Here’s What It’s Like to Have Depression
As an entrepreneur and business owner, I've seen employees through a whole manner of things, including deaths in the family, breakups, and mental health crises. Pretty much anything bad that can happen to someone has happened to one of my employees in the past five years. Your first instinct might be to say, “You're going through a breakup, take some time off,” or, “Oh my gosh, you're depressed. How can I help?” I’ve also found that being open about my own mood disorder and mental health journey is immensely helpful in destigmatizing the issue in the workplace, and in encouraging employees and friends to get the help they need, too.
According to a survey by the Harvard Business Review, 50 percent of Millennials and 75 percent of Generation Z said they had left a job due to mental health reasons — a vast disparity from 20 percent of the general population. I don’t think that it’s because our generations are more stressed than previous generations, but rather that we are destigmatizing mental health issues, and encouraging people to be more open about getting help. When I lived in San Francisco, it was almost trendy to be working on your mental health, and to talk about your struggles. But given how addicted we are to our screens, and how lonely and excluded we feel as a result, it’s almost expected that we would be so much more connected and yet so much more alone. And something needs to be done about that.
I speak from plenty of experience: I've thrown the kitchen sink at my mental health issues. I spend 10 to 20 hours a week meaningfully focused on my mental health, through therapy, meditating, and other treatments. Over the past few years, it’s been a huge priority for me to beat my depression. Even so, all of that work hasn’t made me blissfully happy, or solved the issue. And I can only imagine what the struggle feels like for people who don’t have the resources I do. But if I can shine a light on my experience just as one person, and really be honest about what it's like to be an entrepreneur — including the cool and awesome things that I’ve gotten out of it, but also the negative, like the fact that I’m depressed — then I think I should.
How I Realized I Had a Mental Health Disorder
Growing up, I had moments of sadness. I’ve talked to loved ones and even my mom has told me that when I was a little kid, I would talk about “The sadness.” I would just feel inexplicably sad for a day or two. It wasn't tethered to anything — it was just unexplainable sadness. I've also always been a very anxious person, and as I got older, it got harder and harder to shake my sadness or anxiety with a really good coffee or a run. I also remember judging people who couldn't seem to deal with the ups and downs of life because for me, the ups and downs were manageable — that all changed when the ups and downs were absolutely not manageable and became entirely all-consuming. I realized how serious these things can be.
When I was 25, I had a very traumatic, intense, charged relationship that totally rocked me. I went from experiencing depression and anxiety as annoying things that would come and go in my life, to barely getting out of bed. I went from being a top performer at work, to almost getting fired. I worked at this big ad agency in midtown New York City, and they had showers in the building for employees, so I would take three showers a day in the middle of the day trying to wake myself up, and snap out of my depression. I would spend hours walking through Central Park in the middle of a work day, trying to get my head to stop buzzing and to lift the heaviness off of my chest. I felt like there was nothing I could do, and that I wasn't safe anywhere. That was one of the scariest feelings.
One day, I left work at noon and I came home and just crawled up in bed in the fetal position. I had what I considered them to be a really cool apartment: I was living with like two of my best friends in the East village, and I felt really cool. I remember looking around my room on that day and thinking, “I'm doing it. I'm living this awesome life in New York City working at a fancy company. That's what a 22 year old should want. And despite all of those trappings, I’m miserable, and acutely in pain.” That was so terrifying because I had all the boxes ticked and I was doing everything right.
My life was in shambles. And by the time I went and actually started seeing a therapist and started really addressing this, it wasn't even remotely a question as to whether or not my mental health was a problem.
How I Sought Help For My Mood Disorder
Bad anxiety or bad depression feels entirely all-consuming, and when I was in a really dark place, talk therapy wasn’t helping me. There was a little bit of relief from sharing my reality with another person who understood what I was feeling and going through, but I didn’t feel like anything was helping in the way I needed.
One of the first doctors I saw pretty quickly pushed medication on me, and I was very resistant because of the stigma about mental health medication. It probably took him a month to convince me to go on an SSRI, which is a very common drug to be prescribed if you have depression. Between that and my breakup, I got back to a place where I could function as a human being. On a scale at one to 10, I had previously been at a negative 9 or so — making those changes helped me get to about a negative 2.
I stayed on the SSRI for five or six years, and there have been ebbs and flows and ups and downs, but basically I lived at that negative two for that whole time. But living at a negative two is no way to live. I'm able to function, and to the outside world, I seem fine, but I don't feel fine. And every single day of my life is marked by depression.
So I've tried everything in the book: I’ve done 10 doses of ketamine. I've microdosed mushrooms. I've meditated, I've journaled, I've exercised. I've tried 12 different drugs and have tried every form of noninvasive treatment. I've given up alcohol. It has become my number one priority in the past year to fix this. I’ve made really immense progress, but I'm also more dedicated to my mental health than anyone I know, which is an immense privilege given how expensive mental health treatment can be. If you're an average person dealing with a mood disorder, the chips are very much stacked against you, and it's very hard to overcome it.
