“Stay in the moment. The practice of staying present will heal you. Obsessing about how the future will turn out creates anxiety.
Replaying broken scenarios from the past causes anger and sadness. Stay here, in this moment.” ~Sylvester McNutt For two years, I studied and practiced meditation.
I listened to podcasts, chanted mantras each morning, sat quietly while exploring my default mode network, and traversed Eastern mysticism under the guidance of a licensed clinical psychologist who taught me how to use deep diaphragmatic breathing to stimulate my vagus nerve and lower my resting heart rate.
This helped me recover from panic attacks, which I started having as a result of existential dread. After a series of nights with intrusive thoughts about death and dying, and painful memories related to my childhood, I decided to learn so my thoughts would bother me less.