Your Passion May Be Harming Your Mental Health, Says Research

Studies point to a painful truth about the activities we obsess over

Photo by Liza Summer from Pexels

It’s not commonly known that passion comes in two types. While following our passions can lead us to our dream lives, it can lead some to a pretty horrible mix of depression, anxiety, burnout and low self-esteem.

To ensure we’re living as happily as we can, we can examine our passions and make sure they’re adding value to our lives – and not ruining them.

Two Types of Passion

Passion can be:

• The great kind: The things we truly love to do, that bring us genuine happiness and often put us in a state of flow. We love the process regardless of the goals and image. This is called harmonious passion.
• The potentially damaging kind: The things we’re obsessed with that take over our lives and build themselves into our identity so we struggle when we don’t measure up or fail to hit a goal. This is called obsessive passion.

Harmonious passion can give our lives meaning and bring us great happiness, and is linked to lower rates of depression. Obsessive passions can help us improve performance in the short term, but can also give us anxiety and burnout, and disguise itself as…