When The Weight of Your World is Too Much
“I do not need this right now, okay? I've got a judge that's just aching to throw me in jail. An idiot who wants to fight me for two hundred dollars. Slaughtered pigs. Giant loud whistles. I ain't slept in five days. I got no money, a dress code problem, AND a little murder case which, in the balance, holds the lives of two innocent kids.” -Vinny, As played by Joe Pesci, My Cousin Vinny
I started this post with a funny quote — but that was probably a little disingenuous because this isn’t a funny post. The quote, while funny, is still accurate. We’ve all been there right? The point when everything that’s piled on us is just too much to handle and we’ve reached the point of total defeat. Your world feels like it’s collapsing in on you and there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to fight back against it.
I hope for most of you reading this that those moments are few and far between. I hope that in most of your lives you can count on one hand how many times you’ve reached that point. However, I know that some of you out there are like me and you lost count a long time ago. Instead, that crushing feeling that you deal with is something that you worry about on a daily basis.
The truth is, I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. It’s something that until now, I have told less than twenty people in my entire life. It’s something that I hid at my two previous jobs because I was so terrified it would get out and people would use it against me. Why was I so afraid of that? Well for one, as I have written about before, bullies exist even the workplace. In addition to that, someone with the best of intentions can still treat you very differently once they know about your struggles with mental health.
Living in fear of telling others about your mental health issues is something that so many people in our world deal with on a daily basis. I can tell you from experience that when you are depressed or anxiety ridden, you don’t need anything else piled on top of it to make it worse.
But that’s honestly where I’ve lived for the last 28 years. Hiding that truth about me. Living in fear that others would find out and it would ruin everyone’s perception of me. When I left my last job, I decided that I would no longer hide this fact about myself. After all these things are — for better and worse — large pieces of me that drive who I am in my life. One of the reasons I took so long to post the blog talking about this information is that I needed to first reach out to a few key people in my life because even they didn’t know.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I also stalled a bit on posting this article because I was still fearful. While being self employed now does give me the advantage of not having to worry about a boss treating me differently after they read this, it doesn’t exempt me from all ramifications. I’ve had concerns that clients could read this and feel like I’m not capable of helping them because of my mental health struggles. I decided to settle on the idea that if that makes someone not want to work with me as a coach, then so be it.
I also worried about telling some of my collaborators that there are days where I can’t even look at our mutual projects because just doing what is required of me with my family is almost more than I can handle. That sometimes doing the creative work we do just isn’t possible for me because I don’t have attention span or positivity to muster. But I like to think they will understand.
I also hope that those who have worked closest with me but didn’t know about my mental health struggles will now understand the reason why sometimes I seemed so irrational and unhappy even when things were great. That I was forced to precariously balance passion and detachment about our work so that I could get through the day even though that was easy for them to balance.
One of the most confusing things out of all this for me is that my greatest trigger for depression and anxiety are when things are going well. Honestly, the better things are going the worse off I feel. This has been a consistent struggle for me throughout life but it’s been even worse in the last six months. Why? Because I left my job to pursue my own dreams and it’s going pretty well. Sure, I am still building up a good client base and working towards consistent speaking engagements, but the truth is, I have been able to work on some projects that I never thought I would be able to and that has been amazing.
And because of all that, I’m struggling. Which by the way feels stupid. Super stupid. The stupidest. But it’s where I live.
So where do we go from here? I like to always believe that when we go through something we can’t handle on our own that we need do two things. Ask for help and then once we are through the darkest part, offer help to others if we can. But that is easier said than done.
For myself, I committed to going to therapy and have been doing so for the last year. That’s a sentence I can’t imagine typing in a public blog a year ago. For as much shame and stigma as mental health issues contain, getting help for it seems to carry one almost as big. I’m going to lay it out straight for you and tell you that getting professional help should never be a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed about. In fact, you should wear it as a badge of courage because you want to help yourself get better.
And for as much better as I am doing, I still have days and weeks where I feel like garbage. And I will for the rest of my life. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that I cannot continue to be a happy successful person. And it means the same thing for you.
While I may not be able to help everyone else in my situation, I can at least throw my hat in the public ring and stand up saying that I struggle with mental health and I’m trying my best to not be embarrassed about it. I can stand up and say it in hopes that it will make it easier for others to do the same. The more of us that stand up, the more normalized this becomes and that is what will truly help others. When people start realizing that they personally know people struggling with these real issues, then it will start to carry less of a stigma. At least, that’s what I am hoping for out of all this.
And while I never have found myself in a situation where everything was so bad I wanted it to end, I know that many people have found themselves in that position. For those people, I want to remind you that you matter, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You have worth, you are important.
If that is you, please call this number: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
As I finish this article, I am once again reminded of my personal why statement and what truly drives me to get out of bed every morning: To create positive change in the world around me. I think that at the core of all of this, that is what is driving me to put this all out there. If my doing this can help even one person, then I have succeeded.
Even if that one person is just me.
-Jason