How Depression Helped Me Conquer the Loss Aversion Bias

Every day I make more decisions about what I’m not going to do than what I am going to do.

The next time you’re meeting up with a group of people pay attention to how long it takes the conversation to turn to how busy they are. Extra points if at least one person complains about being overly busy. The hectic lifestyle is our cultural norm. Try to not talk about being busy. I dare you.

Unfortunately, I can’t do busy. It will send me straight down a dark depression spiral. In order to stay healthy, I have to make sure there is a lot of open space in my days. This means I’m almost never too busy. And most of the time I’m not what you would even call busy. I do a lot of stuff every day, but I don’t do even more. I used to be as crazy busy as the next person, but then a bout of really bad depression made it impossible to maintain. I was forced to deal with my loss aversion bias in the most dramatic ways: I had to stop doing basically everything.

The loss aversion bias is people’s preference for gains over losses. We have a preference for solving problems by adding something rather than subtracting. Loss aversion is one of the major reasons people become exhausted and burned out. When I hear someone talk about how overly busy and stressed out they are, I know the next thing they’ll say is probably going to be about how they’re adding even more to their plate.

No one ever says they’re jettisoning things. They may talk about carving out time to be mindful, resting more. But that’s adding something, right? That’s one more thing to put on the to-do list. Or they may talk about how they’ve “failed” at accomplishing something. But almost never do they ever say they’re letting things go on purpose, joyfully. People prefer to figure out how to do everything more efficiently, using productivity hacks. Better time management, better sleep, better diet—we can do it all if we find the right ingredients to add to our life.

When you have mental health challenges you learn over time how to prioritize tasks, whittle life down to the essentials. When you are forced to jettison everything, you begin to understand what really matters. You become inured to and even accepting of the loss of productivity because you’ve learned to recognize extraneous stuff that you don’t really have to do, were doing only because you thought you had to, or were giving in to external pressures. Over time you figure out how to divide your goals into those that really do enhance your quality of life, and those that decrease it. And you jettison the latter,because you have one overarching goal: feeling good enough that you want to be alive in this world. Everything else follows from that.

I honestly think that on my better days my quality of life and happiness may be on par with or even greater than what I see in people who don’t struggle with mental health issues. Sure, I have some bad times, but they’ve taught me to slow down, open up space for myself, let go of all the pressures. I’ve been forced to learn the important lesson that if you want to get the most out of life, you have to give up more than you add.

This goes against instinct. Why? Because when you lose things, you feel bad. Adding things gives you that nice dopamine hit. Adding things is condoned, busyness makes you seem accomplished and important. Doing less? On purpose? I can tell you that in conversations about busyness I am always the only person who talks about not getting stuff done in a positive way, as something I intentionally practice. Maybe people think I just must not have ambition or the responsibilities they do; possibly they think I’m lazy. True, not true? Who knows. Comparing two people’s lives is that whole apples and oranges thing. What I do know is that every day I make more decisions about what I’m not going to do than what I am going to do. This is the way I choose to live. And I believe that most people have the capacity to make empowering choices for themselves regardless of life circumstances.

Does this way of life mean I lose out on things? Absolutely. Does it mean I sometimes disappoint people? Yep. And that is hard, but it gets easier over time. Because what I gain is so much better than anything I ever got from adding to my burdens in a misguided attempt to solve them. Every time I “lose out” on something because I’ve made a decision to pursue quality of life over productivity, busyness, and giving in to external pressures, I feel better. It becomes a bit like ripping off a Band-Aid. There’s always a sting, but you kind of start to look forward to it, because that fresh air hitting new skin is the feeling of freedom.

In Which I Rage-Write About Writer’s Block Being a Real Thing

Please stop saying it doesn’t exist!

Special note: This was written after hearing a well-known and successful public creative say writer’s block doesn’t exist. I had an angry reaction to that opinion, and this essay was what came out. It’s full of strong feeling, and I’m publishing it as I wrote it because I think it makes an important statement. It is not meant to be some kind of hot take, nor is it meant to impugn on a personal level that specific person or other people who say stuff like this (that’s why I don’t name them). Ultimately I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are simply trying to help people when they say writer’s block isn’t real. And I’m sure that does help some people. But not me, and in this essay I tell you why. For an extended and more benevolent version of this essay, listen to my podcast episode on dealing with writer’s block.

Over the years I’ve heard a number of writers and other creatives deny the existence of writer’s block. I think it’s wild people would do this. It’s demonstrably false, or put another way, there’s a preponderance of evidence that it does exist: most writers have at one time or another experienced a block, even if it’s for a short period of time. So why do we still have people going on record saying shit like this? Let’s break it down.

First, a definition of writer’s block, because it’s widely misunderstood. A mistake people make is that it means you can’t write a word. More likely it manifests as a feeling of having to force the writing, feeling uninspired and finding no joy in it, and dreading having to do it. Eventually this will lead to being unable to write. I’ve experienced this in both short and longer bursts. If you learn to identify it early, you can manage your block so that its duration is shorter. The causes are usually our own fears and insecurities about our writing, but sometimes other factors are involved: mental or physical illness, exhaustion or burnout, time-management challenges. And sometimes it’s a sign that writing just isn’t your thing, or that you’re writing novels when you should be doing screenplays.

