Back from the Brink

Pause for a moment and consider the blackness that is anxiety. Not the anxiety with a lower case ‘a’ that might just be a passing feeling of despondency about a geography SAC or a looming exam.

This is Capital A Anxiety - complete with underscores so heavy that they tear paper and leave the tabletop scratched and the student feeling so angry that she wants to stab herself in the head. It’s the kind of anxiety that deals the adolescent so much grief over a protracted period of time that every single second of her life is affected.

It happened to Ali. Big time. Her story is a long one – it would make a book. But she wants to tell part of it to Education Eye in the hope that other students who experience the same kind of pain as she did will take comfort – and even find relief from the anguish that became an anxiety quagmire, destabilising her young life.

In particular Ali wants to tell people about the rainbow that pushed aside the blackness when she began meditation sessions with family therapist and author Pauline McKinnon, who established the Pauline McKinnon Life Development Centre in Harp Road Kew to offer the unique stillness meditation therapy made famous by the late and eminent psychiatrist Dr Ainslie Meares.

We are chatting in the family living room and the sun is streaming in from across the courtyard. It’s one of those iced tea, lazy summer days. Ali, barefoot and wearing smart jeans and a tee-shirt, is sitting on the couch with her legs tucked beneath her. No one could possibly imagine what this fair-haired, bright-eyed, effervescent 18-year-old with the pretty face and cheeky grin has been through.

She is beautifully articulate and speaks with the confidence and maturity of someone with a few more years. Her answers have a bandwidth of their own; sometimes she talks like a bubbling brook, the words coming out rapidly and her sentences on a positive and charted course. At other times she is reflective. Contemplative. Quiet. Almost brooding. These are not mood swings though – simply a consequence of remembering, of delving into the blackness to tell it how it was and how she doesn’t want it to be again. Indeed, Ali has a measured disposition that perhaps indicates acceptance and peace.

From time to time she refers to the anger that has been a constant companion to the depression and anxiety that have plagued her young life. But the anger is dissipating. Since the meditation, she says, she tends to let things go and not allow irritations or even wrath to enter her mind space.

"I had been so troubled, in much mental anguish," says Ali, her eyes betraying just a trace of sadness. "But when I first started Pauline’s meditation I remember saying to myself: ‘This is like heaven on earth’. She is the most amazing person, full of warmth and calm. I can feel my life beginning again – and I am excited about it."

Ali believes other students who suffer stress or anxiety could see their lives turn around with Pauline’s meditation and therapy.

"Anxiety can be extremely crippling to one’s life. No one deserves to live a limited existence, entangled and entrapped by the complications of being an anxious person. So the best thing is to acknowledge the issue and seek help.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. Seize the opportunity to grow. Do as much as you can for yourself. Take time to read about it, talk about it and open up and share your experiences. The more you let out, the better you will feel."

Ali lives with her mother, Jo, and two of her three older brothers in a leafy southern suburb of Melbourne. All are high achievers. Her mother is a health professional and undoubtedly Ali’s anchor. She loves her mum to bits and she adores her brothers. They are the closest family you could wish to meet and this closeness has helped Ali through her nightmare that started when she was in primary school and re-surfaced a few years later in secondary school.

She has only attended private schools – a fact about which she now feels a little uneasy. Her father died suddenly in mid 2004 when she was in Year 11 and it was at about this time that her life began to seriously unravel. She had had anxiety issues before but this, for Ali, was the beginning of the end. This was depression.

With the regular assistance of a psychiatrist Ali managed to get through Year 11 but early in the first semester of Year 12 she became ill, recovered, returned to school and then broke down with acute depression and anxiety. During the following several months she undertook intensive psychiatric treatment. This was very beneficial to Ali during this period, and Ali and Jo pay tribute to the doctors who helped her through her depression.

"Even though I had done pretty well in Year 11, I was in a mess about the thought of Year 12," says Ali. "I felt hopeless, lost, empty and alone. My life had lost all meaning and value and I seemed to be existing rather than really living.

Soon after, the time had come for some other kind of help for Ali. The doctors had done the best possible job ameliorating the depression but she had reached a plateau. It was now anxiety that needed to be seriously addressed.

"The symptoms that I was experiencing were limiting my life," Ali says. "They ranged from tightness in the chest and a pounding heartbeat to tension, nervousness and insomnia. These lead on to insecurity, isolation, worry, confusion and mental overload."

Her doctor suggested meditation. Jo had read Dr Meares’s book, Relief Without Drugs and had heard about Dr Meares’s techniques. She had also heard of Pauline McKinnon and within 24 hours Ali was in talking with Pauline at the Life Development Centre.

