A bit less than three weeks ago, I posted an article about my experience of depression. It felt very warm and wholesome that quite some people reached out to me privately via text or in person, expressed their support and told me that they loved my article. Some even shared their own struggles with mental health and told me they find solace and strength in it.
I feel that the posting of the article acted as a ceremonial closure of this chapter of depression of my life. I think I have got out of depression now. An excellent sign is that I started to feel energetic instead of gloomy after waking up, even on the days when I got less than five hours of sleep. Of course, I cannot be energetic all the time. But I have a deeper level of peace under the surface of energy and tiredness.
I think the period of depression was a sign of a crisis in my perception of myself and my relationship with the world. It signified my limited capacity to cope with the situation and thus provided me with an opportunity to reconstruct my perceptions and improve my capacity. A crucial lesson I learned from the depression is the transitory nature of feelings, which largely contributed to the peacefulness.
Intellectually, I have known for a while that feelings are transitory. I am aware of the theory of Hedonic adaptation in psychology, which suggests that no matter what happens, positive or negative, people tend to return to a relatively stable level of happiness. Buddhism and Stoicism also inspire me that once we understand that feelings are temporary, we can observe them arise and disappear without getting carried away.
But just intellectually knowing something is not enough; you must feel it and internalise it to be able to practice it in life. It is likely not true if I say I now have fully internalised the transitory nature of feelings. But it is fair to say that coping with depression helped me to achieve a deeper degree of internalisation of the transitory nature of feelings.
I noticed the change from two recent events in my life. Both evoked a lot of emotions but ended up in peacefulness.
The first event mainly evoked positive feelings. I recently completed a course on stand-up comedy. At the end of the course, we had a showcase at the Bill Murray Comedy Club. It was a great setting with around 80 audience. It was not my first time performing stand-up, but my first time in a real comedy club. I felt nervous and excited before performing but was pretty confident with my set. Then I went up and immediately forgot my lines. But I reacted fast, made the situation of forgetting my lines funny(some people thought it was part of the joke), and brought me time to remember my actual lines. Then I went ahead and smashed it. It was a roaring success. I enjoyed the performance, and the audience loved it too. I feel terrific even when I am writing this part.
Interestingly, I felt very calm after the performance. I have to say there was a bit of arrogance in my feelings. I thought I had achieved something I knew I could achieve, so it was not a big deal. When people from the audience congratulated me afterwards, I was way too calm; I probably didn’t show enough gratitude for all the compliments. Of course, I enjoyed socialising with people at the party afterwards. But after I left the party and headed to the tube station, the excitement was gone very fast.
There was way more excitement after my first-ever stand-up performance. A year ago, one day before the Easter End-of-term party at my department, I realised I had enough jokes to put up a show. I just really want to do it the next day at the party as a surprise to my friends and colleagues in the department. I prepared it the night before, talked to people organising the party on the day, and performed it. Although I performed reading my phone, it went very well. I was so excited afterwards that I couldn’t sleep well for the next three nights. Of course, I couldn’t be that excited all the time. However, it was still pretty exciting in my second-ever performance, where I did it without note for the first time, and so on for my other times. The showcase was my first in a comedy club with all new jokes and only my fifth-ever performance, so it was interesting that the excitement could be gone so fast this time. The peacefulness actually felt better than the excitement.
The second event came after ten days, which mainly evoked negative feelings. As a kind of give-back and full-cycle experience, I volunteered again to perform at this year’s Easter End-of-term party in my department. I was not that nervous because I would perform the same set as the showcase, which is new to people in my department. A colleague of mine helped me fix my bike recently, and he jokingly asked me to mention him in my set. I initially decided not to do it or do it very simply. But again, just one day before the performance, I decided to not only mention him but to devote a whole section to roasting him. I guess I just love a challenge or drama. That did make it more exciting and nervous. But I was still pretty confident because at least the set apart from the new roasting bit was proven to be great.
As I stepped on stage, I felt a sense of ominous. I ran downstairs to the toilet just before and did not adjust my breath well. I should’ve taken my time, but I started too fast. Of course. I learned from the course that I need to commit no matter what I feel. I kept adjusting my status, but unfortunately, I did not get into the zone. There were waves of laughter consistently, but I did not feel the bursting laughs. In the end, I got a great round of applause, and people told me it was great afterwards. My friends who were also there last year told me it was much better than last year. But I was in this state of perfectionist self-criticism. I knew I didn’t bomb, but I knew I could do better. I felt terrible that I didn’t bring my top game. I did realise that there was a situational reason for no bursting laughter. The party was on a floor in our student union building. The room was too open and spacious, and the ceiling was too high, so it was hard for the laughter to be contained, contagious and fed back to me.
It was funny that it was a success overall, but I felt defeated. I felt so defeated that I had to hold a friend’s shoulder to go to the bar and ask him to get a drink for me.
The good thing is, as all those negative feelings were running in my head, another part of me was staying very calm and analytical. My peaceful part helped me to enjoy the rest of the evening. After I got home, I took some notes and reflected on the experience. I realised that I was indeed too perfectionistic not only after the show but during it. I shouldn’t rely on bursting laughs to get into the zone. Previously, I did not need that big laughter to get into it. I was spoiled by the success in the showcase and had an unrealistic expectation of laughter.
The reader of this article should realise way earlier than now that I am an over-thinker. So, it would not be surprising that when I woke up the next morning, I was still a bit upset that I didn’t get into the zone. But here came the excellent sign of non-depression. The tiny sadness did not affect my overall peace. I started to feel better after a shower, and I already started to think of new jokes as I walked to the bus stop. The negative feeling was totally gone when I listened to the music on the bus. People kept saying good things about my set even the following day, and I was able to accept the compliments without unnecessary self-doubts. I was peaceful later that day, when I discovered an annoying data issue with my research, I was not annoyed at all. Instead, I was very present; I focused on how to solve the problem and viewed it as an opportunity to learn new skills.
As I am experiencing all these and observing the come and go of my feelings, probably for the first time in my life, my understanding of the transitory nature of feelings starts to go beyond intellectual. I now have an emotional understanding of that and started to internalise it fully. I think I indeed achieved a new level of peace.
I know I can achieve that because I am in a good state right now. It must be tested in the future when the challenge arrives. I am hopeful and confident that I am indeed better equipped now than before this period of depression to deal with what life throws at me. After reading my article about depression, a friend said there is a danger that I tried too much to find the reasons for depression, but sometimes depression is a state people get into without apparent reasons. I agree with that, and I hope I addressed it with the part about fate and randomness. I am an over-thinker, but I know that after all the reflections, one must accept a level of fate and randomness. So, there is a possibility that my current state of peace is also just random. I hope not, and I think the possibility is low. Even if that is the case, I am still grateful to be in this peaceful state now, and I will enjoy it as long as it lasts.
P.S. I talked a lot about peace in this article, and I know people will suspect that this peace is induced by drugs. So, just to make things clear, I am not on any drugs, not even prescribed medication for depression. I fully believe in modern medical science, but I am on the cautious side of using substances to affect my mind in a way that I don’t understand. I don’t smoke. I drink alcohol very carefully. I drink coffee and tea moderately, which is very safe. The only indulgence of substance I have in my life is processed food, which sometimes could be too much but generally manageable. I am very fortunate to find peace without relying on outside influences. I think this kind of experience is worth sharing. But I am a big advocate of freedom. I have no judgment for people to use whatever they have at their disposal to pursue their own way of happiness, as long as they do not invade the freedom of others.