Sense and Nonsense: Reflections on Mental Health

Important: I am not a psychologist/therapist, I don't know what I'm talking about, lol. These are just the opinions of a fellow human, treat them as such. Always prioritize the advice of professionals over the advice of laypeople

I have debated writing an essay about my struggles with mental health for a while. On the one hand, I thought that I shouldn't, for two reasons:

• There is a stigma against men suffering from these sorts of issues. People have the subconscious notion that if you suffer from depressive symptoms, you must be weak, an attribute that is commonly ascribed (whether fairly or not) to women. I don't believe this (in fact, I rather believe the opposite) but it's worth acknowledging.
• I am not a huge fan of what I might call the “fetishization” of mental illness. That is, I don't like how it is treated by sufferers and those that are sympathetic to sufferers. There is this notion that these issues are inescapable and untreatable, and give license for a person to act in whatever way they please.

However, I realized that I might be able to provide some respite to those in the thick of things that I have been through. My perspective on mental health is this: in life, a person may be afflicted by situations that are outside of their control, but people generally have the ability to handle these situations and, sometimes, to overcome them. We should not give in to the temptation to be overwhelmed by the crisis, and to just give up.

Reader, if you are at a point in which you are tempted to give up, I understand. I have been there many times. I hope that reading about my experiences and how I overcame them will give you the hope and the courage to face these issues.

Let's start with the most blindingly obvious: if you are given medication by your doctor, take it. You should take the medication when you feel bad, of course, but you should also take the medication when you feel *good*. You might wonder, how do I know if the medication is actually working? I'm not sure how to answer that question, but if you are concerned about it, you should talk to a medical professional.

One thing that worked for me was using a weekly pill-sorter – you know, the type that old people use to organize their pills Monday through Sunday. This creates a great visual reminder to regularly take the medication.

I say this with a major caveat that medications are not magical. They are useful, and created by people that are very intelligent, and generally improve do conditions. However, it is well-known that without a change in lifestyle, these medications will serve merely as a crutch, as opposed to something that can actually effectuate change.

Here are four things that improved my mental well-being:

• Drinking water: It's hard to overstate how much good hydration can improve your physical well-being.
• Eating healthy: Garbage in, garbage out. That's how it works. If you eat crap, you are going to feel like crap. You need healthy foods that will give you good amounts of energy.
• Spending time outside: This is huge. Breathe the fresh air. Make it a habit to take walks.
• Exercise: Also huge. When you exercise, you release endorphins. If you are a man, maybe try weightlifting. I got into it recently, and, even if you are weak now, it feels so so good to progress in your strength. There is no feeling in the world like easily lifting a dumbbell that gave you serious trouble a month ago. It is great for confidence and self-image

The sad truth is, you have to do the work. If you are suffering from depression, it is going to feel like a monumental labor to do it. I think that the reason for this is that because the most vicious attribute of depression is that it robs you of the hope that anything could ever be better. Why would anyone do anything if there was no hope of improvement?

This is, obviously, nonsense. There is always hope. I understand, however, that sometimes this is difficult to believe. So, let me instead suggest flipping the script: If you can't find it within yourself to have Hope, maybe you could start with Love?

(This is my epiphany, and the general idea I try to instill into others, so if you read anything that I write, I am always going to try to tell you to have Love in your heart :D so bare with me)

Please understand, reader, that I am not talking about romantic Love. English does such violence to the concept of Love by giving it only one word, and by saying that it is something you celebrate on Valentines day. I have been in love, the infatuation with another person… this is a different thing. Instead, I am talking about the goodwill that you have towards… anything, really.

Take a moment to meditate on the things and people you love. Then, if I could suggest something, try to expand that love – try to reach out with your heart and embrace more. Embrace with lovingkindness the person you see on the street who doesn't even look at you – what is their life like? What things are they struggling with? Who loves them?

The Dalai Lama had this to say: “A thousand candles can be lit from one candle, however the life of the original candle is not shortened in the least.”

Then realize that there is so much love that you don't just have to feel passively, but also to give actively. There is so much we all can do for one another. The smallest act of good has compound interest in the world. If I hold the door open for an old man once, it has a small impact on his life. But if I show up again and again, and I open the door each day for him, that will impact his life in a big way.

There is a non-linear effect to love. The love that you invest into others can start to create love on it's own. If I show love to a person, I might have improved their attitude in that day. And by uplifting their spirits, perhaps I encouraged them to love others. In this way, the impact of your actions can be huge.

Aesop said: “No act of love is ever wasted.”

The punchline is this: if you can't find the hope to improve your own life, if the night is so dark and horrible that you can't see any hope, maybe try to press on for the good of others? Maybe say to yourself, “self, I know you feel awful, and I know it hurts, but you have so so much to offer to others, there is so much good you can do in the world. so get up and out of bed, because you have a job to do.”

