The Case for Making Huge Changes
The Case for Making Huge Changes
Buy that house, quit those friends, do that thing
Hey, dear readers! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
20 years ago, I wrote a novel about a therapist who got sent to a small town in Alaska that had no mental health professionals by a nonprofit called Psychologically Healthy United States. (PHUS was a stand-in for Teach For America, to which I briefly belonged after college.) The Coping Bee skewered the mental health industry’s constant need to pathologize and monetize every aspect of human existence. 4 shots of Jägermeister was a cure for “Not Wanting to Dance on the Pool Table Syndrome” and Molly/ecstasy/MDMA was called an “instant antidepressant.” As it turns out, that drug does exist: it’s ketamine.
And so, here’s the last half of my 2023 in a nutshell:
Treatment-resistant depression
Ketamine infusion therapy
Depression
Microdosing ketamine (thanks, Joyous!)
During one ketamine infusion, I had a vivid realization that I needed to
One of my big realizations in the ongoing UNBREAK MY BRAIN saga has been the fact that I am an Olympic-level isolator, which has been getting worse over time. What was a cute tendency at 21 can be dangerous a full-fledged hardened trait a few decades later; now, I have more neural pathways devoted to constantly priding myself in being a lone wolf who’s great at going it alone. But am I? Is anyone?
Even introverts need quality relationships. Humans can exist anywhere on earth, provided that we’re in the company of other humans, suggesting that the environment to which we’re primarily adapted is the presence of others. Social living is our baseline, and not having access to the resources that others can provide is a brutally efficient way to make life more difficult.
People need people. In order to stay one step ahead of falling into a years-long battle with depression again, I decided last year to be more mindful and intentional about how I surround myself with people, something extra important as a single, childfree, self-employed person.
And so, I decided to get a house—one that was centrally-located, where I could have others over. And live with other people.
I’m buying a house! I told some people at a party last summer.
Don’t do it! cried my friend Leah.
Oh, but I found the perfect one.
You don’t want 4 housemates, she said.
Actually, I replied, I do. That’s the point.
Nope. Get a smaller place that you can afford all on your own. Maybe a more affordable neighborhood, further away. Living in a far-away neighborhood on my own was the exact environment that I needed to escape. Alas, I didn’t want to start blabbing about my mental health issues at the party and explain why living with people was worth paying more money for. What looked irrational to her made perfect sense to me because I was weighing the variables differently. And, quite frankly, it was none of her business.
Leah texted the day after. I’d be happy to sit down and look at the numbers with you, always up for offering financial guidance. Was she a financial advisor? Was she my financial advisor? Did I ask her for help? No, no, and no.
I’m good, thanks!
She begged me to reconsider. How about a compromise?
Compromise between what? I asked. Between what I want and what you want?
Dominant Personalities Shift Our Lives
“I’m just trying to help!” is like the “he just wants to say hi!” of dog training: an invasion of boundaries by people who lack the humility to realize that they don’t have all of the information, and the curiosity to wonder why someone is doing what they’re doing.
Leah probably had no idea how much effort it took me to point out that toe, advocate for myself, and say what I really wanted. Really looking out for people includes knowing the whole story, including whether or not someone wants your opinion. And really looking out for yourself means being discerning about who you listen to and whose energy you allow into your life.
If I were younger, or hadn’t had this strong gut feeling about my decision, I’m sure I would have been swayed by her. That’s happened too many times in the past to count—mistaking confidence for competence, or someone’s strong opinion for a message from the universe.
The problem is that dominant personalities are everywhere, and they tend to pop up with unsolicited opinions during other people’s most vulnerable transition periods: contemplating a career change, when we’re pregnant, when we want to start a business or go back to school or get married or move.
Dealing with this kind of social stress takes its toll over time; after you get poked enough times, you start to figure out how to avoid it. We mock social norm violators, criticize people who don’t behave the way we expect them to. When you’re on the receiving end of it all the time, or have accumulated a lifetime of memories where people made fun of/criticized you doing that thing, you become less confident in your ability to know what’s best for you, to try new things.
You open up, but learn that telling someone else a dream runs the risk of being mocked at a party and bullied over text. You get less likely to take a stand, have a thought, or be the bravest possible version of yourself. You learn to color inside the lines.
Poor, middle-class, non-whites, women, etc. are more likely to experience depression and anxiety. And these non-rich-white-guys of the world are more likely to be the targets of being treated as a lower status in interpersonal settings.
The Cases for Making Big Changes
In a world that profits off of our dissatisfaction and anxieties, that constantly makes us second guess ourselves by offering a million options of everything, all the time, what’s more revolutionary than jumping in the deep end of the pool every now and again? By burning it all to the ground? By finally listening to that voice inside of you, if for no other reason than to free your future self from the tyranny of regret?
You get clarity on how something affects you
We never really know how much something is affecting us until we make a big change.
I never knew how much sugar was affecting me (ditto alcohol, processed food) until I quit it for a few months. I never knew how much negative people in my life were wearing me down until I took an extended break. I had a very complicated skin care routine when I lived in NYC and still broke out; now, living in the Pacific Northwest near tons of trees means clear skin with minimal effort.
You learn a lot about the people around you
Are they happy for you? Fearful? Confused, jealous, indifferent? The way people react to your big change often helps clarify their influence on your life.
Who do you think you are? Why would you do that? That’s not going to end well for you… that negative self-talk came from somewhere.
You get an opportunity to assess the barriers
Try acting like it’s going to happen to give yourself a clear idea of what it would actually take to follow through. My friend who wanted to move to Europe was anxious until she got out of her head and started looking at storage units. Storage units. Once she started focusing on the concrete details, she realized how possible it actually was.
Storage units: not impossible.
I felt stuck because of the narrative I was telling myself: I can’t move. I have to listen to these people. Single people can’t buy houses. I’m too old to have housemates. I can’t because I have a dog, don’t have enough guaranteed income this year, and what about those interest rates?
What changes do you want to make? Are you dipping a toe into the water? What’s holding you back? Why do you feel stuck?
Being “stuck,” in system dynamics, is referred to as a system’s attractor: a steady state caused by the repeated motion of the variables. Your stuck might be related to the beliefs of people in your immediate social environment, the most salient source of immediate feedback. Alas, because it’s the first input that your brain gets, we may interpret our aunt Betty or coworker Joe’s advice as important or correct when really they were just the first to speak.
What kind of rules, principles, relationships, or sticking points in your life might be contributing to your steady state, your “stuck”? You might not even realize why until you decide to jump…
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