Guest Post: Photography, Mental Health, and Spirituality

Sarah Fleming is finishing up her last year studying Psychology and Religious Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is passionate about spiritual and emotional well-being, social justice, interfaith dialogue, and photography. She hopes to pursue careers in both photography and Unitarian Universalist ministry.

I’ve struggled for years with anxiety and panic. Without even noticing the build-up, I can get to places where I literally forget to breathe for seconds at a time. I lose myself, and my thoughts don’t have time to complete themselves. The world is a hostile place at these times.

For me, mental health and spirituality are absolutely intertwined. For the first few months of my panic attacks, the only thing that could make the world an okay place again was Xanax. However, I was lucky enough to be taken in by a college chaplain who introduced me to Zen meditation. Meditation changed the possibilities that life held for me. Over time, I’ve learned to be patient with myself, with others, and with the world; to rest in the ambiguity of the moment and see it for what it is; to learn that it’s not bad after all. I’ve found stability and faith that I hadn’t believed possible.

I have long been attracted to photography because it does what meditation does: it breaks down the overwhelming chaos into little moments of clarity. After a difficult few months in which meditation seemed more difficult than usual, I got myself a DSLR camera and threw myself into photography. I’m inspired by the work of Matthieu Ricard, a well-known Tibetan monk who uses photography as a supplement to his meditation practice. In a well-known quote, Henri-Cartier Bresson describes this connection: “Matthieu’s camera and his spiritual life are one, and from this spring these images, fleeting and eternal.”

I’d like to share the results of my semester-long experiment with photography as a spiritual practice. I have a long way to go, but I’m now considering pursuing photography as a career after finishing college (in addition to ministry/spiritual leadership!). I’ve experimented with several genres of photography. I especially like capturing authentic emotion through portraits and little poignant snapshots of time through street photography. I also have a collection of travel photographs from my trip to Dharamsala, India this past summer.

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Here we go – some links to my photography!

My website: http://www.saraheflemingphoto.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saraheflemingphoto

Tumblr: http://saraheflemingphoto.tumblr.com/

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109246693@N02/

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Adrenaline Rush

In therapy, we’ve started to focus on anxiety. I’m much more concerned about that right now than I am about depression; depression is something I’ve learned to deal with and to a certain degree, can’t be “cured,” but anxiety is relatively new, and I believe that can be trained out of me.

I don’t remember my life without depression, but I remember it without anxiety, and I want that life back.

We talked about activities that I can practice, the ones that are on the lower end of my anxiety. Leaving the apartment to do laundry, going to the store alone, talking to clerks, and driving are all things I can practice pretty easily, and have made a lot of progress in. I went to my psychiatrist yesterday, and when I saw her last month, I wasn’t even able to go downstairs to the laundry room because of the anxiety. Since then, I’ve done laundry four times, gone to the store twice, and driven myself to every counseling appointment. The changes in medication has definitely played a part in that; when I sleep better and stay asleep for longer periods of time, the rest of the day automatically goes better and I’m able to concentrate my energy on achieving my goals.

There are certain activities that I can’t really “practice,” and those are on the highest end of my anxiety spectrum. Job interviews, saying something potentially embarrassing, and going back to school are all petrifying. When I think about school, it’s not school itself that I’m anxious about. I’m afraid of repeating what has happened before and what can only be described as a crash and burn. I’d start out the semester ok and then over time, get more and more anxious about things, miss more classes, and panic about everything. As I went through college, the periods of time where I could push past my fears got shorter and shorter until I collapsed on Chris’ floor just before midterms of my junior year and stopped going to school. I’m afraid that will happen again.

I’m afraid that when I walk through the school buildings, sit in class, and just navigate life as a Macalester student, the memory of my anxiety will be too vivid to ignore. Simply by being in a situation where in the past I’ve felt a lot of anxiety will be enough to send me spiraling. My brain will go into protection mode and a shot of adrenaline will disrupt the normality of finishing 20 credits.

What has basically happened to my brain is that my adrenaline is overly sensitive. While most people only experience that level of intensity when there’s an actual crisis (running from danger, gaining super strength when a car falls on a child, etc), I will begin feeling a sense of danger when I’m just doing everyday things, like asking for help in a store or meeting with an academic adviser. The physical symptoms of adrenaline kick in and I interpret that as meaning something is actually wrong, and my thinking follows. Why can’t I stop shaking? Why is my mouth so dry? If I talk, it sounds like I’m going to cry, and that will make me seem weak and weird. I can’t be around people right now, they’re making it worse. Now I can’t breathe. The fears going through my mind only make the adrenaline rush worse and that can cause anxiety attacks. The physical and mental panic build on each other until I can’t tell the difference between them.

Since my anxiety is so physically based (shaking, difficulty breathing, dizziness, feeling out of control of my body), the solution is also physical. What I basically have to do is calm my physical state before my mind can interpret the situation as one involving actual danger. In my head, I know that sitting in a class is not scary, but when my body is responding to the situation with shakiness and cold sweats, it’s hard to convince my mind that everything is peaches ‘n cream. When an adrenaline rush happens at an inappropriate time, I need to make some physical adjustments to ease the adrenaline back to a normal level. Deep breathing is key. When breathing gets out of control, everything just falls to pieces. Focusing on maintaining deep, even breaths calms down panicky feelings and concentrates the mind on something other than the non-existing peril. My therapist also suggested carrying water wherever I go, since getting a very dry mouth and not being able to swallow are very common symptoms for me. Drinking water helps so many things. The dizziness might even be caused by partial dehydration or low blood sugar, which I also tend to have, so having water and keeping a good blood sugar level are possible solutions. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

I may not be able to go practice going to school by actually going to school, but thinking about it is all it takes for a lot of my anxiety to kick in. I can use that to practice breathing and other techniques to calm myself down. Simulating anxiety-causing situations and then learning to control the feelings that arise is definitely a new goal on my list.