Depression

This post was actually preceded by 3 long and dramatic posts on depression that I wrote while going through the thick of it. Now about 4 months later, I decided that those posts were too personal and have removed them in place of this post below. Amazingly enough, I am pretty happy now just a few months later and don’t identify with that same mindset that wrote those previous posts. You can get a little flavor of what that mindset was like by reading the “Perception” and “Book Review: Self-Compassion” posts. Maybe I will re-release those other posts later in life, but for right now I feel more comfortable sharing my thoughts looking back on my depression from a more objective and stable mindset… so here we go!

Throughout much of my life I have experienced anxiety and depression. Nothing debilitating that kept me in bed all day, but a sense of dull dread that followed me throughout my years growing up. I was always concerned about what others thought of me, and spent most of my efforts worrying about whether people liked me.

This manifested mostly in relationships. There was a common pattern where I would start dating a girl, and then the relationship would end on terms that I was ok with. However, like clockwork, I would get offended when the other person moved on with their life and I would start obsessing over them. I would drive myself crazy thinking about why I wasn’t good enough for them (even in situations where I ended the relationship). This repeated several times throughout high school & college. After college, I would start to get this type of extreme self-criticism & obsession before I even got into a relationship with a girl.

The other area of life that provoked this lousy self-worth was my career path. I never had enough confidence to pursue what genuinely interested me because I was too busy thinking about what would bring me the most money and prestige. I was chasing the things that I thought would make people like and respect me. I was pretty obsessed with the idea of “making it big” but kept getting smacked in the face with the reality of mediocre results.

In spring of this year, a perfect storm career-stagnation, and a promising relationship cut short, sent me over the cliff of depression. Long story short, it got to a point where I couldn’t derive any sense of joy or peace for weeks straight. Luckily I had been practicing mindfulness & meditation for a few years at this point, and had enough awareness to realize that there was something wrong and I needed to get help. I found a local therapist who did a couple sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy and introduced me to an awesome book called “Self-Compassion” by Dr. Kristen Neff that I wrote about here. It turns out that a huge part of my depression were functions of some dysfunctional world-views I held.

Since this experience, I have pretty drastically re-framed my mindset, and the depression and anxiety have pretty much melted away. I have found a sense of resiliency and self-compassion that I had been missing for the majority of my life. A major motivation of this blog is being able to sort through and share these mental models that have helped me so much. In a way I am hoping to solidify them so I continue to reap their benefits throughout life.

I appreciate anyone that reads this, and to anyone out there that struggles with anxiety & depression, I highly encourage seeking professional help. I feel like it has completely transformed my life experience, and I hope that you don’t let any type of stigma prevent it from helping you.