This hopeful healing story about how meditation can help mental disorders places itself at a mental health hospital in California. Earlier that year, the hospital hired me to teach meditation once a week. Within a few months, the hospital ramped up my sessions to 4 times a week, with 6 additional private sessions available to the clients. The unprecedented success from my meditative interventions motivated the large increase in my time working with clients.
By the time of this story, I had successful interventions with diagnoses common to a psychiatric hospital. Working with Schizophrenia, bipolar, and the usual mood disorders had become standard protocol. The consistency of weekly meditation talks, with additional private sessions allowed my holistic practice streamlined focus and reach. Many instances of true healing and transformation resulted from the consistency and potency of meditation.
Around this time, I received notice the hospital planned to admit a new client. The hospital clinical director briefed me on the prospective client’s diagnosis. “The client has Dissociative Identity Disorder, commonly referred to as DID” she states in a matter of fact tone. I would later learn DID to be one of the rarest mental illnesses recorded in western science. DID occurs within a subset of dissociative disorders, where the individual shows consistent depersonalization of their subjective experience. Such depersonalization occurs spontaneously without conscious intent or prior knowledge.
DID exists as the most severe form of the dissociative disorders. In DID, the disassociation occurs within the client’s own identity. Someone suffering from DID presents with multiple identities. Each identity has a unique personality and background. Moreover, an eye-popping case study shows a DID client with one identify suffering from physical blindness. All other identities had normal functioning vision. When tested, an MRI confirmed loss of occipital lobe functioning when the blind identity presented itself!
It comes with no surprise, that such a scientific anomaly has no straightforward treatment advice. In fact, most research shows most forms of psychotherapy unsuccessful in treating this fascinating condition. Although, small outlier studies document spiritual interventions having positive results. Even before hearing this, I felt my intervention strategy had a shot at success.
In my meditations, I recommend allowing attention to rest on the subjective sense of “I”. Every person refers to themselves as “I”. The “I” sense is common to all. Anyone can become consciously aware of their present existence if shown how. In fact, it is not possible to have any experience without an underlying sense of “I” present. The logic being that to have an experience, one must be present to the experience! Thus, it can be said that the “I” sense pervades all subjective experience. This is how I knew meditation could really help with mental disorders and why I thought I could help in this case.
We can recognize our own conscious sense of self-existence with ease. With some guidance, even those suffering from severe mental illness can recognize their own conscious sense of self-existence. When our attention becomes absorbed in the natural “I” sense, meditation follows without effort.
I worked with the new client, let’s call her Amanda, for hours a day in our short time together. Amanda achieved incredible results working with the simple meditation instruction. As the ever-shifting tides of identity played out in this special individual, I held grounded presence and reminded her to connect back to the “I” sense. Just as any person could follow such simple instruction, each of her identities successfully followed my guidance.
Throughout our work together, I saw Amanda become more and more grounded in connection with the present reality of herself. Each time her attention settled into her natural sense of self, I asked what she felt. Over time she felt an uncaused sense of well-being through connecting with her sense of self. Clinical Director of the hospital reports never witnessing such a rapid and significant shift, especially in such a rare disorder.
It was a true privilege to remind such a special soul of the light that’s always existed within her. The experience filled me with more meaning than words could ever capture. I will remember my experience with Amanda for the rest of my life. In my opinion, the success reflects the universality of meditation and how it can help not only with mental disorders, but potentially in many other areas.
Logan Friend
Spiritual Teacher
Huntington Beach, CA
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.