The Day I Made the Decision to Live
The Clock is Ticking
Last December I made a pledge to stay alive for the entire year 2022. The decision to live may seem like an odd New Year’s resolution. Most of the time we commit to losing weight, or exercising more, or quitting a toxic habit. I guess you could say that my toxic habit was suicidal ideation. After more than four years in a severe depression, with no reprieve, life had become unbearable. For me, staying alive was the equivalent of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Until this depression, I’d always been able to bounce back from life’s setbacks. My determination and work ethic consistently pushed me through tough times to achieve ambitious personal and professional goals. Unfortunately these qualities did nothing in the face of the depression demons.
Once they set in, not a single intervention made a dent: not the countless medications prescribed, nor years of psychotherapy. Not the daily walks in nature, nor regular exercise, nor sleep routines I committed to doing, in spite of the fatigue. Not journaling. Not meditation apps. Not a daily gratitude practice. Not plant-based nutrition. Nothing.
I Have a Soul Migraine
Imagine going through life with a perpetual migraine of the soul: your pain completely invisible to the outside world. This pain has no beginning and no end. Only a seamless ream of pitch-black clouds and swirling waves pulling you under. Anybody who’s visited these depths, knows exactly what I mean.
I’m not talking about a temporary bout of sadness after a minor inconvenience. The name depression doesn’t nearly do justice to the level of psychic torture inflicted on those in the throes of this illness. Depression is an insatiable soul-sucking beast. Put it this way: if sticking your neck through a noose and strangling the life out of your body is a more appealing option than staying alive, you’re experiencing more than a bad day.
Depression doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care how much money you have in your bank account, or the level of career success you’ve achieved. Once the hijackers set up shop in your brain, you can’t see straight anymore. And you’re so far past hope, there is no other viable option. Worse yet, you’re alone in the darkness. Not even the most well-intentioned friends or family members can get you out. If you have a spouse and kids, you’re convinced they’ll be better off without you. If you are single, you will forever be alone and unloved. Either way, depression is a one-(wo)man show.
Save Me From the Darkness
For years, I kept wishing for somebody else to save me from this raging storm. I pinned all of my hopes on my doctor and hospital staff. After all, this is what we’re taught to believe: when you fall sick, seek out medical help and you will be cured. If traditional treatments fail, there is something wrong with you—not the treatment. In reality, the options currently available to treat depression fail far too many people, assuming you have access to medication and therapy in the first place.
At the same time, telling people you have a mental illness can be detrimental to your career, your social life, and your reputation. For all of the progress we’ve made in mental health awareness in recent years, the repercussions of coming out remain potentially devastating: judgements come fast and furious, adding to the weight of your battle to get well. For this reason, I hid the truth about the extent of my illness, for all of this time, from everyone apart from a few friends and family.
By the end of last year, being alive was pure torture. I put on a smile for outside observers, while being stabbed to death on the inside. The friends who knew about my suffering kept telling me that things could only get better. By this point, I didn’t believe them. After a relentless years-long battle for survival, I was exhausted. It took all of my energy to fight off the constant barrage of self-inflicted negative thoughts attacking my psyche every minute of every day.
Meanwhile, the medical system failed to deliver any tangible improvement to my health: they labeled and classified and pacified, only to make the situation worse. Something had to change. It was no longer possible to endure the slow burn in limbo.
A Most Unusual New Year’s Resolution
On New Year’s Eve, I decided to give myself one more year. I would stay alive until December 31, 2022, no matter how painful. And I vowed to try every remaining means at my disposal to get better. The deal was as follows: if I still didn’t see any tangible improvement to my health—and life—by the end of the year, I had full permission to go quietly into the night.
I’d fought a good fight. I’d followed every single bit of medical advice for four years. I’d shown up consistently for therapy appointments and taken the medication as prescribed, despite significant side effects. At some point, enough is enough. I needed to see concrete evidence that my effort to get well was paying off.
Going into 2022, I didn’t have a clear treatment plan: only a conviction to explore alternative means of healing. Throughout the year I researched and experimented with countless alternative therapies, some of which fall on the fringes of the scientific establishment. The one thing they all have in common is training the mind, in the broadest sense of the word.
