Don’t Call It “Mild Depression”
Bringing attention to this epidemic of denial
For ten years, from ages 16 to 26, I did nothing to improve my mental health. I didn’t even know that I needed to work on my mental health. Often, when I was lying on the floor, over-analyzing something someone said to me, I’d become aware that I was over-thinking. My head would hurt, and my eyes would get blurry. But then I’d say to myself, “What if all this worry is justified, and something is really wrong with my life.” For ten years, I made that excuse, and nothing you could say would have changed that.
Then I discovered meditation. I started breath-monitoring for 30 minutes a day, and it dawned on me that I had been in denial for ten years. Nearly everything I worried about was just in my head. I probably could have saved myself 99% of my neurotic episodes had I adopted meditation as a teenager. On some level, those ten years of my life had been a waste. Oof.
After meditating for eight years, though, I noticed something troubling. It seemed that I stopped succeeding professionally. In my early twenties, I made three hit iOS apps, two for my account, and one for a client. After meditation, I produced nothing of note. I then thought, “What if this whole time, meditation has been making me too calm, and that anxiety is crucial to success?!”