I’ve heard people say writer’s block isn’t real because its origins are often psychological: “Writer’s block doesn’t exist, it’s just your fears and insecurities getting in the way.” This is akin to saying mental health challenges don’t actually exist because they’re psychological. Writer’s block is often a mental health challenge (mine is of this type). And this kind of statement is also offensive to people who struggle with brain chemistry-related depression who are blocked. To the people saying this kind of thing: stop right now. Your mental health privilege needs to be checked.

You’ll also hear people who deny writer’s block say stuff like, “I don’t allow myself to get writer’s block.” Okay, good for you. Again, check your mental health (or other) privilege. Choose your words more wisely, have some compassion for those who struggle. Your personal reality doesn’t elide the truth of other people’s lived experiences.

I get it that many people who say writer’s block is a myth are trying to help. And it may help a minority. But mostly it sounds shockingly misguided and patronizing. And I think many people who say this kind of thing are actually getting a dopamine hit from it: it reminds them how well they’re doing with their own writing, how they’ve “conquered” their own fears and insecurities and “mastered” self-discipline. In a culture that sees hard work as a moral virtue (and writing regularly is hard work), they get to feel very good about themselves, even hold themselves up generously as an example of what “anyone” can do if they put their mind to it and simply refuse to allow writer’s block to happen.

If you are one of the majority of writers who struggles with blocks, please understand that it’s totally normal and it’s real. There’s no need to deny the existence of writer’s block in order to deal with it. In fact, accepting that it happens, that it isn’t an implication of moral weakness or inherent laziness, will help you move through these periods faster. It’s okay to feel insecure about your writing, to fear failure. If you are struggling with mental health issues that hold you back, you have my compassion and understanding: me too. Sometimes we just need a break, that’s the honest truth. I find that taking short periods away from writing every month or so helps me maintain my enthusiasm over time.

If you are experiencing a longer period of writer’s block, my deepest sympathies. After I finished my PhD, my burnout was so severe I couldn’t write much of anything for two years. I endeavored, I made strides, but I couldn’t write. To those of you who maintain writer’s block isn’t real or crow about how you don’t “allow” it to happen to you, here’s what that sounds like to me: an invalidation of those heartbreaking two years of my life, of the struggle I encountered finding my way back to writing, and of the challenges I still face in managing my mental health while pursuing my creative dreams. Do you really want to imply that I am delusional when I have writer’s block, that I’m experiencing some kind of hysteria, or that I am simply lazy, that I lack the character necessary to be a “real” writer? Please attempt some kindness and compassion. The world certainly needs more of it, and you sound like an asshole.

When You Don’t Have the Privilege of Mental Health

Grief over your unfulfilled potential is a normal reaction.

I’ve been given many privileges in my life, some of them substantial, but one area where I do not have any privilege is mental health. Since childhood I’ve struggled and suffered emotionally and psychologically. Much of this has to do with being an HSP in a society that isn’t built for gentle souls, some of it is inherited, and some of it comes from life experiences. Mental health issues are complex and individual, which is why they are so difficult to understand and treat.  

It took several decades of adult life to come to a place of peace around who I am and to figure out what kind of life contributes to me feeling like it’s worthwhile to be alive. And I’m doing pretty well these days. I’m happy most of the time, which is not something I ever felt I’d achieve. But I have to be very, very careful on a daily basis to maintain my peace. It’s the work of my life, what I spend most of my energy on day in and day out. It’s very hard to live this way, but I feel deeply grateful I’ve been granted my small lot of happiness. Not everyone gets that.

But sometimes I have mini-relapses, and I expect I always will. That’s part of life as someone who struggles with chronic mental health issues. There is no such thing as getting cured. Your best hope is to manage.

And you know what I wonder sometimes? That I’ll get to the end of my life and be left with the thought of all the things I didn’t achieve because my mental health struggles precluded me from doing so. Because every time I push myself for more, I know that eventually life will slap back—which it does to everyone. I want to be clear here that I’m not saying I desire or think I deserve a life without all the regular obstacles. What I’m saying is that I’m particularly delicate, and stuff that people privileged in terms of their mental health seem to handle with just a moderate amount of discomfort can put me out of commission.

Sometimes I look around at people doing what I can’t seem to do without spiraling down into that darkness and I’m gutted by the losses of a lifetime spent managing chronic mental health challenges.

Maybe you understand personally what I’m talking about, or have someone in your life who’s struggling with depression, anxiety, addiction, despair, anhedonia. None of us are untouched by the mental health crisis endemic in our society.

I want to convey what it’s like for those of us who struggle in this particular way. I hear a lot these days about sitting with discomfort, how important it is to challenge ourselves, how we need to push the boundaries of our own capabilities. I’ve said similar things myself on my blog and podcast. But the truth is that if you are living with mental health struggles, this is what you do on a daily basis from the moment you open your eyes in the morning. You are constantly in discomfort. Everyday tasks like exiting your house to buy food require you to push the boundaries of your capabilities. If you have anything left over to put toward life achievements, you’re lucky.

I hear people talk about sitting with discomfort and feel mystified: isn’t that what life feels like all the time? Is that actually something people have to actively try to cultivate in their lives? What privilege, what colossally lucky people these are, who go out seeking their challenges, who get to dip in and out of discomfort.

