Key Takeaways:
- The stigma around mental health challenges is still too real
- Healing requires time, reflection and support
- Empathy and human connection matter more than ever in times of hardship
Today is Mental Health Awareness Day, a day dedicated to increasing mental health understanding and empowering individuals and communities to prioritize mental health.
People honor this day in different ways. Today Tercera’s CEO, Chris Barbin, announced that he’ll be rowing 1,000+ miles to raise $500,000 for two mental health organizations close to his heart. For others it’s about sharing a personal experience with mental health that changed everything.
Here is mine.
250 Panic Attacks in One Year
Back in 2021, I had 250 panic attacks, all in the middle of the night. Three hours after I fell asleep, I was shocked awake, as if I were shot out of a cannon. Running through my apartment, screaming, eyes unblinking, breathing strained, heart bouncing. Panic like I’ve never experienced before. Every single night. Groundhog day over and over again.
For the back-half of the year, I was afraid to fall asleep. Lying in my bed preparing for the worst, I would just stare at the ceiling, thinking about what was to come. Unfortunately sleep is inevitable and therefore the panic was inevitable. Terrifying. Life-altering. Never-ending. Once the panic started each night, I couldn’t fall back to sleep; far too much adrenaline coursing through my veins. For 9 months, I lived life on fumes. At one point, I considered ending it all. What’s the point of living when this is my life?
I felt helpless. Doctors diagnosed me with anxiety and put me on an SSRI. It made sense. The private equity industry is a high-energy, high-stress industry. Deadlines are tight. Numbers are precise. I’d been in the field for 10+ years and maybe I had just hit my breaking point. Everyone has their limits. So I turned it down a notch at work, but that didn’t help. I turned it down two notches in my personal life, that didn’t help either.
When months had passed on the SSRI and the panic attacks only accelerated, doctors gave me two Valium pills to “test” the anxiety. If this were a mental ailment, the Valium would have immediately helped. I remember taking those pills and praying that they wouldn’t work. Because if they did, this was all in my head. And if it were all in my head, I had lost all hope.
Getting Answers
The Valium didn’t work. Thank god. And after further testing, I got a call from a cardiologist with what he considered bad news. I was experiencing late stage heart failure from a congenital heart defect, one I was born with, but only recently had my heart lost the power to pump. And the prognosis was not great. He wasn’t sure I would be ok. There was still more to learn, but my heart had taken a lot of abuse. I needed to see one specific doctor, the tops in his field. That was my best chance.
To him, he was delivering bad news. A potentially near-term terminal problem that he’d never seen before affecting the most life-generating organ in my body. Yet to me, this was the happiest day of my life. Because I know that if the problems were mental, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. My mental fortitude had been beaten to a pulp. Even if I died from my heart problems, I fought for an answer and it wasn’t in my head. To me, the thought of dying from a physical problem was a relief compared to living with a mental one.
I had open-chest, open-heart surgery shortly after that call and experienced my last panic attack the night before the surgery. It turned out the panic attacks were caused by my heart’s inability to pump blood through my lungs when I was at rest. My heart rate was at its lowest when I was asleep, so I was choking on my own blood each night, which stopped my breathing and required an adrenaline rush to wake me up and get me running to increase my heart rate. Adrenaline can’t be addressed specifically to my heart and feet, so as it coursed through my brain, panic ensued.
Prior to the surgery, my cardiac surgeon told me I would forget I had the surgery six months after the procedure. But that wasn’t the case for me. I cried when I woke up every morning for the first nine months after the surgery because I was so happy to be alive and sleep through the night. I experienced a high during those teary mornings that I may never be able to replicate. And I’m ok with that.
Healing and Living Differently
It wasn’t until I wrote a nearly 200 page journal to get the episode out of my head and onto paper that I healed mentally. I finished that memoir 18 months after the surgery, and 31 months after my first panic attack. A memoir that I plan on sharing when the time is right.
My cardiac surgeon was right that the heart would heal after six months, but the mental toll of those panic attacks lasted far longer. I am now fully “healed” from that episode. My heart is healthier than the average heart. I’ve done 16 mile trail runs, 50 mile bike rides, multi-day hikes. I’ve gone on incredible adventures driven by my heart and own two feet. Stress doesn’t impact me nearly as significantly as it once did. But my life will never be the same. I can’t go back to the time before my first panic attack. While I am past any mental anguish from this period, the mental scarring is ingrained within my DNA. Because even those who have healed from mental health struggles will never be the same. Yes, my symptoms were caused by physiological issues, but the mental strain was just the same.