"Pauline’s counselling and meditation has helped to turn my life around," Ali says. "With her I felt really, really safe. To find that quietness through stillness meditation was the most incredible thing and I think it has saved my life. It has given me control of myself."

I ask Ali whether it is possible for her to put colors to the bad times and also to the way forward. She considers the question and takes her time answering. Her response is careful, measured and, like everything else about Ali, honest.

"If my depression and anxiety were a color I would say it was black. And I’d like to see my future as a rainbow. Pauline McKinnon diluted the blackness and made me better able to see the rainbow…to see my future."

So who exactly is Pauline McKinnon? Ask the people she has helped over the past 23 years and their answers will range from miracle worker to guardian angel to "the therapist who could help when others had given up or failed". And her practice, which amazingly receives no government support, was born from personal experience.

Her own nightmare began one day in 1967 when, stuck in heavy traffic and running late for an appointment, she was seized by a deathly feeling of unreality. Her anxiety intensified as giddiness, nausea, blurred vision, numbness and palpitations took hold. Hyperventilating and convinced that she was dying, she managed to park the car and stumble into a store where friendly shoppers came to the rescue and helped her home.

Ms McKinnon was just 26, happily married with two small children. Doctors then were unable to offer her a clear explanation for her condition. There were platitudes, pills, hand-patting and even one overly earnest specialist who concluded immediately that she must be suffering a serious kidney ailment. Not so.

In fact Ms McKinnon had suffered a panic attack and it was the start of an eight-year stretch of agoraphobic misery. Leaving the safety of the family home was her constant paralysing fear. Taking a bus, or indeed any form of public transport, was out of the question. Had the Burnley Tunnel been built at the time, a journey through it could never have been considered. Quite simply the joys of being out and about - and happy – had vanished. On the upside – although she didn’t know it at the time - she had just embarked on an amazing journey that would see her help thousands of fellow sufferers of anxiety and depression – including Ali.

Despite being severely limited by her condition she managed to raise a family while on a medical merry-go-round. The turning point (or "the intervention of destiny", as she prefers to put it) came in 1974 when she met eminent Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Ainslie Meares who was pioneering his unique style of meditation – perhaps to the irritation of some pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners who promoted the kind of treatment that came only in small tubes and bottles.

Ms McKinnon, who had read Relief Without Drugs began Stillness Meditation with Dr Meares and the response was swift. Her anxiety diminished and, in turn, she overcame agoraphobia which was ruining her life. After eight years she had found a specialist who not only had a deep understanding and insight into human emotions and the dreadful effect of anxiety and tension but who also empowered people to regain control through resting the mind.

As her health improved Ms McKinnon became increasingly aware that there were many people with similar conditions all over the world and who, like her, were searching for effective treatments. Sadly, meditation was then viewed by some doctors as "too alternative" and, moreover, incompatible with orthodox medical science.

Little was widely known about anxiety disorders in those years. As Dr Meares pioneered the concept of meditative practice for the primary purpose of anxiety relief Ms McKinnon became determined to put her personal struggles to positive use. She told her story in her own book, In Stillness Conquer Fear. Published in 1983, it was an immediate success and the first book of its kind, bringing to public awareness the matter of anxiety as a problem within society.

Indeed, her nightmare had turned into a personal crusade to help others. Later that year she was invited by Dr Meares to teach other people stillness meditation. He encouraged her to establish a practice which exists today as the Pauline McKinnon Life Development Centre at 146-150 Harp Road, Kew.

Later training in family therapy, Ms McKinnon became a professional therapist through being an anxiety victim. Her book has seen five editions (the latest reprint was last July) and demand for it is buoyant – perhaps a reflection of people’s crowded and relentlessly busy lifestyles which often spawn stress, unhappiness and abject depression. A variety of treatments are available today for anxiety disorders. However, from more than 30 years’ personal and professional experience Ms McKinnon offers a different understanding and a unique and powerfully effective skill that has stood the test of time. 97 percent of her clients state significant improvement with symptoms reducing by almost 50 percent within approximately 16 facilitated stillness sessions.

Ms McKinnon believes more people would benefit if Stillness Meditation Therapy were more accessible. One way, she suggests, is to encourage general practitioners to become familiar with the philosophy, concepts and successes of Dr Meares who was responsible for her own return to good health.

She believes that "societal pressures on all ages coupled with 21st century pressure-cooker lifestyles impact heavily on some people, leading to conditions that beg the ability to change our inner response to life - something that can not necessarily be treated satisfactorily through drugs.".