Everyone has advantages and disadvantages, and as I said I do have many privileges. I move through this world as a white person, as a thin person (which masks the fact that I am very much not in shape). I have some economic privilege; I’ve had the privilege of an education. But I also move through the world with an invisible and substantial disability, one that keeps me from being all that I want to be.

I work very hard at maintaining my sense of optimism and hope. I work hard at humility, and feel genuine gratitude for the small and large gifts of my life. But sometimes the grief at what I have lost, at what I will continue to lose out on, haunts me. Some of these things are substantial: my dreams of publication, having a human family of my own, having a career of note. Some are seemingly smaller, yet chronic losses: being able to grow my business, being the friend, daughter, partner I’d like to be, being able to participate in community. I am overwhelmed when I contemplate the losses that accrue over time.

If you feel like this, too, I want you to know that I think it’s okay to feel this way. It’s the normal feeling anyone would have in such circumstances. You’re not feeling sorry for yourself, you’re grieving. And I’m so deeply sorry that you are experiencing this.

If you do not struggle with chronic mental health issues yourself, you surely know someone who does. Hopefully this has given you some insight into what life is like for them. People with chronic mental health challenges are trying so very hard to just have a modicum of what regular folks have. These people deserve our compassion and respect. If you don’t suffer from chronic mental health challenges, thank your lucky stars tonight: they have smiled upon you and granted you many blessings.

Why Do We Talk So Much About Goals?

It’s okay to not have goals.

Have you ever noticed how much we talk about goals in our culture? From new year’s resolutions to aspirational advertising, we live in a very future-oriented, acquisition-based, improvement-obsessed paradigm. We rarely question the assumption that we need goals. But do we?

The problem with a goals mindset is that it orients us permanently toward the future. We are always thinking about the arrival. Achievement, satisfaction, even happiness all exist in the space where the goal is realized. But of course when we get there, we realize there are ever more goals. It never ends. There’s always more to do, always more to get. There’s nothing wrong with having ideas about where we’re headed, nothing wrong with dreams. But if we’re regimenting our lives around goals, we risk neglecting the quality of our lives.

Is this the case for you? Only you can decide if it is, and what that means to you, but if the space of your day is taken up by how much you can get done, and you find yourself exhausted, dissatisfied, and experiencing existential terror as the years tick by and you still haven’t found purpose or fulfillment, you may want to examine your relationship with goals and their associated outcomes.

Consider that you may not want what you think you do.

I used to have a big dream for myself. I wanted to get a novel published. And I failed. It devastated me. I wasn’t able to write another novel for fifteen years. Now I’m on the road to publication again, but I’m going about it differently. While I nominally have a goal of publishing my novel, I recognize that what I really want is how I imagine publishing will make me feel. Like I’ve arrived, like I’m a real writer.

It's okay to want those feelings. But it’s important to recognize that publishing isn’t the only, or even the best, way to get them. And letting a goal dictate how you feel about yourself is a dangerous game. The world is full of stories of middle-aged folks having crises because the things they thought they wanted didn’t make them feel happy or fulfilled.

I only started feeling like I was a real writer, like I’d arrived, when I started taking myself seriously despite any goal and achievement thereof. This is what brings fulfillment and eventual happiness: the ability to find value in the self for how you live rather than in what you achieve. Achievements are nice but they’re icing. When you live based on a clear understanding that it’s the feelings around achievement that you are actually craving, you can begin to look for other, smaller ways in your daily life to attain those.

Here's what that looks like in reference to my example of wanting to feel like a real writer: I write as much as I can, I regularly put stuff out on a blog while I toil away at the larger project of my novel, I insist on seeing myself as a real writer and describing myself as such. Together all this adds up to a feeling of arrival. What about publishing my novel? I still really want that! But I feel good about the journey now, as challenging as it can sometimes be. That’s a big win.

Goals talk is only just talk because that’s what it’s supposed to be.        

We all know go-getter types who actually do set goals and achieve them, as if they’re part machine, but most people we know probably spend more time talking about their goals than they do actually achieving them. We’re probably a bit like that ourselves. Most of us use goals talk to feel like we’re doing goals. Imagining accomplishing our goals feels like we’re actually doing it in the moment. But the come-down is that later we feel awful when we don’t accomplish them. It’s a bit like a drug reaction. But if we understand that this is what goals can do for us, give us a chance to test out ideas and have good feelings in the moment, we can have fun goals talk without the hangover.

I’ve learned over time that goal setting is best done sparingly, if at all. My quality of life is higher without them. As I point out above, this doesn’t mean living without any idea of the direction I’m headed. But I no longer use a goal setting methodology (visualize outcome, create steps for achievement, feel bad when things aren’t going well, consider it a failure if I don’t realize the goal…). Instead I focus on how I want each day to feel. Sometimes I want to feel busy and accomplished, and sometimes I just want to sink into an endless peaceful moment. Then I find activities that go with those feelings. Somehow the stuff that needs to get done gets done. Most of the time haha.

