I’m currently sitting in the yoga space that comes with my room in Bali. It’s my favourite place, not only for yoga but apparently also for writing. Today is the first day in five years without using add- medication. I ran out of it and it’s not available here. Therefore I felt somewhat nervous to start writing, and at that specific moment I received a handwritten note from a woman I ran into this morning. Another confirmation that we always receive guidance. That I always receive reminders throughout my own holistic healing journey.
My name is Esther and I’m twenty-nine years old. When I took the plane from Amsterdam to Hanoi in February, I thought I’d healed. I had finished my psychotherapy, found a new job, ended my longterm relationship and the final step would be a three-month trip throughout Southeast Asia. After that, I believed I would be fully ready to serve society again and show off my worth.
The past two years have been challenging. After losing my mom in 2019, I fell into another depression. It all started with bad fatigue, which eventually led to my entire body shutting down. I received signs that something was off, but I was so keen on protecting the life I had worked so hard to build that I ignored them all. This made my symptoms getting even worse, leading to heightened paranoia, an eating disorder, excessive drinking, lack of concentration and anxiety that influenced every aspect of my life. Eventually, I couldn’t keep up anymore so I ended up staying home for two years.
Being raised in a family with its own challenges and having to navigate through loss from a young age, mental health has always been a topic in my life. Over the years, I tried many types of psychotherapy, but in some way I never felt truly seen. The focus was always about getting rid of symptoms instead of taking a look at the underlying cause. When I relapsed though, there was no other option than signing up again.
During the fourteen months (!) waiting period for the treatment, my feelings of worthlessness got even worse. I was twenty-six years old and not participating in society at all. Unlike ‘everyone else,’ I wasn’t building a path for my future career and had no sense of connection with the outside world. I was even too anxious to go to the supermarket at some point. Being locked up in a dark house, I was prescribed various medications to ease these intense emotions. They signed me up for MBT treatment, mainly focused on people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).
When it was finally my call, I attended two to four sessions a week for over two years, where I focused on understanding my own behaviour and the inner world of people around me. It was during this time that I first learned to explore my emotions and feelings without criticism or guilt. MBT was the first treatment that sounded promising to me. However, the outcome turned out to be completely different from what I expected. My goal was to build more self-confidence with the intention of working on my relationship and being able to return to work. Instead, I came to the realisation that I wasn’t in the right place and after completing the treatment, I decided to change my life. Ending my relationship and moving out of the city was the first time I took a gut-based decision.
Buying a ticket to Asia to start solo traveling was the second.
After a month in Vietnam, I arrived in Bali. How ironic that I initially only booked two nights because I could only make fun of the island’s spiritual image back then. It’s been four months now, and I’m still here: I quit my job and I’m discovering alternative ways of treatment. I wasn’t looking for this, it found me. This was just the beginning of my holistic healing journey, I just started and it already changed everything. My journey began with being introduced to a local acupuncturist. My sessions focus on the deficiency of Yin in the heart and kidney and grounding my Shen. He prescribes additional herbal tincture which supported my ability to quit all of my other medication.
I recently came across breathwork, meditation, and yoga that I’m still discovering. Every day I’m getting closer to my true self because I lost myself along the way. By softening and being able to accept and love myself, so many beautiful people crossed my path. I truly believe that our inner voice is trying to guide us. The challenge is to not be distracted by the world around us. Focus on you and your own, unique holistic healing journey. Love, be loved, and trust the process. From the moment I started on that, everything came towards me. Just like the note I received today.
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