You are going through a terrible breakup. You are dealing with deep sadness.

Somebody says: "Let's go to the gym. You'll feel better."

Good advice or not?

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A lot of people, including myself, would be extremely careful with building these kinds of relationships, because they can cause a lot of problems over longer periods of time.

Basically, you mask one thing with the other.

You block things from your awareness.

It's the same equivalent as drinking when you feel bad, or not eating when bad feelings arise.

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Is it then smart to sit on the couch crying the whole day? Yes. But maybe after a few days, it's smart to go to the gym again. But then you have actually felt the real pain, what it was really about.

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Blocking things from your awareness is a little bit like pretending that you didn't notice that bad thing. You can do that, but over time you are also going to block all the beautiful things in life: the sunshine, the rain on your face, the pure happiness.

I lived in the dark for a long time. And it started completely, 100%, with blocking things from my own awareness. That was a mistake.

But sometimes you have to forgive yourself for that.

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Examples of hard-to-fix relationships:

Bad feeling -> restricting food intake

Sad feeling -> mask it with a better feeling, for example by drinking

Dark feeling -> try to block the feeling by pushing it back, for example

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Is all drinking bad then? Of course not. It's the difference between the one who tries to escape reality, and the one who just enjoys a beer.

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The thing with these relationships is that initially they work. But over very long periods of time, you spiral into depression, psychosis, isolation, or an eating disorder. This takes years and years and years. And it also takes years to climb back out.

I grew up in a household where my feelings weren't respected. This literally resulted in psychiatry and mental institutions later in life.

How to Pace Your Thoughts

Thoughts are a bit like that water game with the rings: when you press on it, all the rings splash up simultaneously. You can do that manually with your thoughts.

You can pace them too. You can slow down tremendously until you reach the lowest voltage possible, and then the storm calms a little. You wait for the snow to settle, and then you try again.

The Market Trader

Imagine being me. I have to convince you that it's possible to figure out how a brain works from the inside out.

I mean, you can just ask.

I vividly remember asking my own brain, "How do you work, brain?" when I was six years old, sitting alone in my room. I immediately started getting answers.

"If you want to know, I can show you. But it's going to be a tough ride," my brain said.

"Bring it," I replied.

"First, try to grab me inside your skull and try to squeeze electricity through me manually."

That's what I did. I grabbed my brain and started electrocuting it from the inside out. The thoughts hitting each other made a weird sound.

Maybe I'm dead, I thought.

"I'm like a black box with clear input and output signals," the brain said. "You have to decipher them for yourself. I have to keep a little distance, so to speak. But if you manage to decipher it, there will be moments during the day—completely normal, ordinary moments—when you feel the wind on your face, you hear a car passing by, and that's when you know you understand life."

And so it happened.

It Only Counts When You Do It from the Inside Out

A lot of religious people don’t take science very seriously. Rightly so, in my opinion.

Traditional religion is about being amazed by how life works. Over time, this unfortunately polarized into bizarre views of the world, just as science partly evolved into nuclear bombs. But the source is simply amazement.

Traditional religion, then again, is more about seeing the magic in what is here than in a higher power. It differs fundamentally from science, though.

Traditional religious thinking believes that it only counts when you figure it out from the inside out.

Take the inside of a body. You can know all the organs, what they do, and what happens on a molecular level, and still have no clue what you are doing in day-to-day life. You may have very valid additional knowledge about how a body works, but that is not the same as situational knowledge.

Let's say we take 10 hearts and put them side by side. Sure, we can probably point out the healthy ones. We can perform surgery, which is unbelievable in itself.

But do you know the exact health state of your own heart right now? I bet a lot of people don't. Which is the whole point of religion and consciousness. Can you tell me exactly at which moments during the day your heart is struggling and where the danger is? Knowledge about other hearts is always external knowledge.

If you showed me a few hearts, I could maybe vaguely tell you which one was healthier.

Or can you tell me how your own brain works from the inside out? Which signals are interfering? I can. I know all my thoughts and where they come from in my body. It doesn't matter how many brains we put under a brain scanner—you can't find those nuances.

I have read things from very respectable sources about the inner workings of the brain that are just plain and dangerously wrong.

How to Deal with Mental Health

First, I am obviously not a doctor.

What I do have, though, is real-life experience.

I have a lot of experience with psychiatric "diseases" and ways to tackle them.

I think there are huge information gaps in how we look at psychiatric diseases.

My list of psychiatric and atypical neurological brain things:

• Autism (comes from my father's side of the family)
• ADHD (comes from my mother's side of the family)
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Depression
• Psychosis

These are official diagnoses.

Besides that, there was a lot of substance abuse. I grew up as a happy, dreamy child, but I spiraled completely out of control. I was in a mental institution twice. I still hadn't learned my lesson.

It's very tempting to blame everything on external circumstances, but the first problem was myself and my inability to take control over my own life. I know it's not fun to hear, but it's true.

Important Notes

I know that modern science doesn't necessarily agree, but in my opinion it takes years and years to get depression. When you finally get it, it feels as if it happened overnight. It's not true. My estimates are something like this:

• Depression: 5–10 years
• Psychosis: 10–20 years
• ADHD is not something you get, but what you do, how you eat, and how you work out certainly makes it much more intense. Driving with understeer is still a good metaphor I once read.

I Am 37 Years Old Now

At 33 years old, I crashed for the last time into a psychosis and was put into a mental institution again.

At that point, I was sick of this. So I threw all my medicine in the bin and started a new life. From that point on, I started working out seriously, invested a lot of time in optimizing my diet, and started journaling. I also looked for people outside of the party scene—new friends.

I also incorporated a lot of religious beliefs that are very precious to me. I am not necessarily talking about a higher power. For me, it's more the wisdom that people have accumulated over the years that helped me tremendously. Take a day off sometimes. Take a break for a few minutes every day. Look with gratitude at what you have instead of what you don't have.

Then the journey started. It was rough. Old emotions spiraled up. Bad habits. My inability to deal with emotions normally. Basic mechanisms I had incorporated when I was younger.

If I Tell This Story to My Colleagues, They Don't Really Believe It

"You?" they say. "But you're always so serious about working out and your diet."

I do not mean this as a brag. But when you are in dire straits, it helps sometimes if somebody tells you that there is always a way if you try hard enough.

Have ADHD? Spend that energy on working out and doing creative stuff.

Have autism? Take extra breaks in order not to get overstimulated.

But the most important thing is to fight and keep getting back on your feet.

I know it sounds so boring, but it's true.

One of the Major Challenges We Face Is That Mental Health Is Like Physical Health

It takes years and years to get into A+ shape.

It takes years and years to get into F shape.

That long-term trajectory is what actually matters.