A letter from a mental health blogging dad to his 13-year-old self
- Contains adult language
Dear 13 year-old Sean,
Hello from the year 2023. Flying cars don’t exist yet, but cell phones went through a transformation. Now, they’re called “smart-phones,” and they’re more sophisticated than Dad’s computer downstairs. My phone can read me text messages aloud and control the lighting in the house. The football player Michael Strahan has visited space – for a fucking vacation! And future you? I’m full-on adulting at 35 years old! Don’t fret, it’s more exciting than it sounds.
We’re living a fulfilling life. And Spoiler alert: fatherhood with your two little girls is a beautiful adventure. A wild ride is ahead of you, friend. The ride will be bumpy, and there will be times it goes too fast and terrifies you. There will be times you’ll feel ready to do anything to make it stop. But – I wouldn’t change my story if I could, because it has shaped me into the man I am proud to be today.
First, I want to congratulate you. If I’m remembering correctly, middle school currently feels like a giant shitshow, but you are truly handling it like a champ. You’re a great student and you have a kind heart. Be proud of yourself. The narrative in your head isn’t healthy, I remember those toxic thoughts I used to have:
- Everyone at school thinks I’m a weirdo
- Being smart, like me, is useless
- Nice guys, like me, never get what they want
- I suck at (insert almost anything)
The thoughts our brains come up with are not absolute truth. Yes, there are times the brain comes up with useful information, but many thoughts are only meaningless noise. You need to decide which parts are worth listening to and which parts to dump into the mental garbage can.
Those negative thoughts you have about yourself are wrong. Middle school is a bad time for loads of people.
Recently, you have been discussing how lame it is to be a good student with your friends. If you could, you’d trade in your smarts to become an elite athlete or a celebrity that girls dream about. I have no idea anymore, who do girls like in your time again? Leo DiCaprio? Brendan Fraser?
Be grateful for your access to education, academic successes, and intelligence. One day you’ll learn how powerful it feels to positively impact others. Your education and experiences get you there.
And, newsflash! – Being smart is useless if you don’t put in any effort. Stop acting confused about the C’s and D’s you’re getting in school when you skip all your damn homework.
Now, it’s time to address this “nice guy” thing. I need to call you out because you’re disappointing me. You’ve come to view kindness as a character flaw and now, you’re allowing yourself to be an absolute dick to certain kids in school. Why, because it makes you feel “cool?” Throwing pinecones at a “friend” or calling one of your classmates a gorilla until they chase you around the cafeteria are vile behaviors. Deep down you are appalled at yourself and self-loathing is coming. It is no wonder these actions soon lead to deep sadness, because it is part of our identity to be compassionate.
There will end up being periods in life where helping other people feels like the only thing that’s going right for entire weeks or months. During difficult times, the positive impact you’re making may end up saving your life. The suicidal ideation you’ll experience one day is neutralized by subsequent thoughts of the damage you would cause by abandoning people you care about. Drop the asshole act kid – the more nurturing you are towards others, the more joy you are going to get out of life.
Once you are in high school, your internal negative self-talk slightly dampens down, and maybe this is why you start assuming that as you get older, this bad way you feel about yourself might naturally drift away, as if it were a mysterious part of puberty.
To concoct a fallacy this off-base, you need to have an immensely distorted view of how “effortless” life appears to be for adults. Teachers and doctors may appear to be wise and confident. Dad can fix all the problems around the house, but that doesn’t mean everything’s hunky-dory for these people.
Adults are human, and they struggle too. They’ve accumulated a shitload more practice than you at hiding it though. And they may not spend a single second of their day fretting about finishing their homework or talking to a girl, but that’s because they have their own kinds of fears and doubts and worries.
Over the years, this belief cumulatively inflicts damage on your mental health as you counter feelings of anxiety, awkwardness, nervousness, self-doubt, and a lack of confidence with a mental reminder that:
Once I grow up, the discomfort in life magically ends. Grown-up’s don’t feel like I do anymore. I can’t wait to grow up!
Sorry dude. I wish you figured this out much earlier. It would have forced us to learn how to accept with and deal with our feelings instead of pushing them under the rug and waiting for them to vanish.
Finding this out the hard way will be a slow and agonizing process. Time passes and you become an adult. You go on to experience heartbreak, anxiety over school, social anxiety, shame, embarrassment, and struggle with mental illness. And this hope you were clinging to, of miraculously waking up “fixed,” makes it feel increasingly frustrating. Over the years, you achieve great milestones in life; you finish graduate school, become a doctor, then become a father, but your emotions are not getting calmer. In fact, those feelings grow bigger, stronger, LOUDER.
As your frustration grows you will try anything to make it stop. You’ll stare yourself down in the mirror and say “get it together man,” the way you do when you play sports. You’ll resort to slapping yourself in the face until your cheeks radiate with a bright red. You scream “AHHHHH!” at the top of your lungs, searching and searching and searching for a way to escape the psychological torture.
Many people with mental illness develop symptoms and get diagnosed during childhood, but what you are experiencing right now, it’s not debilitating. Mental illness can be debilitating – I’m sorry – one day, you’ll know exactly what I mean when you’re living it. Right now, seedlings are sprouting, and over the next ten to fifteen years they will blossom into the monsters that have haunted me and tried to destroy my life.
