New to forum

[frazzled37]

Hello All

I thought I would take a moment to introduce myself to the forum. I'm currently very active in practising mindfulness and meditation to help alleviate the chronic stress that I am suffering from. Without sounding too dramatic, I actually thought I was beginning to die. Nothing I tried got rid of the crippling lethargy/fatigue, negative thinking and poor self image. I've always felt trapped like a prisoner in my own body and mind however the feelings have intensified over the last few years. 6 years of full blown 24/7 stress, without a break in fact.

After exploring several avenues as to what the cause of all my symptoms were I was given a book written by Ruby Wax entitled 'Sane New World: Taming the Mind'. Ruby wrote this book for me, or at least that's how it felt. I had finally hit the nail on the head and discovered it all boils down to stress and excess cortisol in my system. At first I didn't think mindfulness would work for me. I tried and tried and nothing seemed to happen. In fact, my mind was so busy I found it virtually impossible to practice and the harder I tried, the harder it became. I've persevered however and I'm glad I did. Slowly I am feeling change and it's very exciting. I'm finally having mini holidays from the Cortisol and it feels amazing. Without the darned stuff I have higher levels of thinking I didn't know I was capable of. It's still early days and I need to work on cooling down the stress response as it happens so I am hoping to pick up a lot of insight from this forum and help any others by lending a listening ear to anyone who just needs someone to talk to.

Looking forward to using this site

Darran

[Gareth]

Great to hear from you, Darran!

Your story is fantastic, and I'm so glad that mindfulness is helping you. All this would make a great blog, if you felt like writing one for us.

Welcome to the forum.

[monkey]

Hi Darran,

Welcome! It's good to hear your story.