I believe there are three things that affect your mood at any given time: Your biology, or brain chemistry and genetics; your psychology or upbringing; and your social, which includes your present-day stressors like work, relationships, family, finances, and whatever else is causing you strife. Those three things coalesce in different ways: Some people are skewed in one direction, and I believe my depression is about 50 percent biological, given my family’s history of mental health. I'd say 30 or 35 percent is psychology, and 15 to 20 percent is social stressors, given that I have a pretty high stress threshold. And for me, effective treatment takes that breakdown into consideration.
How My Mood Disorder Impacted My Career
An incredibly high percentage of founders experience anxiety, depression, and/or ADHD. And I believe that for someone to be an entrepreneur, you have to have a certain risk tolerance, energy level, and way of thinking, being, and existing built into who you are as a person. I would not be surprised if those personality markers are often accompanied by neuroticism, openness, and extroversion. These are all things that make a good entrepreneur, and they are often heavily correlated with attentional issues, as well as energy swings. I don't think it's that being an entrepreneur makes you stressed, or makes you depressed or anxious. But I do believe that being an entrepreneur genetically is highly correlated with being someone who's prone to these things. The stress certainly doesn't help, and it probably exacerbates the problem.
I believe I was born an entrepreneur, and I believe I was born depressed.
I think all the time about what my relationship with my ex would have been like, and what my company would look like if I didn't have depression, or if I fixed it to the extent that I have now. My company, The Hub, is still small enough where, when I'm on fire, the company does really well. And when I'm slumping, the company slumps. It’s tethered to my lifeforce and the work I’m directly putting into it, whereas most people who work at a big company can’t see that mirror. Their boss might say something, but it’s not like a company’s stock goes down because of one person. But at a small company, if any of us are off, the company will reflect that pretty visibly. And as I've seen the benefits of addressing my mental health, that then begs the question of, what if I'd been operating at plus five instead of minus two for the past five years?
The only way I get out of thinking that is by telling myself that it is what it is. I also know that while there are a lot of bad things to being depressed and anxious, my same brain is very creative, very high energy, and very passionate. My therapist always says they don’t want me to be overmedicated because I’ll lose things. If my company is succeeding, the reasons that are at least due to my contributions are because of gifts that I have that are part and parcel with the same things that cause my depression.
As a business owner with employees, there's a line in supporting someone’s mental health journey. If your employee is going through a breakup and needs to take a week off, or if for the next two to four weeks, they're a little out of sorts, that all makes sense. If six months later they're still underperforming, that's a problem. Businesses on the one hand need to understand and be supportive; I think it should be normalized for employees to take time to prioritize their mental health, the way they would stay home if they were sick. But by the same token, if the depressed party is not able to manage it and they're consistently underperforming, they're not holding up their side of the bargain.
Over my time as an entrepreneur and founder, I’ve had a number of employees who have shared mental health issues with me. And I'm very, very, very actively supportive, because I've gone through the same thing and I so deeply understand. Their instinct is always to fight through it, and for them to admit it to me, their boss, is a big deal. I’ve always told them to take time off, and pointed them in the direction of what has worked for me, but I also believe it should be the government’s role in helping people access the help they need, rather than a private institution.
Why I Want More Entrepreneurs to Be Open About Their Mental Health Struggles
I would love to see a more honest conversation amongst entrepreneurs or future entrepreneurs around entrepreneurship. I'm just one guy, who is even still getting used to calling myself an entrepreneur. And just like any community, we as entrepreneurs benefit from being honest about the trappings — the successes and the excitement — as well as the shortcomings and the challenges.
In the past five to 10 years, entrepreneurship has been branded as this amazingly exciting, dynamic existence, and what we do is something a lot of people want and strive for. But there's also so many ugly parts of entrepreneurship. There's so much loneliness. There's so much failure. There's so much self-doubt, depression, anxiety, bipolarity, all these things. So let's talk about some of them. Let's really be honest about what it's like to be an entrepreneur, including all the cool things, which are measurable, but also the negative.
I find it very liberating to talk about my mental health. I'm a big fan of turning the lights on the boogeyman — instead of denying how I feel or drinking it away or hiding it, I ask myself how I can turn the lights on and look at the problem. I’ll do whatever anyone tells me to do to try to fix the problem.
A lot of what I get out of being honest about my depression is just destigmatizing it for myself. Knowing the size and shape of the problem makes it a little less scary because it's just something that I'm aware of. I know what it is and the effect it has on my life. That gives me freedom and as much power as I could possibly have in the situation.
I also see it as a way to give back and help other people feel comfortable talking about their own mental health struggles. One out of 8 Americans has a prescription for benzodiazepines, There are millions of people that are lying in bed right now, feeling exactly as I did. And there is a comfort in knowing that whatever I or a friend feels isn't something that I and only I am experiencing. If you know what I’m talking about, I need you to know you’re not alone in this.
I'm beating my depression, and I’m grateful that society has risen up and that science has gotten better. The drugs have gotten better. The stigma has gotten better. I'm going to have a better life, though it took me five years to get there. It took my grandfather a lifetime. And I hope it takes my grandson a month, thanks to advancements in medication, and in our ability to be more open about what is hurting us, before it’s too late.