You’ll find out what it’s like to be an adult who breaks down crying. In your mind, you’re carrying this masculine pride that you’ve cried as a “big kid” that one, single time when Mom and Dad threatened to give away the dog. Well you’ll sob as a grown man – much more than a handful of times; try a hundred. Or maybe hundreds? I lost count long ago. You will get dealt shitty cards in life on numerous occasions, and you’ll experience the pit of absolute hopelessness. But you will learn, pain is part of being human.
By the way, it is normal for you to be frustrated. The teenage years, and college years, are for figuring out what kind of person you’re going to be and that process takes time. This is the beginning of your identity journey, and I have advice for you that will make this time simpler.
The way you see the world now, you likely read the previous paragraph with career goals in mind. It’s not right, but it’s not your fault. This entire messed up society we grow up in basically teaches us to strive for achievements and accolades and titles and respect. We spend too much energy focusing on what we will become when the real question is, “Who will we become?”
One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to focus your energy on discovering how you want to live. What values are you going to live by?
Sounds simple, but it’s extremely difficult. There are a lot of forces that will make the answers hard to find. You can easily get tricked into going the wrong direction and, like the wrong pathway in a maze, it can be hard to see it until you’ve traveled to the absolute dead-end. There are pressures from numerous sides – pressures to be cool and fit-in, pressures to be more manly and strong, pressures to make our own mark amongst our successful extended family’s accomplishments.
These are outside forces though. You need to learn to decide on your own, “What kind of person am I?” and use that to guide you when you have hard choices to make.
Apologies for my blunt delivery, but you are living like a coward. There is a better way bud.
And I want to be crystal clear for you because you are not a great listener. The problem with being cowardly is NOT that other people will see your weakness. Stop giving a fuck about what people think of you.
The problem with it is that you are putting an emphasis on protecting yourself from feeling the pain of failure or rejection. And by doing this, you are choosing not to feel fully alive. Failure and rejection are as much a part of life as love and joy, and if you avoid what you want or value in life in order to avoid feeling difficult emotions, you are choosing not to be your authentic self.
You can do scary shit! In fact, facing situations that make us nervous, scared, or uncomfortable in life is what helps us grow the most. And don’t come back to me and say it’s too hard, because you have already faced challenging situations.
When I sent our younger daughter to preschool for the first time, she was scared as hell. She required a “peel-off” at dropoff time. That means the teacher literally pries your screaming child away from you so you can drive away. After a few weeks, she fell in love with school. Perhaps when we are thrust against our will into a terrifying situation we forget to give ourselves credit for overcoming the adversity.
Like her, you have overcome fear many times: When you brought home your near-flunking 6th grade report cards for parent signatures, when kids started throwing 65 mph in Little League, when you messed up on stage during the school play in 5th grade. You faced adversity and it made you better.
“The comfort-zone is where dreams die”
– David Goggins
This quote is from a guy I find inspiring. He’s from my present, aka your future. During his early adult years he was unhappy with himself. Overweight, with a dead end job, and battling depression, he was determined to find out what he could achieve if he pushed his body far beyond the previous limits he had set on himself. He committed to going all-in, and through near limitless willpower he became physically superhuman. By pushing his body’s limits to the extreme, he wound up becoming a Navy Seal and is now one of the world’s best “ultra endurance” athletes. That means he does superhuman things like doing 4030 pull-up’s in 17 hours and competing in ultra-marathon events (e.g. in a 48 hour distance running competition, he ran 205 miles).
Living your life being willing to take risks and be vulnerable is scary, but the faster you realize it, the sooner you will truly understand the boy you see when you look in the mirror.
I love myself and that means I love you. And, I want you to learn to love yourself too. Sounds lame, but pay attention. Taking care of yourself is more difficult than you think. And I don’t mean brushing your teeth and taking showers (although that is self- care too). I mean prioritizing your needs first, and not second, to others’ needs. It’s called setting healthy boundaries.
If you are asked to help and you don’t have the time, say no. If you are made to feel hurt or uncomfortable, speak your mind. Make sure you take time for yourself to do the things you love when you are an adult with a family. And when you do, don’t feel guilty.
You deserve to be loved and cared for, from yourself above anyone else. There will be times when you will feel hopeless and feel you are unworthy of being loved or being alive. Try to keep this in mind: You can do scary shit!
Applying these ideas to life is grueling work. I am not a master of my emotions or a man with the perfect life today. These are things I have struggled with throughout my entire life. I am giving you precious advice that I have a hard time following.
Mental illness causes me pain today, and I expect it to for the rest of my life. I saw my therapist last night; he said I’ve got room for improvement. But, I have tools to manage it now and confidence that this is merely the beginning of my OCD and depression success story.
Love,
Sean
P.S. Pro-tip: When friends in the cafeteria pose the question “What does ‘pussy’ mean?” to the group, don’t act like you know. If you chime in with your opinion, you may become defensive when someone corrects you. Then, you may end up starting a loud argument which may end up making you look like a fool in front of everyone because a “pussy” is definitely NOT the same thing as a penis.
Brave Enough All Along 