Why Burnout May Be an Inevitable (and Positive) Developmental Stage for HSPs

If you are experiencing a dark night of the soul, keep going.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

Once I was far enough into my recovery from severe burnout, a strange thought began occurring to me. What if my dark night of the soul, as I like to refer to it, was somehow a necessary experience for me to reach my fullest potential as a human being? It’s common for people to feel gratitude for challenging circumstances once they’re well enough in the rearview mirror, but this was different. I actually started thinking that my burnout was inevitable, and in particular the kind I experienced, which I term “existential burnout” (more on this below). I began working on a theory that not only was this burnout necessary for my own personal development, but that it would have occurred at one point or another regardless of what life path I’d chosen…and that it was a very good thing.

And then I discovered I was right. Or, in the parlance of academia, I found evidence to support my theory. A doctor, psychologist, and poet named Kazimierz Dąbrowski (Ka-ZHI-meerz Dom-BROF-ski) developed a theory in the 1960s called Positive Disintegration, which details a process that highly sensitive people (HSPs) are very likely to go through during their lives that is very similar to what I experienced as existential burnout. Unlike mainstream psychological and medical approaches that pathologize the anxiety and depression people experience when going through one of these “disintegrations,” Dąbrowski saw such emotions as an inevitable and necessary part of HSPs’ personality development. He believed that HSPs have a particular developmental path and that they quite possibly have a special purpose in society.  

Before I explain the theory of Positive Disintegration and its implications for HSPs experiencing burnout, let me briefly define what I mean by existential burnout. Some burnout is situational, like being burned out in a job or relationship, and you can deal with it through taking a break or exiting the situation. Existential burnout is a whole-life phenomenon, when you begin to question the very foundations of your life and beliefs. It is the state of emotional, psychological, and spiritual confusion and exhaustion that results from years or decades of trying to follow conventional paths and not finding satisfaction or happiness through them. This is essentially what positive disintegration is: a conflict between an individual and society’s norms, driven by a desire for greater autonomy and a feeling that there’s “more” out there, that results in many ostensibly negative emotions, a dark night of the soul.

Positive Disintegration is a complex theory, and I will only touch on the portions here that are relevant for HSPs and burnout. Dąbrowski did not use the term HSP (it was coined by Elaine Aron in the 1990s); rather, he referred to the constellation of traits comprising high sensitivity as overexcitability, or OE, which originates in an extrasensitive nervous system. If you are an HSP, you will recognize yourself in multiple types of OEs as detailed by Dąbrowski:

• Psychomotor: An excess of physical or mental energy. Can manifest as racing thoughts, jitteriness, and feeling an actual need to either think obsessively or for physical movement.

• Sensual: An extra sensitivity of the five senses. Super-tasters, sound sensitivity, sensitivity to light, etc. are all manifestations of this.

• Intellectual: An extreme desire for understanding, greater knowledge, truth, enlightenment. These are people who are driven to observe, collect data, research, analyze, and theorize. They usually love reading and are highly curious.

• Imaginational: Characterized by a highly active imagination and propensity to lose oneself in fantasy. These people can have very vivid dreams, see less of a stark distinction between truth and fiction or see truth as paradoxical, often find more pleasure living in their head than the real world, and are highly creative.

• Emotional: Experiencing intense and complex emotional responses, often accompanied by physical sensations. These people are often highly empathic, often attracted to or experience the melancholy or the “dark” side of life, and form unusually strong attachments.

I have all five of these OEs. The last three especially are associated with positive disintegration. So basically I was always on a path to existential burnout. It was required for me to reach a higher level of personal development, according to Dąbrowski’s theory. So why do HSPs experience this type of thing, and what purpose does it serve?

A simple explanation for why HSPs often experience burnout is that their sensitivities make them more prone to it. But disintegration is more than just crisis. It is a rejection of the status quo, coupled with a desire for an individual and autonomous path forward. HSPs enter their dark night of the soul because of the particular way that they experience this kind of crisis: as a disquietude with the self; the feeling of being inferior, not just when compared to others but in terms of what they wish for themselves. HSPs are highly self-aware and self-critical, and have a keen sense of themselves as being “different” and misunderstood. The path through disintegration for most HSPs involves self-education and what Dąbrowski terms “autopsychotherapy.” In other words, the path toward greater autonomy is individual and self-directed. Each person must find their own untrodden path – and this, in essence, is both the reason for and result of existential burnout. The outcome is syntony, a state of being in harmony and resonating with one’s environment: integration.

Dąbrowski believed that HSPs play a special role in society, that through their own personal experience of disintegration they could then use their learnings to help raise the level of society. But it is the implications of his theory for individual HSPs experiencing burnout that I find most compelling. I know that for me, I only began to heal when I stopped believing something was wrong with me, i.e. when I stopped pathologizing my experience of burnout (or letting others do that). How different would my experience of my dark night of the soul have felt if someone had said to me, “You’re an HSP, and what you are going through is a normal, necessary, and even positive part of your development. It’s going to hurt like hell, but you will find your way through it and emerge as a more highly functioning individual with something important to contribute to the world.” I wonder.

A Thought Exercise to Help You Break Free from Overwhelm

Censorious Cow definitely thinks we need to stop doing things we don't want to do.

