#82 - My journey with mental health

Hans Chan -

What I’m Watching

Devil’s Advocate (1997) is a film which stars Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, and Al Pachino. The premise is Keanu Reeves is a high-flying city lawyer and Theron, who is his wife, starts having visions and it turns out that Al Pachino, their boss, is actually the devil. It’s a bit unhinged but entertaining.

Resource of the week

From the Tim Ferriss blog, a curated page of mental health resources and tools.

Quote

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Carl Jung

Thoughts

This week, we had mental health day, so I wanted to talk about my experiences with mental health. Growing up, I was aware of the concept of mental health, but not having had any direct experiences with it, I’ve always underestimated its seriousness.

I would have debates with my friend who is a doctor:

‘Why can’t people just get over it? Surely they’re just weak-minded and undisciplined?’

My friend always takes a moment to consider both sides and give a balanced view.

‘Well, there are some people who could be, in very mild cases, but it’s not as simple as that Hans, in seriously depressed patients you can see from the brain scans, that the brain chemistry/activity is different, some depressed people struggle with basic things’.

Life can be ironic as I experienced these things myself not that long ago. 

It was a combination and culmination of things that triggered it. (I did write them all out but deleted it because I don't feel like going through everything. I don't want to sound too sorry for myself, but has been documented in my past posts).

It put me in a downward spiral and caused those insecurities to all resurface at once.

I went through every emotion I’ve ever felt.

In short, I wanted to die. The overriding thing was thinking about how devastating it would be to my parents who have given me everything. I tried very hard to ‘get over it’ by myself, doing the usual things I know normally helps lift my mood. Going to the gym, eating well, journaling, rowing. Only this time it wasn’t enough.

The crazy thing is, for the first 30 or so years of my life I always thought of myself as a very logical person. But in the last few years, I realised I’m anything but. I went on a self-destructive rampage and did things I wouldn’t have expected, it was like watching myself in an out-of-body experience. 

It was here I realised to needed to speak to someone, I did something I’ve never done before in my life and reached out to everyone around me and started dumping my emotions. I can’t say it was a magic bullet but it helped. Hearing different perspectives on things. It made me realise that managing our emotions is important.

This opened me up to the idea of taking therapy and took me on this journey to understand more about myself.

Everyone has a different story, but here are some of the things that have helped me:

  • Going to the gym and looking after myself. The act of working out itself releases endorphins and lifts mood and the longer term benefits to your health and getting in shape helps.
  • My property business: having something you care about with goals to work towards to build and put my attention into helps distract me.
  • Rowing, getting on the water when I can and connecting with nature feels very cleansing plus the social aspect. 
  • Opening up to people around me.
  • Therapy.

I feel like it’s not something that ever truly goes away, I have ups and downs. It’s a battle you manage and fight every day. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, most of life is like that, you don’t do something once and reap the rewards, it’s a set of repeated actions day after day.

If you’re feeling a similar way, an important thing to remember is that acceptance is key, the past is already set and you can’t go back. At the same time, the past does not equal the future and there are discoveries out there you didn’t even know existed. This could be an opportunity to make that big change.

My greatest breakthroughs came from moments of pain. Each of us has a lot to give and I’ve found that the more I can give the more I’ve received. Make sure you reach out if you need to, you’ll find that you’re not the only one. Through this process of reaching out to my friends and telling them what I've gone through, they've shared back and I've connected in ways I would never have before.

Hans