While I am past any mental anguish from this period, the mental scarring is ingrained within my DNA. Because even those who have healed from mental health struggles will never be the same.
In a weird way, I am happy I went through this, now that I’m on the other side. Don’t get me wrong, I would not want my worst enemy to feel what I felt during that 13 month stretch. But I emerged on the other end with a far better appreciation of what matters in life. Empathy matters. The little niceties in life matter. Treating people well matters. Building strong relationships matter. Transparency matters. Physical health matters. And mental health matters.
I took 14 months off full-time work between jobs. I am beyond thankful I could do that. Not many people can. It allowed me to clear my head and figure out what I wanted to do next. I loved where I worked; I loved what I did; I loved who I did it with. I just needed a different environment and one that screamed my newfound core values. It needed to scream these values. Because compromise wasn’t in the cards, not after what I just went through.
I was lucky enough to find the Tercera gang and have built a great relationship, on and off the pitch, with the team over the past 18 months. To find a team that shares your core values is rare and I am thankful and excited to help shape the next chapter of Tercera. I think we are building something special here and I’m excited to be a part of it.
It’s better to wait an extra month to find the right position than quickly take a position that doesn’t align with who you are. You only have one life to live and it is fleeting.
I often get approached by friends and contacts looking for their next job and I tell them the same thing: if you can, it’s better to wait an extra month to find the right position than quickly take a position that doesn’t align with who you are. You only have one life to live and it is fleeting. Time ticks by whether you want it to or not. Every week matters; every day matters. Why spend it with work you don’t care about and people you don’t align with? Don’t wait until retirement. You never know if you’ll make it that long.
Going through mental health issues can be a lonely path. There’s a stigma associated with mental health that differs from physical health issues. I only found the courage to speak about my health issues after I learned it was not a mental issue, but a physical one. I didn’t tell a soul what I had gone through in its entirety prior to my diagnosis. So the day the doctor gave me my diagnosis, I called nearly everyone important in my life. For hours, I told folks the same story about what I had gone through over the prior year. The dam that was holding my story back for that year burst upon the news and couldn’t be contained. It was so much easier to speak about mental anguish in the past than in the present.
Going through mental health issues can be a lonely path. There’s a stigma associated with mental health that differs from physical health issues.
I should have been open with them before, but I couldn’t do it. The stigma was too strong and I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t want people asking me about something I felt I had no control over. I was hamstrung and embarrassed to not have an answer and that prevented me from speaking about it.
But that’s when I needed the support. After my heart defect diagnosis but before my surgery, the panic attacks were still as powerful, the breathing problems and the running in the middle of the night just as real, but the fear was not the same. I had an answer. I could rationalize to myself what was actually happening. That’s the period when people reached out. It’s the only period when they knew I was struggling. But when people were most supportive is when I was most able to self-soothe.
Advice for Friends and Family
And as I started telling my story to a broader group of friends, colleagues and even strangers, I heard about their own stories of mental struggles. They were looking for any excuse to talk about it. It is far more common than I had known, and more people than you think want to talk about it. Hell, they need to talk about it; they just don’t know how.
I was lucky that my story had a beginning, middle, and end. Most people suffering don’t have an end. It’s a perpetual middle. Always searching for answers, never finding them. Ashamed to talk to people about it, and often without support from friends, family, bosses, colleagues and insurance companies that simply don’t understand. They will never get the catalyst to speak about it the way that I can. So as we celebrate Mental Health Day today, I encourage everyone to ask their friends, family and colleagues how they’re doing.
So as we celebrate Mental Health Day today, I encourage everyone to ask their friends, family and colleagues how they’re doing. Pay attention to subtle changes to personality, responsiveness, or work productivity. Give folks an outlet to talk and be a good listener.
Pay attention to subtle changes to personality, responsiveness, or work productivity. Give folks an outlet to talk and be a good listener. Because even if they don’t know how to ask for it, they need your support. And if you’re struggling with mental health issues, just know that you’re not alone. Millions of people are struggling alongside you.
Let’s break the stigma and be open about it. I know, firsthand, how much it will help.