Ms McKinnon’s patients are from all walks: adolescents like Ali, high profile professionals, business men and women, university students struggling to cope with tertiary pressures, cancer sufferers, children and adults with eating disorders, traumatised police officers, kids who have suffered sexual abuse and even a 14-year-old boy who had become depressed because he had been required to take on significant adult responsibilities following a dramatic family breakup.

Ms McKinnon believes changing values, expectations in the workplace, a perceived need and race to acquire wealth, family pressures, job insecurity, a materialistic society, the forgotten need to "pause and take stock" and the scarcity of peace and quiet were all contributors to increased stress and anxiety.

"Clearly Ainslie Meares was ahead of his time," she said. "It is a wonderful tribute to a great doctor to see how people are able to pull themselves up out of the depths of despair through the ideas that he pioneered. This is the fuel that keeps me going and I passionately believe that we must open up these options to people who either may not be aware of how they can learn to care for themselves, or who have not explored alternatives."

Ms McKinnon has earned the respect of many, including one of Australia’s best known cancer survivors, Dr Ian Gawler, who says: "Pauline McKinnon is one of those successful patients who did it. She has recovered. She even knows how and why she recovered. More importantly Pauline has the ability to articulately share her experience and knowledge with others – in a way that can help them directly and effectively."

Ms McKinnon has written six other books including Quiet Magic, a delightful novel for children that subtly teaches the recognition of stress and anxiety and the importance of relaxation skills for young people – prevention being better than cure! She has also produced two CDs, Stillness for Stress-Free Living (for adults) and Let’s Be Still (for children and adolescents).

Ali believes the one-on-one counselling as well as group stillness meditation sessions with Pauline McKinnon pulled her back from the brink. She has read In Stillness Conquer Fear, loved it and practices stillness meditation anytime and anywhere – "even on the tram". Sometimes she slips Pauline’s CD into her portable player and enters her own stillness zone. She has known the hell of anxiety and doesn’t want to return. She agrees with Pauline about the pace of modern life contributing to anxiety.

She believes it is critical for people in responsible leadership positions (she certainly includes influencers like politicians, teachers and public commentators) to be genuinely mindful about the potential dangers associated with pressuring students to succeed beyond success.

"But what is success?" she wonders aloud. "All of these factors place unnecessary pressures on students, therefore creating anxiety - and sometimes large cases of anxiety - that lead to breakdowns.

"Today’s achievement-oriented society and fast-paced modern-day lifestyles are the ultimate breeding ground of anxiety," says Ali. "The focus is that we must strive harder and harder. Attending well regarded universities and going on to highly-paid jobs seem to be seen as being ‘successful’.

"We keep going, faster and faster in the hope that our busyness and ‘successes’ will make our lives meaningful. But has anyone stopped to realise that being successful doesn’t have to be about school, university or work. What about ourselves? Endless pressures are driving us away from self-discovery and true contentment."

Ali believes her bouts of anxiety and depression are now behind her, and she has enrolled in a course at college. She partly owes the change in her life to Pauline McKinnon, Dr Ainslie Meares, her mum and her family. And another important player: herself.

"If I hadn’t allowed myself to play a part in my getting better I would not have gone to see Pauline. There is only a certain amount that others can do for you, and it is important for fellow sufferers of depression and anxiety to acknowledge the importance of wanting to be well and wanting to help yourself.

"Pauline has opened up a whole new world to me. Meditation, spiritual growth and personal development have grown to be a very important part of my life.

"Pauline’s stillness meditation therapy has particularly helped me in calming my overly-analytical and busy mind," Ali says. "When I first began meditating I felt like I had found ‘heaven on earth’. Finally, I had found release from my mind. I now know how the mind works. It is a problem-solving mechanism that likes to be busy. However, if we learn not to give our thoughts any attention then gradually they disappear to the back of our awareness."

Ali says many "positive transformations" have taken place in her life since she started seeing Pauline. She is generally more at ease being with herself and with other people. She can now be patient and "still" in times of stress and frustration and sometimes when she smiles she knows that it is a happiness coming from deep within her. She feels an inner glow and contentment.

"Pauline has a very calm and warming nature, different to that of other professionals," says Ali. "She seems to have a calming aura that permeates into other beings in her presence. She is sincere and empathetic and incredibly wise.

"Since I have put school and the associated expectations of myself behind me, I have flourished like I never could have imagined. I have become my own person, created my own life, and taken myself on a new path.

"I have never felt so good simply about being me. New doors have opened up that I never knew existed. I encourage other students to embark on their own journey too. It’s an amazing feeling when you take control of your own life and start discovering who you really are."

The Pauline McKinnon Life Development Centre is located at

146-150 Harp Road, Kew.

Phone (03) 9817 2933 or visit www.lifedevelopmentcentre.com.