There’s a lot of talk these days about neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to adapt and change in response to stimuli. Our scientific understanding of the intricate mechanics of the brain and nervous system is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, humans have been exploring the workings of the mind—and consciousness—for thousands of years.
Exploring Mind Stuff
As I looked deeper into this mind stuff, I started to wonder: what if I could train my mind out of depression? To be clear, I’m not talking about simply thinking positive thoughts and “getting it together, already”. That would be the equivalent of expecting to build muscle mass by sitting on the couch and staring at a set of dumbbells.
You can’t think your way out of depression. Otherwise, I would have healed years ago, along with millions of others who are suffering right now. I’m interested in the potential to reprogram my brain beyond the level of conscious thought. Could it be possible to disrupt the neural highways of negative thought loops etched into my brain, and replace them with more constructive ways thinking and experiencing the world?
This brings us to January 1, 2023. Spoiler alert: I’m still alive. After experimenting with this mind stuff over the course of the past year, I’ve seen enough progress to believe that change is possible.
This doesn’t mean my symptoms are gone. According to official diagnostic assessments, my depression could still be considered moderate-to-severe. Many days are a struggle. However, I no longer feel like a slave to the hijackers. Better yet, I believe I can take them down—or at least disarm them enough not to control my life anymore.
Decision to Live
Recently I saw a video about the incredible transformation of a man who’d been told he would never walk again without the use of crutches and leg braces. At the time he was severely overweight and his doctors advised him to accept this condition and learn how to navigate the world with physical disabilities. You could say the guy was at rock bottom. Then, one day, he made a firm decision to change his life. And he did. He undertook a new physical strength and mobility program. He proceeded to show up day after day, putting in the work, under the guidance of a coach. His consistency and determination paid off. Today this man can run.
I want to achieve the mental equivalent of this transformation. My current disabilities may be invisible, however, in mental terms I am exactly where this man started his journey. Until now, I felt powerless to change my situation. After all, nothing worked.
At the beginning of last year a psychiatrist told me there was nothing more to be done. (Needless to say, I fired her.) The one before that fired me because he didn’t feel he could help any further. He’d had enough.
I, too, had had enough. Only I‘m not able to simply close the file on my life and get on with the day. I’m the one who must live with the suffering and hopelessness, day in, day out.
I’m done with suffering. I’m done with surviving. It’s no longer enough to simply stay alive. I want my life—and mind—back. The only way out of this depression is to reclaim the power in my own healing.
Let’s Thrive!
For decades, we’ve spent far too much time focusing on a single neurotransmitter as a convenient explanation for a highly complex phenomenon. We’ve convinced people that the only way back to mental health is to take a pill and endure a long and arduous process of self-analysis. Meanwhile, millions of people continue to suffer.
If there’s one thing I learned in 2022, it’s this: the only person who can cure my depression is me.
I do not accept a life-long sentence of despair. Nor do I believe the depressive symptoms I’ve been experiencing are solely the result of a chemical imbalance in my brain—although the physiological aspects of this illness are undeniable. (Whether they are the cause or effect is a chicken-and-egg dilemma.)
Whatever the case, I can’t change my genetic make-up. But there are a whole lot of other variables in depression that I can influence proactively. So I’m dedicating 2023 to the elements within my control. Each month I’ll perform an in-depth exploration of a different technique to reprogram my mind back to health, following the guidance of leading experts in these emerging fields.
My commitment is to practice a series of mind training tools every single day. Along the way I’ll share what I learn: what worked, what didn’t, where to find more information, and the most useful takeaways.
At the same time, I’m giving the medical establishment one last try with the support of a new doctor and psychologist, both of whom are trained in more contemporary approaches to treating depression.
I’m not a mental health professional. I’m not a therapist. I have no formal training in the treatment of mental illness. What I am is a depression survivor. My mission is to uncover every possible means of freeing myself from the tyranny of depression, and to create a space where fellow warriors can connect. Here’s to a new year of thriving!
