My Mental Health Journey Pt. 1

Every high functioning human has a story and a struggle. I pride myself as an ambitious, capable, high function person, but this is my personal mental health journey starting with my struggles with work , living in NYC (4 yrs) + SF (5 yrs), and entering therapy. My goal is to de-stigmatize the mental health conversation and empower people to start their own healing journey.

TL:DR

• My first panic attack in NYC was connected to work achievement and put me in a spiral of depression and social anxiety. It really sucked
• Friends tried to help but giving advice didn’t help. I tried counseling but ultimately moved out of NYC to escape depression
• I landed in SF and it was helpful at first, but I went into an even more depressing spiral after brutal job interview rejections
• I took a 6 month sabbatical and got my body and mind right. Therapy helped the most and reworked my internal value system

The Panic Attack in NYC

If I had to recall exactly what happened in my first mental health encounter, I remember a specific, distinct moment when I found out I made a big gaffe at work. I thought I cemented myself as an all-star performer at work in the big NYC Ad Agency world but much to my dismay, I may have made a huge mistake that could have really costed my company. I remember a sinking feeling in my stomach where I felt my hopes of future promotion and life advancement tanking.

I had always prided myself as a positive contributor but I started seeing myself as dead weight. I found myself trying to compensate to the point of exhaustion. It was a vicious cycle of burnout and all nighters to make up for my inadequacies.

Much of my identity and self-worth was wrapped around performance and achievement. Being passed on for promotion I felt like I was drastically falling behind my peers. The feeling of exclusion amongst my career-driven friends in NYC started creeping in. I felt like an invalid imposter that didn’t belong. I remember my internal self-judgment and criticism was uncontrollably hostile. I had such a fear when other people looked at me they would see such a worthless opinion of myself. I felt like an imposter covering my brokenness, ashamed of my flaws and imperfections. This lead to a veil of depression that hung over me for several months.

What did depression feel like? I felt all the typical symptoms. I remember the mornings were the hardest. Getting out of bed felt like climbing a mountain. I was constantly late to social and work meetings. I couldn’t socialize normally with people. I was so used to putting on this figurative suit and armor to impress people but I had nothing to wear. I developed severe social anxiety where I couldn’t look at people in the eye. I had a hard time accepting anything less of myself than amazing.

All I wanted to do when I got home is lie in bed and veg. I would often describe depression as waking up at -5 out of a 0–10 scale and fighting to get back to 0 every time and resetting to -5 the next day. My outlook, self-esteem, and confidence were bleak, devoid, and shot. It would feel like a nagging demon was drinking from my pool of inspiration, gratitude, and happiness everyday, with the daily refill getting less and less.

I tried to get help. I couldn’t will myself out my depression myself and needed help. I tried many things. Vacations, talking to friends, praying about it, eating it away. A lot of these things helped momentarily, but the root cause was still there. Not a lot of people could really understand and gave very shallow answers — the cliche ‘suck it up’ or ‘things will get better.’

However, a good friend of mine mentioned therapy as a plate-management tool to help some of the brightest succeed in effort to de-stigmatize it. This may have been the hardest thing in my mental health journey which was to start it. I looked up the counseling service at my local church. Faith (evangelical Christianity) has always been and still is an integral part of my personal journey providing community, purpose, a relationship with the divine, and salvation. It has a place in mental health recovery but I am not ever going to suggest faith as an antidote to your depression.

I loved coming out of counseling unloading my honest, unashamed thoughts in a non-judgmental space given my self-critical inner monologue. However, I did not like the imposition of spiritual and growth advice I got. It was always this returning narrative that your struggle is suppose to fit this spiritual narrative to be used for God’s glory. While that can be true, it wasn’t helpful at the time and invalidated what I felt. I’ve learned I needed affirmation that it’s ok and normal to feel what you feel instead.

Counseling helped but I couldn’t completely get rid of it. I ultimately concluded NYC the environment caused my depression. I had a love/hate relationship with New York City. The ambition and culture is very rich and is healthy in doses, but the environment ultimately changed who I was for the worse. It made me want certain things I didn’t always want as a child, chasing more ephemeral things that I felt weren’t as fulfilling — prestige, money, and an amazing dating partner to show off. I did what I thought was best for me: LEAVE. I realized there was nothing left for me to really experience in NYC and I packed my bags and left … even without a new job.

The Retreat in SF

I ran away to SF. This was first post I made after I arrived in SF. Visiting the west coast for the first time was life-changing. Vacation-bias made it feel like a utopian society with natural escape, culture, sunny-zen vibes, good food, and cool people. People didn’t care that much about titles — they cared more about causes and environment. I remember billboards saying ‘DATA CAN SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS’ thinking this WAS the place to be for my career in data and eventually switch into Tech. The first 3 months were perfect. Golden Gate Park was the better version of Central Park. I was immersed more often in nature and got the requisite mental space to feel better.

However, things didn’t go as easily as smoothly as planned. Things got a little tough (understatement) trying to interview against the best of the best for data job at tech firms. It was forever etched into my brain that I wasn’t technical enough, rejected like a second class citizen. With high rent and rejections, I found myself spiraling into inadequacy and depression again. After 6 months, gratefully, I was able to get a manager role at a local ad agency but it didn’t play out the way I imagined. I pulled more all nighters than I pulled in college yet a lot of my hard work wasn’t able to translate to lasting success. I hit rock-bottom again and had to heal.

The Healing Process

It was a tough, planned decision, but I voluntarily quit after a year and I took a personal sabbath. My internal monologue was riddled with constant negativity and self-doubt. My self-worth was destroyed after these never ending self-comparisons. I never felt so out of place as I was surrounded by successful techies that had their shit together. I never felt so invalid and out-of-place.

I did NOT have a new job lined and I turned down interview requests. I lived off of unemployment for 6 months and got my mind and body right. I invested in myself, figuring out grad school plans to get much-needed technical skills. I spent the first half of my time just reading, tv-ing, sleeping, eating, and working out well to get my physical health back.

For my mental healing, I tried anxiety medication for the first time and restarted therapy. Low side-effect anxiety medication help me think and feel less. I remember more white noise quieting out my inner monologue, but I still had to deal with my realities and work on my relationship with myself.

Things I learned in Therapy

Looking back, this was an opportunity for ‘positive disintegration,’ basically reconfiguring my value system that’s misaligned with my environment. Breaking it down and rebuilding it from scratch. I processed why I was comparing myself so much. I didn’t know where I was going and how fast I should be moving. A lot of conversations with close friends not only listened, but also advised me to find what I wanted to pursue, instead of what I thought I should pursue. My happiness was no longer predicated on achievement and it hinged on doing things within my control and building a happy routine.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) taught me I had faulty heuristics processing my life events. There were all these biases where I didn’t give myself enough credit, over-personalized mishaps to me, and over-generalized disappointments to the future. I was able to suspend and organize the negative thoughts in my head and challenge them rationally.

Internal family systems (IFS) empowered me to better understand my internal conversations stemming from Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. These are the different point of views spewing your internal monologue where exiles are the ‘woe is me’ types, firefighters are the first response / coping voices, and managers are the strict preventative voices shielding you from previous trauma. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) has helped me excavate underlying irrational beliefs causing my distress and challenging them rationally.

Ultimately I learned to listen more deeply to my internal thoughts, trying to understand why and what they’re really trying to tell me. The biggest misconception about depression is that we try to get rid of the feelings immediately instead of understanding what it’s telling us. I’m grateful to be in a much better place where I can process and manage my emotions a lot better. I can manage my external relationships with healthy, loving confrontation to build better relationships and ultimately, I’ve built a more loving relationship with myself.