Love has become the reason for almost everything that I do. In the morning, I feel tired and I feel like I don't want to go to the gym. But then I realize that in building my strength, I am becoming stronger for people I care about. In a literal sense, I will be able to carry the weight that weaker people won't be able to. There is also the health angle – working out makes me healthy, and if I am healthy, I can serve people better. I will have more energy, as well. I won't be tired as much, I will be able to have more literal stamina.

This isn't me being pretentious, because this attitude wasn't something that I was born with, but rather something that I kind of just… stumbled across. And guess what, the reason that I am sharing it with you, despite the uncomfortableness of doing so, is, you guessed it, LOVE! I want you to have love in your heart, because I want you to overcome your depression, because of love!

How do you foster this love in your heart? I have found, in my own experience, that the attitude of love follows from the practice of love. That is, the more I give of myself, the more love I have. And, the more love I had, the more I was willing to give.

Obviously, there are problems here, of course there are. People might take advantage of you, so what is the line between loving and being taken advantage of? Honestly, I don't know if I have all of the answers. My perspective is that you should protect yourself from being completely consumed by something, so that you become useless in other attributes. In short, I'm not saying you should be stupid. You should be wise so that you know what it actually means to love others. Be, as Jesus said, “Wise as serpents and as gentle as doves”.

At the same time, I feel like Americans in general have become way too suspicious of and cynical about love. At some point, I am going to make a video about how cynicism is ruining my generation's lives and making them stupid. (I am talking about “omnicynicism”, this universal attitude of suspicion towards everything) I feel like as a result we are letting our communities crumble and die, because no one wants to do the work to make sure things run smoothly! No one accepts the responsibilities of living in a functional society without the government imposing those responsibilities on us by force.

Eh, let me bring it back to specifics. It is completely fair to not give money to the homeless man on the side of the street, because you are suspicious of how that money will actually be used. However, maybe consider instead donating money to a homeless shelter, that you have carefully vetted? In that way, you are still showing love, but you are being wise. Or, if you simply don't have enough money to be comfortable donating any, that's fine too.

In a practical sense, I generally try to do good through established organizations that I trust, rather than on an ad-hoc level, unless it is for someone that I know well.

My perspective on good works is: it is more important to do good than to be good. Don't focus on eliminating supposed hypocrisy or internal philosophical contradictions of your actions. Don't focus on whether or not you are doing “enough”. If you do, you will never do anything of value, as you will be so completely paralyzed by self-doubt and guilt. The practice of love should be rooted in joy, not in guilt.

Now that I have established my basic framework for a healthy mind, I will discuss some sepcific things that I have faced, and my advice for others in dealing with them.

Anxiety has two facets that ought to be considered:

• The fear it afflicts you with when you try to do something that makes you anxious
• The desire to never do anything that makes you afraid

Both of these can be destructive and should be managed.

For the first facet, I have a few strategies for how I deal with it:

• Planning: There's really no harm in planning out what you are going to do before you do it. In fact it is generally a good call. You just have to be careful, because sometimes things don't go according to plan
• Research: Anxiety makes everything seem like a big deal. However, many things are actually quite manageable when considered objectively. If something makes me nervous, I try to do research on it, and understand it better. Just knowing more about the subject allows me to gain control over it.
• Reject Nonsense: After doing research, some things that you are afraid of are just complete nonsense. Don't fall for emotional reasoning, just because something feels like a big deal doesn't mean that it is a big deal.
• Doing hard things: This is similar to “doing the work” – as you do things that make you uncomfortable, you gain more and more confidence in your ability to do other things that make you uncomfortable.

As for the second, this is trickier, because a lot of the time you don't even realize that it is happening. The anxiety doesn't proclaim itself to be anxiety, instead, it manifests as a desire for comfort. On the surface, this seems okay – after all, who doesn't desire to be comfortable?

To quote Kahlil Gibran: “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”

That is to say, the desire for comfort caused by your anxiety may cause you to live a life that is contrary to your own aspirations. It will tell you to always do the easiest possible thing, to never take any risks, and this will kill your spirit.

How does one manage a threat that pretends to not be a threat? In my opinion, you manage it by first understanding your what your aspirations actually are. This is an inherently philosophical task, but a good place to start is by considering what your dreams are.

I'll give you an example. I was very nervous about getting started with dating, so I put off some things that would have moved me closer to the goal of having romantic success. I would always find an excuse for why now wasn't the right time for it. However, at a certain point, I realized that I greatly valued the idea of being in a relationship with someone. So, my desire for comfort was directly contradicting my much greater desire for a relationship.