How to pull yourself out of the darkness
You could throw a dart in any direction and find a reason why 2020 dramatically affected your mental health. It took awhile for it to catch up to me but when it finally did I just gave up. I kept thinking “I just want to sleep for like a year and wake up when this nightmare is over.” This is a change of pace for the blog and I hope you find it helpful.—Joshua
Yesterday I showered for the first time in seven days. That was actually an improvement on the week before but roughly on par with the last six months.
I was supposed to start teaching one of my design classes last month but just before the first day it got cancelled. I love teaching. Few things manage to be joyful, rewarding and keep your refrigerator stocked yet I was beyond relieved that it wasn’t happening.
I didn’t check email for 6 weeks unless I got a text that I needed to read a specific email.
I didn’t even realize I was depressed. I joked that I had PTSD after last year’s riots and the never-ending stream of shootings and carjackings but I didn’t really believe it. But showering once a week or less kinda says it all.
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Depression sneaks up on me. I don’t actually recognize the feelings when it comes around because at first it just feels like a vague dissatisfaction that I might mistake for needing a change of scenery. It’s not until I become physically symptomatic that I can see what’s happening. Besides the stuff I just mentioned here’s some of of what happens:
I sigh. A fuckin’ lot.
I don’t want to do ANYTHING. Nothing.
Worse than that I have no idea what to do even when I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.
I eat crap and drink coffee too late in the day.
I go to bed late and wake up right before I need to do something.
I have zero attention span for anything besides sitting on the couch and watching TV. I can’t focus on work. I can’t focus on the not-work stuff. I can’t hold a conversation.
I alternate between thinking about the things I SHOULD be doing and “What’s the point?”
And the number one sign that I’m in a depressive state is that I have super-unbelievably-clear to-do’s and I just can’t bring myself to act.
My worst habit when I’m in the darkness is that I try to fix it by taking action on some big goal. The idea being that if I radically change my situation then all my REAL problems will lift and I’ll feel better. I’ll dive down a rabbit-hole related to some overarching facet of life — career, finance, health — and become obsessed with fixing it. This sounds like a good thing but it’s not because I do it in a way that is detrimental to things that create a healthy mental ecosystem. I become too impatient and get micro-focused on the idea and start putting everything else to the side. To make matters worse I’ll do this on a bunch of different things. So I go back and forth between wanting to do absolutely nothing and finding everything in life annoying and getting so fiercely focused that I still find everything in life annoying. On some level these are both the same thing: ignoring the day-to-day. It’s just that one is apathetic and the other is manic.
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It’s probably apparent that my writing this means that I’m on the other side of it. I’m not at 100% but I feel normal and that feels good. Here’s some of the things that, for me at least, need to be done to create an upward spiral.
Number one: Talk about it. Some of the weight was lifted as soon as I admitted to a couple of people that I was in a bad place. The other thing is that I realized how fucking stupid I was being by not doing everything else on this list.
2. Shower (obviously). It’s insane how much better a shower makes me feel.
3. Wake up earlier. But just waking up earlier isn’t going to cut it since the point is to wake up feeling good. That means going to bed earlier. Creating some space between waking up and working helps me to feel more like a human being that has options versus obligations.
4. Walk/Sun/Fresh air. Admittedly this can be hard in Minnesota. There was a week where we could only walk the dog to the end of the block before she was too cold or we were. That had a cascading effect where it was easy not to go out once the temperature was back up to 15° or 20°F (compounded by the stress of needing to have a fucking spotter to watch your back whenever you’re within 15’ of your car). But it’s necessary and if you’re dealing with heavy anxiety that you can feel in your central nervous system a walk is a better idea than hard exercise (aka adding physical stress to a stressed system).
5. Forget the future. Focus on the immediate future. Like “What do I have to do today to feel Ok tomorrow?” 90% of this list is about doing little things today to feel a little bit better by the same time tomorrow. Putting away the laundry, dusting shelves or purging some old clothes won’t cause the heavens to open up majestically but they’ll make your next trip through your home just a little bit lighter.
A glorious Italian sunset is not necessarily on the horizon just because you swept some cobwebs out of the corners but it will be a small win. Photo by Fausto Accordi on Unsplash
6. Accept your circumstances. A lot of my unhappiness or despair can be boiled down to this idea: “I don’t want to be this person in this place doing this stuff at this time”. If I let that feeling run me then I impatiently start working on some big goal and sacrifice all the little things that need to be done daily to feel like an actual human being. 2 or 3 weeks later my life will be demonstrably worse as I skip showers, eating and relationships in a frenzied effort to change my situation.
7. Break commitments. I’m always committing too much stuff whether it’s to work, other people or my own goals. It may be possible to meet the commitments but at what cost? Over the last few weeks I’ve had to decide that there’s only a couple things that I can work on and everything else just has to wait. As a creative person and an ADD-case it’s so hard to not go after everything but the reality is that there’s very few exceptional (or even happy) polymaths and I’m probably not gonna be one of them.
8. Keep the commitments that count. I decided that there’s people that I will be bummed out about if I disappoint. That means that the things I have to forget about are mostly projects that matter to me. That’s hard but not as hard as feeling like you failed as a friend. I’ve made massive headway on a collaborative project over the last 2 weeks and it’s had the overlapping effects of making me feel good about progress, reducing my anxiety and guilt and making me feel excited when I get texts or phone calls rather than stressed.
9. Reduce inputs. I realized the virtues of a low-information diet a long time ago when it comes to the news and current events but after 2020 (ALL OF IT. EVERY LAST THING WITHOUT EXCEPTION.*) I needed to re-affirm it and expand it. This is hard for me but I’m trying to be selective and purposeful about all inputs from the obviously awful like the news to something that is normally great like music discovery** or reading. Basically I’m putting my brain on an elimination diet until I feel like I’m running my brain and not being run by it.
My brother is in the hospital right now. If this had a happened a month ago I wouldn’t be handling it well. But yesterday? I don’t think I sighed once. I don’t think I threw my hands up and thought “Why bother?” or “Fuck, it never ends”. I texted him and joked around. I read to my kids. I took care of some obligations. I watched Community and laughed (without feeling guilty about all the shit that I “should” be doing). It wasn’t some peak experience, just a decent day where I mostly did things that will make today a bit better.
*Okay, one exception: the Human Impact LP.
**I’ve got a blog post coming on why this is specifically necessary for me.