During the years that I was suffering from severe burnout, I didn’t have to worry about cutting things out of my life that were causing me stress – my depression took care of that for me. I functioned, or rather, I didn’t function, at the bare minimum, doing only what I absolutely had to. It wasn’t much of a life, but one good thing came out of that time: I learned how to be ruthless about saying no. After I recovered, avoiding relapse became my priority. I knew I had to avoid overwhelm at all costs, but I also wanted to avoid those difficult feelings that arise when you say no and downsize your life (Am I missing out? Am I lazy? What will people think?). So I developed a formula to help me do just that. What makes this formula effective is that it doesn’t require you to give anything up you don’t want to, or say no to something you really want to do. Because here’s what I think: if the goal is to feel better, then this has to feel like it’s adding value to your life, not subtracting it, right?

This formula relies on a thought exercise, so in the beginning you don’t have to do anything except think things through. You only take action when you feel ready. There is no pushing or forcing involved, because that’s how stress comes into your life. It may seem counterintuitive to make changes in your life by doing nothing, but it’s an incredibly powerful method. The underlying mechanism is this: when your mind is changed, action naturally follows. You will do something if you feel enthusiastic about it. The key is getting your brain there. 

Here’s the thought exercise:

Mentally identify something you hate doing but feel you have to. The more you think about this, the more things you’ll come up with. Anything that makes you tense up and gives you a sense of dread belongs on the list.

Ask yourself if doing this thing will get you what you want, expect, or hope for. This is the difficult part of the thought exercise, and you’ll need to dig deep to figure out your real reasons for doing it. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to because it’s a clear case of A leads to B and we want B. But these cases are actually rare. Usually when we do things we don’t want to it’s because we’re hoping for results that are unlikely to happen, because they are either:

• too abstract (maybe if I do this it will make people like me), 

• illogical (if I stay in this job I hate maybe it will get better eventually), or 

• too complex or distant to work (if I post on Twitter every day maybe I’ll get more followers and maybe then when I finally publish my novel it will translate into more sales).

Now, these may all be good reasons to do something, if you are enjoying doing that thing. If you love posting on Twitter every day, have at it! But if it’s draining joy from your life for the sake of an unlikely outcome, that means it it has a very low ROI (return on investment). That’s all you need to know for now. Practice analyzing and evaluating things this way for awhile.

The next step is to apply this process to situations you feel powerless in. Say your job is making you miserable. When you ask yourself if doing your job gets you the results you hope for, you’re probably tempted to say that it does: it makes you money. But this answer doesn’t explain why you are doing that particular job. The answer to that question is probably something more like you hope it will get better somehow or you’ll somehow start to like it. Neither are likely. You may be thinking, well I can’t just up and quit. Agreed. Remember, this is only a thought exercise!

At this point, broaden your field of inquiry. Are there aspects of your job you do derive enjoyment from? Is it the actual tasks you have to do that make you miserable, or the context you have to do them in? Is the environment toxic? The point is to move yourself from “I hate my job but if I quit everything will fall apart,” to “I hate this part of my job,” to “But I like doing this,” to “How can I do more of that, or find a different job that has more of that?” Or something along those lines. The point here isn’t to make some grand decision about your job and your life, it’s to shift your perspective enough that your resourceful, creative brain starts working on possible solutions.

The final step of the thought experiment is both the easiest and hardest. Once you understand that something you don’t want to do won’t likely lead to the results you hope for anyway, the obvious solution is to cut that thing out. But actually doing that can feel impossible, especially if it’s a big thing, like a job. That’s why this is just a thought exercise! You don’t have to actually do it! Just think about doing it. What would your life look like if you cut this thing out? What does your life look like going forward if you continue to do it, knowing it’s not taking you where you want to go? What are your other options? Is there something you do want to do that could get you a positive result, even if it’s just that you like doing it and your life is happier overall when you do more things you like doing? Wait – that’s actually a major result! Because isn’t that what we’re talking about? Feeling better about our lives?

The truth is, feeling overwhelmed isn’t really about having too much to do. It’s caused by doing too much of what we don’t want to do. It’s a self-imposed condition. Sure, we’re at the mercy of many constraining factors in life, but we absolutely can develop the power to stop the overwhelm. We push ourselves to do so many things we don’t want to do, that harm us in the long term, because we hope they’ll result in certain outcomes that won’t happen. There have been studies that show that about 85% of the things we worry about won’t ever happen. It’s logical to assume the numbers are similar for things we wish will happen. If you can learn to identify where and how you are draining your emotional energy on low-ROI activities, you can refocus it on activities you actually enjoy that still lead you in the general direction you want to go. Which for most of us, when it comes down to it, is greater life satisfaction – which often really is just a matter of doing more of what we like, and less of what we don’t.

Life Lessons I Learned From Bungy Jumping

And now I never have to do it again!

It was the first morning of my post-graduation celebratory New Zealand group tour, and we were gathered around the breakfast table getting to know each other. Bungy jumping, first commercialized in New Zealand, was on everyone’s list of must-do activities. Except mine. Never in my life had I ever wanted to bungy jump. Sky diving, yes, sign me up! But something about throwing myself off a bridge, as opposed to a plane, was scarier. Maybe because the ground is so much closer, or because I had this idea that bungy is for adrenaline-junky types, which I am decidedly not. Nope, not interested in bungy, I told everyone. Not my type of thing. A day later I found myself standing on the jumping platform of Kawarau Bridge, the original bungy jump. I peered down at the turquoise water rushing by 43 meters below, trying to convince myself to take a swan dive while the guy behind me counted down from three.

