Mental-Health

The Performance of Planning In my worst depressive episodes, making plans felt like church youth group theatre. I was performing. The audience was a small cast: authority figures who needed to believe I had my life together, and myself — the harshest critic, who knew exactly how hollow the performance was. I would map out courses each semester with the same enthusiasm I might bring to a role I did not want. To my professors and advisors, I appeared organized. To my peers, I seemed to have it figured out. The secret was that planning itself had become a coping mechanism, a way to generate the appearance of forward motion while standing perfectly still. ...

Introduction The FIRE movement—Financial Independence, Retire Early—is built on a compelling premise: aggressively save and invest, minimize expenses, and buy back your time. For people whose mental health makes traditional employment exhausting or unsustainable, the appeal is obvious. But the relationship between financial independence and mental health is more complicated than the FIRE community often acknowledges. This post explores both the promise and the limits. Key Points What the FIRE framework actually offers people dealing with mental illness The ways financial stress compounds anxiety and depression Where FIRE’s assumptions break down for people with health-related income instability The psychological relationship with money, security, and future orientation Building financial resilience without making it another source of anxiety Conclusion Financial independence is a legitimate goal and a genuine buffer against certain kinds of suffering. But it’s not a cure for mental illness, and the intense optimization mindset of FIRE can become its own trap. The aim is enough security to give yourself options—not a new obsession to replace the old ones.

Introduction In Brave New World, soma is the drug that keeps citizens content, compliant, and untroubled by the weight of real experience. When I started taking Zoloft, I worried about something similar—that I was trading authentic suffering for chemical comfort, blunting the edges that made me who I am. This is a post about why that framing was wrong, and what psychiatric medication actually does and doesn’t change. Key Points The soma anxiety: fears about medication changing identity or dulling experience What SSRIs actually do at a functional level The difference between treating illness and altering personality Reflections on before and after: what changed and what stayed the same The stigma around psychiatric medication and why it persists Conclusion Zoloft didn’t make me a different person. It made me more capable of being the person I already was. The soma comparison gets it backwards—it’s the illness, not the treatment, that narrows your world.

Introduction Anxiety and depression are often described in clinical terms—symptoms, diagnoses, treatment protocols. That framing is useful but incomplete. What they actually feel like from the inside is more like wearing shackles: a persistent drag on everything you try to do, a narrowing of what feels possible. This post is about that experience, and what it means to start removing the shackles one at a time. Key Points The difference between describing mental illness and inhabiting it How anxiety and depression interact and reinforce each other The specific ways they constrain decision-making, ambition, and relationships What “getting better” actually looks like from the inside The residue that remains even after significant recovery Conclusion The shackles metaphor matters because it implies agency. Shackles can be removed. Understanding what they are and how they work is the first step toward taking them off.

Introduction This post will examine the connection between self-efficacy, self-esteem, and mental health recovery. Key Points Define self-efficacy and self-esteem. Discuss the impact of mental health on these concepts. Provide strategies for enhancing self-efficacy and self-esteem post-recovery. Conclusion Summarize the insights and encourage readers to focus on their mental health journey.