It took me many years to realize—about 3 decades.
For the most part of my adult life, I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety. Not all the time. For long periods of time – sometimes years – I feel great. I feel content, light, happy.
Then something happens. Some event just pulls the rug from under my feet and I face plant into the asphalt. And then follow months where I feel completely shit.
During those times, I’m having a really hard time getting things done. I often stop working completely, and that’ll often end up in me having to start all over when I finally get back to work.
For most of my working life, it felt like everyone else had their shit together. I mean, I could see that hey did. Every day, people were posting about their successful product launches, increased MRR, and side projects being acquired. I really thought I everyone were doing great, and I was the only one struggling.
Until I started talking to people.
My anxiety lives somewhere in my chest. On really bad days, it’ll prevent me from taking normal, deep breaths. I can only do shallow ones, like I’m hyperventilating all day. It feels like there isn’t enough room in my chest to breathe. On the not-so-bad days, I just have a constant, numbing, worrying sensation in the same place. I don’t know where I want to be, or what to do, I just know I can’t stay where I am right now. I usually end up walking around, going from place to place.
And I thought I was the only one. Until I started talking to other creators.
My platform of choice has always been Twitter. It’s a great way to get to know people, and I often create really deep connections with people like myself. At the end of my last period of depression and anxiety – when it released its grip of me enough to sit at the computer and focus for a few minutes at the time – I decided to start talking about it. I just had this feeling there should be at least a few others feeling the same.
I was wrong.
I didn’t find a few others.
I found a lot.
As soon as I started talking about mental health in relation to creativity, I was drowning in replies and messages from other creatives who experienced the same thing.
They were telling me about their crippling imposter syndrome. How they felt like failures every time they saw another $10k launch. That they were so stressed out from constantly trying to keep up, that they were on the verge of quitting.
There and then, I realized I was not alone. My entire life I’ve thought I was a weirdo, different than everyone else.
It turned out, I was normal.
Understanding how many entrepreneurs, artists, and creative people struggle with anxiety, depression, and a constant feeling of not being enough helped me. It was what I needed to give myself permission to be OK with feeling how I do. And you should be OK with it as well.
We are the fucking normal ones.