Just two weeks before, I’d walked at my PhD graduation, and I had two panic attacks during the ceremony. What should have been a celebration was one of the worst experiences of my life. Later that evening I couldn’t even keep food down, all while trying to entertain my family and dissertation advisor. Awful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Here I had finally accomplished what was, without question, the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. I finished my dissertation and defended it successfully while operating with what felt like the rubble of a nuclear explosion in my brain. I’d done it. The problem was, I didn’t want to continue on in academia. I didn’t want to do anything. All ambition, enthusiasm, and motivation I’d ever had for, well, anything was gone. My life felt like it was already over, all my chances used up. So I went to New Zealand.

I’d actually won the trip – on a whim I’d entered a drawing a travel blogger was doing to advertise her group tours, and what do you know. It felt providential, like the universe was awarding me for all my hard work. Hell yes I was going! But no bungy jumping, definitely not. Maybe some kayaking and hiking. That stuff’s peaceful, and what I needed was some calming time for rumination about my future. Nope. Wrong. I didn’t know it then, but what I actually needed was something big. Something scary to push me out of my comfort zone. As I boarded that plane in Orlando and settled in for a long haul, little did I know that within 36 hours I’d be standing on that Kawarau Bridge platform with bathroom towels and a huge rubber band strapped to my ankles. Bathroom towels, you guys. They use plain old bathroom towels to pad your ankles. Somehow I just couldn’t get over it. What do they do when they need new ones? Head to the local Target?

So there I was, looking down at that turquoise water, and the guy behind me was shouting out the countdown. It was one of those defining moments when you make the decision to do it…or not. And in that moment I realized that I didn’t just need to find a new direction – I needed to change everything about my life. I had to take that leap into the unknown. That moment contained the seeds of what would come after: reconnecting with my creative spark and starting to write fiction again, my coaching business, and a feeling that maybe I haven’t used up all of my chances yet after all. Here are some of the lessons I learned that day and in the intervening days that have helped me move my life forward.

Trust your instincts, but listen to your intuition.

Bungy jumping goes against every natural instinct. It’s just not an evolutionary advantage to want to dive head first off very high things. I didn’t even want to do bungy! That is, until I did. I was suddenly possessed by the idea that I had to do it. What my instincts were against, my intuition was pushing hard. Instincts are fear-based. They’re what tell you to avoid walking through a dark park at night. Instincts are important, but their mechanism of action is negative. Intuition has a positive mechanism of action: it will tell you what’s right for you specifically. It’s what encourages you to forge ahead even when nothing is sure.

What makes us feel alive is challenging ourselves in BIG ways.

During my darkest days I got used to doing the bare minimum to get by. I didn’t have the energy or motivation for any extras. I spent years living that way, thinking I was protecting myself for further trauma that challenging myself could cause. And I don’t think I was totally wrong. I really wasn’t in any shape to handle the kinds of things that happen when you put yourself out there. But if we remain in our comfort zone, life becomes rote and uninspiring. And for creative people like myself that causes death of the spirit. Sometimes we need something really big to shake ourselves out of it. Bungy jumping didn’t solve my problems, but it showed me I was capable of responding positively to hard things.

Distraction cures worry. Really. 

In the hours running up to my bungy jump, my fear was almost surreal. I could not imagine how I would be able to do it. But when my attention shifted to something interesting (there was a lot of interesting stuff in New Zealand!) I completely forgot about what I was about to attempt. In those moments of distraction I felt calm, engaged, and content. My brain kept trying to make me feel like I had to worry about the bungy jump because my brain thinks it can control outcomes by worrying constantly about them. But the brain is like a young child who gets distracted by shiny objects. I fed my brain some interesting stuff, and soon enough it forgot all about bungy jumping…until it remembered again.

Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get through it.

I didn’t want to do bungy. Not before the jump, and certainly not in the long minutes of waiting in line to do it. I definitely did not want to do it when I was standing on that platform – check out my “I don’t want to be here!” smile and my death grip on that handle. You guys, that was one of the scariest moments of my life. But you know what was worse? Having to defend my dissertation. So when the guy counting down behind me got to one, I put my arms up over my head and dove.

You better believe I screamed as I went down.

I Want to Join the Fight for Social Justice, But I’m an Extreme Introvert with Mental Health Issues!

How can I contribute in a meaningful way?

A curse of introverts, especially those of us who are intuitive feelers (INFPs and INFJs), is that while we tend to care deeply about social and political issues, we are also behind-the-scene types, if not actively avoidant of large group activities. We want to do our part, but being on the front lines – for example in emotive protests – quickly and painfully overwhelms us. And mental health issues can make participation all but impossible. The attention garnered by active forms of dissent can make those of us inclined toward background roles and a quieter approach wonder if we are doing enough. It can even make us wonder if we are contributing anything significant at all.

This is on my mind a lot recently, because I want to see significant and enduring social justice occur for oppressed peoples. I’m a white, cishet woman who comes from a privileged background, so it’s incumbent upon me to educate myself and do the work to make change. As an intuitive feeler and an HSP, my emotional response to the injustices I see occurring is deeply painful. And yet I struggle to actively participate in frontline activities in any sustained way because of my introversion and severe anxiety issues. I also have to limit my consumption of news and social media. The result of this is a lot of guilt.

