For several years, I fixated on what was wrong with me rather than seeing what was right with me when I developed symptoms of severe depression.
If you’re struggling, too, you’re not broken, either. What is your brain telling you?
While I am not a mental health professional and strongly advocate for people to get the support they need, as I have done throughout my journey, I share this reflection as a perspective I wish I had honored sooner. This reflection helped me to move out of a restrictive, self-destructive mode into an abundant life full of self-compassion, and I hope it may do the same for all who need to hear it.
The reality is that my mental, physical, and spiritual health declined when there was no reason for me to be thriving. Of course, I was feeling depressed: not sleeping, eating, or socializing with loved ones. Of course, I was feeling depressed, not giving myself time to process grief and coping through overwork and people-pleasing. Of course, I was not thriving, and though I expected I should be, given that I was an aspiring superhuman perfectionist robot.
It took me years to start to dissect what was happening and ask myself: What was my brain telling me?
For one, my brain knew that I wasn’t actually superhuman, perfect, or a robot; what a bummer that initially was to accept.
By pushing my brain to try functioning as a superhuman, the psychache was a natural result of pushing past my capacity to recover. My brain was right in feeling deep levels of mental pain. By giving my brain time to rest, I started to see more clearly and was able to release myself from fixating on “What is wrong with me?” and finally started to hear the sirens … sirens we often ignore as we neglect our basic human needs in order to meet the demands of a world increasingly made for robots.
What happens when we change our narrative and listen to what our brains and bodies are telling us? Rather than asking what is wrong with our minds and bodies, what is right?
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Extremely sleep deprived, my brain was telling me that sleep is vital.
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Chronically undernourished, my brain was telling me that proper fuel is essential.
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Not stopping to process losses of people and identities in my life, my brain was telling me I needed to take time to grieve.
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Usually alone, my brain was telling me that humans thrive in community, not isolated.
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Constantly self-critical, my brain was telling me that I needed more self-compassion.
What was right with me when I developed severe depression?
Much more than I could have ever seen when I was walking in a sleep-deprived, undernourished, lonely dark cloud full of self-criticisms and constantly picking at everything I thought was wrong with me.
While it sounds so very simple, it took a voluntary admission into an inpatient hospital unit to get me to stop, rest, and fuel myself properly long enough to think clearly. A necessary unlearning process needs to happen in our chronically sleep-deprived, overworked, disconnected (yet, overly “connected”) society to bring the humans back into the healing.
It starts with stopping. Look at your life. If you’re not thriving, should you be? Or are you, too, trying to be a superhuman perfectionist robot?
What would living and working in a world made for humans look like?
Starting with ourselves: What’s the next best step in your life to honor your humanness and create a life that includes what you really need to truly thrive?
Then, how can we better create that world for others to thrive, too?
Jillian Rigert is an oral medicine specialist and radiation oncology research fellow.
