RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER

Getting over my months-long depression in two weeks

I’ve spent the past six months mildly depressed, partially giving up on my dreams or the mundane demands of adult life. This essay details a simple yet profound mindset shift that I think might help you too.

During college, I had an extremely introverted friend. I’d occasionally host small gatherings and parties in the dorms, but she rarely showed up to them because she hated meeting new people. She spent most of her time talking to her boyfriend. A few months ago, I visited her in the Bay Area, where she’d been living post-college. To my extreme surprise, she had become a social butterfly. We went to a gallery opening, and she also hosted a party because I was in town. Fifty people showed up.

I was dumbfounded. How could she have changed so drastically in such a short period of time? Turns out, about a year ago, she’d had a really tough breakup, and her whole social scene of solely her boyfriend disappeared. For a while, she spent most of her days in the bay alone. But at some point, she couldn’t take the isolation anymore. She decided to force herself to confront her terror of meeting new people and booked thirty events in thirty days. By the end of the social experiment, she realized that even though she’d thought she’d hated being social, she actually really liked it. In other words, when she ran towards the danger, her life completely changed.

Run towards the danger. I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot since two weekends ago, when This American Life released an episode where they interviewed various people who went against the grain in a variety of crises, from people swimming towards shark attacks to a young Kenyan activist risking tear gas and abduction to stand up to the government. The most striking interview, however, was with Sarah Polley, a screenwriter who had her life derailed for 3.5 years by a long-running concussion.

Sarah’s life was a living hell for the 3.5 years following her concussion. She was overwhelmed by mundane tasks like going to the grocery store, dropping her kids off to school, or following what people were saying during conversations. She tried everything, from cutting out gluten and dairy to seeing a neurofeedback specialist, but nothing worked.

It felt hopeless. Sarah felt just as bad as she did before all her attempts to approve and started to accept her limitations. She could live half a life forever. Finally, she saw a doctor who told her that all the advice she’d been given in the past few years — in essence to stay within her comfort zone — was all pointless. He told her to run towards the danger, and that it would be extremely uncomfortable at first, but that she would get better.

“I was in agony. Everything hurt. I had worse brain fog at times. It was exhausting. It made me nauseous. It gave me headaches,” Sarah said. But a few weeks in, she realized that she could follow conversations and go to the mall and be her full self again. How does someone cure a years-long ailment in a few weeks? In this case, don’t take it easy. Treating herself with kid gloves weakened her ability to participate in real life. She had to face her limitations head on.

Run towards the danger.