I want to be clear that my personal feelings of guilt and inadequacy are not important in the context of working for social justice. When I show up, I push all this aside because it’s not about me, plain and simple. But in my own time this is something I grapple with, and I know I’m not the only one. This post is for people who are similarly struggling. Here are some of my thoughts on how to work through complex and difficult feelings about social justice work when you feel unable to participate in meaningful ways.

We need to stop saying silence is complicity  

Silence in the face of injustice can be complicity. We should not stay silent in our private spheres, and people and organizations with a public presence have a responsibility to take a stand. But silence has its place, particularly now, and particularly on the part of people who have privilege of any kind. The first and most important thing we can do is to shut up and listen. Without responding. Our opinions are not needed. We should be listening to the recounting of the lived experiences of those who need justice, and we should especially be listening to what they say about what they need and how we can help.

Guess what introverts are really, really good at? Listening. And thinking deeply about what we have heard. Why does this matter? Because just listening is not enough. We need to practice active listening. This means continuously working to examine our own biases and doing our own research to supplement what we’ve heard. It especially means sitting with discomfort, because discomfort is the growing pains of the soul. If you can do this, you are already ahead of most people, including many of those who jump at the opportunity to go out on the front lines. Demonstrating and protesting, while it certainly can be a catalyst of change, cannot equal sustained and deep work in the realm of discomfort on the part of every individual. That which we seek to change in society is rooted within ourselves, and the biggest and most important work you can do is in your own heart and mind.

You are allowed to be slow in your response

Introverts require more time than extroverts to formulate responses. We also generally prefer quality over quantity – we’d rather think carefully about our response to make sure it’s relevant and targeted than blurt out just anything. This is why participation grades in school are a nightmare for us. Our approach to taking action is similar.

This can feel really bad when the need for justice is urgent – which it always is, right? But it’s important to remember that change inevitably takes time (unfortunately), and that it really is sustained action that makes the difference. Very rarely do overnight revolutions occur. Most of the time, social change happens when a critical mass of people push for it, and political change happens when social pressure results in the political will to legislate. Demonstrations and protests certainly matter, because they are a very public way of showing how much support an issue has. However, most of the work for change occurs behind the scenes and in support roles. 

Guess what introverts love? Working behind the scenes and in support roles. Especially for those of us with privilege, our place should be in support roles. Taking the lead, unless it is asked of us, is called co-opting the issue, and it’s wrongheaded. As an introvert, you probably won’t have a problem with taking a back seat!

Be skeptical of performative activism

A performative action is one that is done for the sake of appearing a certain way to others. When you are doing something performative for personal reasons – because it’s an easy way to show up or so other people will think well of you – this isn’t true activism. It’s like window shopping. That said, doing something for the visibility of it has its place: this is what demonstrations and protests are. But it’s important to not mistake this type of highly emotive and visible activism for revolutionary action. The unfortunate truth is that often people’s work for change stops when the demonstration does. Again, it’s not that this kind of activism isn’t important – but it’s not the only important way to contribute, nor is it the most important way. 

I’m not going to list ways to contribute from behind the scenes, because you can easily google that. I will say that I find that using my money to help fund activist organizations, bail funds, or to support minority-owned businesses is often my chosen type of contribution. And I keep listening, learning, and examining my own biases. Paying attention is itself a kind of activism, particularly when it means you are sitting in discomfort quite a lot. Remind yourself that your discomfort is small compared to those who bear the brunt of injustices. Also remind yourself that you are allowed to take a break from it if you need to (while remembering that the people who need justice often do not have this privilege).

Being an extreme introvert and having mental health issues does not have to mean you can’t do meaningful work on behalf of social justice. If you’re like me, you probably already knew this, but have lacked confidence about your ability to contribute. I remind myself every day that change starts with the personal work I do on myself. If today that’s the only thing I do, it’s still valuable, and tomorrow maybe I can do more.  

I Thought I Had Depression, But It Was Something Else

My depression was a symptom of a bigger problem.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

I once spent three weeks straight in bed. I’d get up to shower occasionally, but mostly my biggest daily expenditure of energy was reaching over to the bedside table to get more Benadryl to make me sleep again. Being awake was hell on earth. I wasn’t bad enough to want to die, but I certainly didn’t want to be alive. I thought I was depressed. I was wrong. What I actually had was burnout.

Let me explain. I tried for many years to treat my depression. Medication after medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy. Wine. Endless rounds of falling into the abyss, dragging myself out and to the doctor yet again, only to come out feeling that there was no hope and nothing would ever get any better for me. “Treatment-resistant depression,” is what it’s generally called.

I don’t know exactly when I realized my depression was actually a symptom of something else. I suppose eventually I became so frustrated by the inability of medical approaches to help me that I started looking for other answers. I just couldn’t believe that I was doomed to feel like shit for the rest of my life because of some inherent biochemical or psychological flaw. But if the problem wasn’t me, what was it? The answer was obvious once I took brain chemistry and mental illness out of the equation: it was the circumstances of my life. I was suffering from the effects of years of anxiety that came from trying to survive and thrive as an intuitive feeler, a gentle soul, in a world that is not made for such as us. I was burned out from it.

