As we slide deeper into the third decade of this new millennium, one thing has become abundantly clear: the internet has ripped apart our social fabric down to the level of the individual. Half of the consumer population aged 25-45 are paying subscriptions or donating to online content creators. All indicators of in-person intimacy are decreasing like usage of third spaces, friend count, and time spent socializing. With all due respect to selection bias, my own experience as a psychiatrist is like bailing out a sinking ship while treating people who complain to me about how isolated post-pandemic life feels. The world seems much worse than it was in 1999 before the robots enslaved humanity and plugged us into the Matrix.

In this final blog post in the series, I will elaborate on how to do mindfulness meditation.

As a reminder, the mindful stance is an intentional awareness of the present moment without judgment. In order to help illustrate this, I will relate my experience while following this five-minute guided meditation (link below). I also urge you to take five minutes out of your day to follow this guided meditation as well. I have no financial ties to the people behind this youtube video. I just like their script since it perfectly embodies the true mindfulness way.

There are perspectives to which we are so habituated they are invisible to us like the rims of glasses in your peripheral vision or the traffic noise of the city. To understand why mindfulness is so “difficult” we have to first make visible some of these values.

It’s January again, which means it’s time to try New Things™. If there’s one thing that I would pitch to help immensely with anyone’s mental health, it’s a practice called mindfulness.

Guh, no, Dr. Ying, not that hippie-dippy meditation stuff…

Listen. Yes I understand this has been a hot topic in corporate wellness since before COVID. And yes I understand many people have tried it and have it “not work.” But having led a mindfulness practice group for four years, I found that mindfulness is poorly taught. When done correctly, functional MRI studies have found increased neuronal activity and connectivity in the brains of mindfulness practitioners which correlate with stress reduction. As a personal anecdote, mindfulness does have a positive effect on stress and anxiety for me as well. It’s free, low-tech, and family friendly. What else do you want out of an activity? In this first of a three-part series, I will enlighten you as to what mindfulness is truly about.

It goes by many names, actually. The Curse of the Gifted Child. The Dirge of the Ne’er-Do-Wronger. Trophy Kid’s Paradoxically Sad Existence. In a results-driven society, naturally, if we want the best for ourselves, we do what is asked of us. Taking that sentiment to the extreme, these characters are trapped in what I call the fairy tale of perfectionism.

I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye four times now, each in a different phase of my life. With each re-reading, I am more and more convinced Jerome David Salinger was either trained in psychoanalysis or he himself had gone through it. All of his work screams psychoanalysis to me. Among other works I’ve read, “For Esme” and “Franny and Zooey” stand out to me as well. What I appreciate most is how delicately Salinger crafts his characters into beautifully flawed, loveably hateable (and vice versa) human beings in the throes of deep suffering.

The world runs on stories, but are the stories that run your world… your own?