Mental Health is complicated. When it comes to physical health, often it’s figure out your goals, and go after them. Want to lift more? Be consistent, lift more, and progressively overload. Want to be a better olympic lifter? Mobility and practice. Want to change your body comp? Ok, that ones not that easy, but you get the point.

When people talk about mental health, their first thought is often of people with severe mental impairments. A much larger number of people have mental health issues that aren’t as clear cut and evident. Depression, for example, it a mental health disease that afflicts a lot of people. By rough estimates, 16 million people in the US had “depressive states” in a year. That’s a lot of people. If you’re in a group of 20, 1 of them is experiencing an active depressive state at that moment.

Let’s be clear, “Depression” is not “depression” (small D), these are two different things. Depression is a chemical state of mind that can be triggered by random things. Small D depression is that you can’t go to the boat house this weekend to see your friends.

When I get into a depressive state, I feel like I look angry. Not sad, angry. Like I want to tear the world apart. Then I perceive in my mind other people think I’m angry and want to tear them apart. In 99.9% of the cases, I’m not angry, I’m just experience a slump. My perception of their anger then intensifies that slump because I think people are angry at me because they thing I’m angry at them. Basically, my mind works in a huge bout of circular logic to bring me down even more.

This year has been particularly rough. I generally lack socializing in general because I am completely and totally socially awkward and don’t know how to start conversations. Being on the autism spectrum means I never really feel like I’m fitting in, so I often pull myself out. Couple that with the elimination of the little bit of socializing I do being taken away, and it’s resulted in a lonely state.

This is not meant to be a “woe is me” moment, but rather a statement of reality. I understand that I need to do things to make myself more available socially. I also need to find hobbies to occupy my time, instead of staring blankly into a wall regretting every life decision I’ve ever made.

When I get into these states, the one thing I won’t let myself do is slow down in terms of my overall goals. I’ve been good about sticking to my nutrition goals in the last few weeks, and I’ve been consistent at the gym. That consistency brings a little bit of stability to my otherwise chaotic at times mind.

So if you see me just looking angry, know that I’m probably not angry. I’m just feeling down, depression has brought me to a place, and I will recover. It takes time. I miss smiles and hugs, remember those things before masks and COVID? Maybe just throw a thumbs up? I’m not pissed, I’m just stuck in my own mind. I’ll bounce back. I always do. It just takes time.