In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized burnout as a legitimate condition (a “syndrome”). Which is great, right? Not exactly. There is this major caveat: it is considered an “occupational phenomenon,” related only to the workplace context. Burnout comes from being overwhelmed and exhausted in one’s job. The standard treatment advice is to take a vacation, maybe change jobs. 

I think this is bullshit. Burnout is a whole-life condition, caused not just by a particular job but by the system that supports our work institutions. A system that prioritizes an individual’s productive and economic value for the organization they work for over their humanity. Take a look at the WHO’s list of burnout indicators:   

·     feelings of energy depletion and exhaustion;

·     increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and

·     reduced professional efficacy

Let that last one sink in. Reduced professional efficacy.

According to this, the true cost of your burnout is that you cease to be an efficacious member of your organization. You cost them money because your productivity decreases.

The irony is that this system of valuation is a root cause of burnout. Even when your job is ostensibly for something other than profit, like my previous work in academia, it still always comes down to what is good for the organization, not you. Any institution seeks first and foremost to survive, and your worth to it is based on whether or not you contribute to that. 

You’re probably thinking, well duh. That’s just the way our system works. And anyway, everyone’s got to earn a living. True and true. But for gentle souls, this system is particularly spirit-crushing. We are not primed for the competitive, impersonal nature of it. But it’s more than that. Many intuitive feelers find that the institutional/organizational context just doesn’t make sense. It is so fundamentally contrary to our own personal value system that we often can’t function within it anywhere near a level of competence that expresses our true talents and skills, even as we exhaust ourselves trying to fit in. And this is devastating. It can lead to feelings of futility and hopelessness.

What really turned things around for me was when I realized that my real problem was that I was allowing the societal values of productivity and money-seeking to lead my decisions. All along I was chasing things I don’t personally value. I began to reassess my life from my own perspective, rather than society’s. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do – it requires a real commitment to examining and throwing away some beliefs that are so ingrained it feels wrong to reject them. Like deciding to not pursue certain career opportunities you’ve spent years qualifying for, even when it impacts your personal bottom line in life-altering ways. Or deciding that you are going to start “wasting” more time – see, we don’t even have positive ways to talk about being unproductive in our language!

Clearing my own mind – working to eliminate the cultural brainwashing – was the first and honestly only really difficult step I needed to take to heal from burnout. Once I gained confidence in living my personal values, and in a way that prioritizes my own mental health at all times, everything else began to fall into place. I’m not saying this is the way for everyone. But for me, trusting myself and trusting my values made all the difference. 

When You've Failed at Your Dream

Should you give up your dream if you’ve failed? That’s not the right question to ask!

I know I was born to be a writer. It’s always been about words and language for me. I even learned three other languages, I love them so much. All of my jobs, from policy analyst in DC to professional editor to academic have involved writing in some capacity. I continued to write fiction as I toiled on a PhD, splitting the writing into morning and afternoon sessions. I was doing what I always had: delegating my fiction writing to the time left over. I thought it was working well.

Then the worst happened. I stopped writing fiction. Looking back, I would call it writer’s block, but really it was more than that. I not only had no ideas for what to write, I didn’t want to write fiction anymore. This was one of the most profoundly awful feelings I’ve ever had. I’d considered myself a writer my entire life, and had pursued it seriously for over a decade at that point. To suddenly have it dawn on me, after being unable to write for a year or so, that maybe I wasn’t a writer anymore, or perhaps never was one to begin with, was disorientating and devastating.

I was at that time in my mid thirties. Maybe my lack of enthusiasm about writing was my brain telling me I needed to grow up and put away childish dreams. Maybe I’d had all my chances already, and it was time to gracefully embrace the inevitable decline in accomplishment of the second half of life (can you say midlife crisis? – haha). Of course that’s all bullshit, but at the time I genuinely felt that it could be time to accept that I’m not a writer at all. 

And I did. I came to a kind of peace about it. I didn’t write any fiction for about three years. I wrote a travel blog for a time, and then started writing a lot of what you see here on this blog, but no fiction. I had no ideas for fiction. Then one day out of the blue, I got an idea. It came in a flash and momentarily stole my breath away. I knew it was real because I could feel the excitement throughout my body. I sat with that idea, and it grew. And some months later, I started a novel. I’m still working on it, and I love writing fiction even more than I ever did. 

It feels like a miracle to be writing again, but it’s something much more mundane than that. I simply needed time to heal from the harm of my PhD. And I needed to reevaluate my relationship with fiction, come to a place where I was truly writing for myself only, because writing is who I am.

Maybe you’re in place similar place of confusion about your dream. Wondering if it’s worth continuing on. Should you give it up? I think this is the wrong question. What if what you really need to do is recalibrate your relationship with your dream? What if your long-held vision of your dream has started blocking you from pursuing it, rather than motivating you? Ask yourself how much of your dream has to do with specific outcomes, and how much with showing up to do the actual work of it. 

I had to step away from my dream entirely in order to give myself space to ask these questions. Just asking them feels like you are giving up on your dream! Trust me, I get it. I had to literally give up my dream to repossess it again on better terms. I’m telling you my story so that maybe you won’t have to go through such a painful experience. Ask your dream some hard questions – and then listen with an open heart.