You Should Give a $#!% About Mental Health

But you already know that.

There's a longer, much more intense version of my mental health story that I'm sure I'll share at some point, but I'm not quite ready for that and if you have a problem with it, feel free to eat my shorts.

There has long been a major stigma around seeking mental healthcare, and frankly, that's bullshit. Also dangerous. So in the spirit of breaking down that barrier, I'm going to talk about it, from my point of view.

Things got really dark for me starting (unsurprisingly) with my sister surviving being shot in the most devastating mass shooting in modern American history. I threw myself into activism and never once thought about taking care of myself. I pretended all the speaking, testifying and op-ed writing was my self-care but really it was just a way to avoid dealing with the reality of what had happened.

Then I changed careers, my dog died and I blew out my shoulder and had to have it surgically repaired so...stressors on top of the whole sister being shot thing.

It took quite a while but I finally recognized a bunch of signs that things were all kinds of messed up with my mental and emotional state. I started withdrawing from the people closest to me. I stopped feeling things in ways I was accustomed to. I couldn't focus on anything. I had zero motivation and generally just didn't feel much emotionally at all. Everything became either negative or flat. It sucked, and sometimes still sucks.

Here's an example: I made a point to meet up with Brandon for his birthday. I told him I wanted to take him to lunch. By the time lunch was done, I forgot that I was taking him out for his birthday and we split the bill. Like, come on. I made the guy pay for his own birthday lunch. Funny in hindsight but I like to think I'm a pretty damn thoughtful friend, so this was super abnormal.

The digression was relatively slow but got really intense. I ate out a ton, stopped exercising (first because of motivation, then the shoulder), gained a bunch of weight, was the king of self-loathing and started having some really scary thoughts. Everything was just hard. The thought of putting effort into anything at all was often insurmountable. It took a year and a half of basically hating myself before I finally decided I should talk to someone.

I'll admit up front I was skeptical that meeting with a therapist would do me any good at all, and the one that I worked with had her fair share of shortcomings, but the most valuable thing for me was being able to brain dump all the thoughts bouncing around in my head to someone who otherwise knew nothing about me. I was able to talk about things I wasn't comfortable sharing with anyone else and this helped immensely as I tried to navigate my various mental problems.

It took maybe 14 seconds to identify two main issues for me; Depression and Anxiety.

Depression looks very different person to person. For me, it took away a lot of my ability to feel positive stuff. Things that would typically make me happy did nothing to boost my mood. I felt numb and it terrified me. Things I found upsetting would devastate me, either by making me miserable or furious. The anger side of things is what got frightening. I spent a lot of time faking positive emotions and acting how I thought I should act, while my mind was tormented. I just didn't want to alarm the people closest to me.

Depression also tells lots of lies - my friends don't care about me, I'm worthless, I'm fat, etc. - The way I treat myself when I'm in that state is horrible, and perpetuates the cycle.

Anxiety is a two-sided coin for me. On one side is the perpetual thought that anytime I go out in public is an opportunity for me to be shot to death and the other side is worrying irrationally about basically everything else. So basically I'm on edge all the damn time but sometimes I find it funny and sometimes I have panic attacks where I hyperventilate and then my whole body shakes like I'm in an earthquake.

Anxiety makes me cancel plans, leave events early, avoid leaving the house all together and essentially never stop thinking "what if...?" It's also the reason I talked about doing this blog for a year or so before finally just, ya know, doing it. Anxiety makes me imagine completely ridiculous worst-case scenarios and then feel like a jackass when I try to explain why a situation makes me uncomfortable. I overthink things so much that I get in my own way and delay or completely derail things I care about.

[Billy Mays voice] But wait, there's more!

I was talking with my therapist recently and said something about struggling to concentrate, even in one-on-one conversations, and she immediately chimed in with HAVEN'T YOU PEOPLE EVER HEARD OF, CLOSING YOUR GODDAMN DOORS! Remember that song? So yeah that's basically how ADHD works for me. What she actually said was that she thought I had been dealing with ADHD for quite a while, but the impact was less severe than the rest so it wasn't something we explored early on.

My brain never really slows down and it's incredibly easy for me to get sidetracked, whether in conversation or listening to a podcast or just about anything else you can think of. It can be absolutely exhausting. But to be honest, it's more annoying than anything else in comparison to depression and anxiety.

I've come to think of my brain as a bees nest. But at any given time, that nest has a completely random mix of honey bees, wasps and hornets - where the bees are normal brain chemistry, wasps are anxiety and hornets are depression. And ADHD is someone poking the nest with a stick.

The ratio of bees to wasps to hornets determines how I feel. Admittedly, this is a stretch of an analogy but this image brings me joy so deal with it.

The good news is seeking therapy helped me immensely. Well, that and finally being able to exercise again. Part of why I'm sharing this at all is because I feel the best I've felt in well over a year. I still struggle with actually trusting that I'm doing alright and anytime I'm asked how I'm doing I refuse to say anything more that "hanging in there" but that's ok. For me, and anyone dealing with issues like mine, it's about managing them. I'm in a good spot right now and I'm grateful for that.

If you're dealing with issues of your own, please please PLEASE take the step of asking for help. You matter so much, and there's no valor in trying to just suck it up and get over it. If you think someone you know is struggling, it often takes little more than just checking in and showing them you care.

A great way to help those struggling with their mental health is to support a great nonprofit called the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI is working in communities all over the country to provide support, education, and to raise awareness about Mental Health issues. They also help shape public policy for people with mental illness, and their advocacy has helped secure better funding for research and helped protect access to treatment and services. They offer a ton of important services in every state.

They also received an A- grade from Charity Watch and let's face it, some of you might not be able to claim an A- on any of your old report cards. Just under 80% of funds raised goes to the programs they provide and it costs them $16 to raise $100. You never know what someone is going through but you can still make an impact. Mental health matters, so please join me in chipping a couple bucks in for NAMI.