World Mental Health Day

A quick post here for World Mental Health Day. Jump!


Obviously most of this blog is about travels and fun and adventure, and those things are all real, and generate my profound and enduring gratitude. But I've tried not to shy away from the rough, hard edges of the past couple of years. That's partly because I've learned - thanks, therapy! - that I function best when I function openly and without operating in fear of voicing What's Happening. But it's also at least a little bit because of what today's about, which is: it's important to talk, and to create a culture that normalizes the discussion of things like depression, anxiety and a whole arsenal of mental health issues.

World Mental Health Day is about raising awareness of mental health issues; there are lots of ways to interpret this. In the US, for instance, we have spectacularly poor policy around mental health (and the repeated attempts to repeal the ACA would restore an even worse regime in which treatment for depression could lead to uninsurability, and basic insurance plans failed to cover essential mental health treatments). But at an individual level, I think it's most useful as a day to talk about and destigmatize mental health from a personal standpoint.

I'm lucky that I came to a crisis point of depression and anxiety late in life, a quick and unpleasant spiral driven by a combo of internal self-perpetuating behavioral patterns and external triggers and stress factors. I don't stack up my experience against anybody else's, and count myself incredibly lucky to have had university sponsored mental health care at hand to catch me, and an army of friends and family to help me back onto my feet. But two things are worth emphasizing in this: first, that I did go through it, and second, that way way way more people than I had assumed would be there for me stood up when I reached out.

Being vulnerable in the paralysis of depression is difficult to the point of seeming impossibility, but if and when you do reach out, you find people more patient than you hoped they'd be. You find kindness you didn't expect. And you find that many more people than you knew have struggled with the same. It's not perfect, and some people will be jerks. (Some People Will Always Be Jerks is the mantra in my sequel to Glengarry Glen Ross.) But it is so much better than going it alone, however wrong that may sound before you start reaching out.

So yeah. If you struggle with stuff, you're not alone. Reach out, talk to friends you can trust, talk to loved ones who have been there for you in the past, find a therapist. If your therapist sucks, find a new therapist. Interview your therapist. It's normal to be nervous about therapy; pop culture, even if it hasn't been hostile to therapy per se, uses it as a narrative device when catastrophe strikes (West Wing PTSD!) or to explore rich psychological trauma for dramatic effect (Tony Soprano!). But if you find the right therapist for you, it's not about confirming that there's something wrong with you or that your world is on fire, it's about a medical professional giving you tools you didn't know existed, and telling you you're not the only one dealing with what feel like completely individual, isolating issues.

For those of you who have people in your lives who struggle with depression or anxiety: I get it. It's a drag. It can be hard, it can feel like you're rolling a rock up a hill forever. The two best pieces of advice I've seen to help in moments of frustration are these:

1) This is water. David Foster Wallace's so-famous-it's-a-cliche-but-nevertheless-brilliant commencement speech is a powerful call to live outside the natural urge toward self-centeredness, the misery-inducing tendency to forget that everyone around you is fighting a battle.
2) Comfort in, dump out. I love this model. Even when going through the divorce, I tried to keep it firmly in mind. Everyone is fighting a battle, and supporting your friends and loved ones does take something out of you. Comfort in, dump out. Get the help you need and support the people who need you. It's a big old world, and we can all make it work if we're good to each other this-a-ways.

Happy World Mental Health Day, gang.

Art Shay, Be Kind Now

Oh, and a bonus shoutout: check out The Hilarious World of Depression, John Moe's excellent and frank podcast exploring depression with comedians, actors, musicians, and all kind of folk. It's a mosaic of coping strategies, shared stories, and funny from-the-future perspective on dark, hard times. It's goooood.