What's Really 'Going On'

The last year I've slowly unpacked my case of burnout and depression. I've begun to understand that this isn't just an isolated incident, but rather something that has been with me my whole life.

When I was young, I felt unsupported and unvalued. I had a few bad experiences in my formative years that left me with some psychological scars in the form of low self-esteem, low confidence, and overall a lack of self-love.

When I came of age, I found that I could supplement that lack of love with the pride of achievement – in my case, academic success. I went to a competitive high school where most students went to college and on to graduate school, and many scored in the top ranks of standardized tests. So I had it drilled into my head that I needed to do this as well. When I did well in school, I got rewarded, and I felt good about myself.

So studying and being "smart" became my identity. It was the thing I was valued for. I never felt inherently valued until I reached adulthood and discovered my inner value.

Before that happened, my value was tied to my performance in school. When I got out of school, I had a crisis, not knowing how I could continue to "prove" my worth without these external markers of "progress." I kept reading books and studying outside of school, but I did so in a sort of compulsive, anxious way that was meant to show how smart I was. Friends sometimes revealed they thought I was being pretentious. And I was. But only because I was so insecure about my own identity.

When I finally got a professional job and started working in the often brutal corporate world, that need to "prove myself" was silently transferred to work. Now instead of having to prove I was smart enough to read Wittgenstein and solve physics problems, I was trying to prove my knowledge of JavaScript was supreme. I was an irritating person to work with. I was overly sensitive and tended to quarrel with coworkers. Because of my attitude, I was always stressed out at work. I didn't enjoy my work. I engaged in it compulsively and always with the deep seated fear that I was not actually "good enough" for the work. When the company did layoffs or restructured, and I lost my job or was threatened with losing my job, this provoked extreme anxiety because I inwardly suspected that I didn't deserve my job, that I was performing badly, that I wasn't "smart" enough, etc.

In the beginning, I had a genuine interest in computers and the internet. I made some moves early on to focus on what I saw as more interesting work like web development and browser programming, which was the bleeding edge at the time. But over time, I gradually drifted into doing work that pays more or is seen as higher prestige. With remote work, I started working in near-total isolation. So I got less and less human interaction. Which allowed me to be more susceptible to anxiety about my performance and what others thought of me.

The relentless need to "prove" myself was not isolated to work. I found myself doing this in my hobbies and sports as well. I even had a few awkward moments when I turned "competitive" with friends and felt the need to assert how "smart" I was. And of course, a persistent feeling of inadequacy will also show up in dating relationships.

I've realized that all of this connects back to those early life experiences, where I didn't get the love and support that I needed at a critical time in my development. So I may always feel this way, somewhere inside.

However, I think it can be changed. This started to change for me about ten years ago when I began to learn the teachings of ancient wisdom – starting with the Stoics, especially Epictetus, and continuing to the gospels and the church fathers. I also started treating myself like a child I was taking care of. I started exercising, eating right, and being careful about what people I allowed in my life.

What Stoicism and Christanity have in common is a teaching that the inner world is separate from the outer world. This is the inner private world of psychology. In Stoicism, it is the private realm where we are free – free to choose our opinions, beliefs, interpretations, and so on. If we are free on the inside, we become truly free on the outside. If we are not free on the inside, we cannot ever be truly free. We have to learn to take responsibility for the contents of our soul – our inner world – before we can make any changes in our lives.

I think I feel such a great deal of shame and self-loathing deep inside myself that I cannot really be free. But these small changes in habits have made a difference. Choosing to look at my life with gratitude instead of the guilt for bad decisions in the past or shame for not being "good enough." Another thing that worked for me was starting to show to others the same kind of love and respect that I wanted to receive myself. I found that even when that love was not reciprocated, I felt a sense of peace and happiness knowing someone benefited from me.

Life is very hard, even when our material conditions are comfortable. That is because inside every person is a full consciousness. Consciousness itself is subject to suffering.

The only kind of peace we can hope for is internal. Neither the opinions of others, our standing in society, our rank in some company hierarchy, nor our material possessions can change who we really are on the inside.