The first time I remember feeling depressed was in 4th grade. It was November in Wisconsin and my “girlfriend” came over to hang out after school. I distinctly remember sitting on the couch in my parent’s living room and wearing a forest green popover hoodie. I was feeling numb, dissociated, and this sense of heaviness at 11 years old — not that I actually knew what that meant at the time. She looked at me and asked with concern,” Are you ok?” I’m not sure what my response was, but most likely it was, “I’m fine.” Later on in my mental health journey, I’d learn that “fine” stood for “feelings inside not expressed.”
In 2001, the fall of my freshman year of college I started to miss my morning classes. I could not get out of bed. Everything around me said I should be happy. I was playing college basketball, meeting new people, and was part of a community that had a shared passion. It was an experience I had dreamed of but felt the complete opposite of how I had felt a couple of months earlier arriving on campus. Searching for answers I went online and found a mental health assessment. I’ll never forget the message that popped up on the screen after I hit submit:
“Based on the results of this assessment, you are clinically depressed. Seek professional psychiatric care as soon as possible.”
This was small town Middle America in 2001. The only answer was, “Take this medication (Effexor) for the rest of your life.” Did it help? I don’t think so. Research from an article in The Guardian explains why. Even with the medication the winters were brutal. I’m talking about not getting out of bed until 3 or 4 PM level of depression. My barometer was if Kobe Bryant’s agent called and said “Kobe is at your training facility and wants to get a workout in with you before the Lakers play the Bucks tonight” and I don’t want to get out of bed, that means I’m not in a very good place on that day.
There were times when I wanted to get off the medication, but I had horrible experiences even when missing a dose. One morning after visiting a friend in New York City I was going through TSA at LaGuardia the night after I missed my nightly dose. I had to get out of line and lie down because I felt like a sudden flu virus hit me — but worse. If you’ve been to LaGuardia you know it’s not the best place to have to lie down on the floor. It made me incredibly nauseous, lightheaded and gave me the physiological response of a fever. I thought, “Maybe I will have to be on this for the rest of my life.”
Growing up in Wisconsin the summers seemed to be the complete opposite of the winter. When I was a sophomore in college we had a December basketball tournament in Honolulu. I distinctly remember two very visceral shifts. When we landed in Hawai’i I felt happier, emotionally lighter, and played better. The day after we returned to Wisconsin we had a morning practice. I woke up for practice and felt incredibly depressed. I told one of my roommates (a teammate as well) to tell our assistant coach I was sick. Just getting out of bed felt unbearable. It was a stark reminder of the impact sunlight can have on mental health.
Trading Clouds For Sun
So in November of 2014, I decided I simply could not take another winter in Wisconsin. Even though our business was based in Milwaukee I decided to trade the clouds of Milwaukee for the sun of Los Angeles. I wanted to try it for one winter and see if it made a difference. At the time I had been practicing yoga for about a year and was opening myself up to the world of clean living. I was trying to eat more organic, drink less craft beers, and make my own green juices. It was during this period that I came across hundreds of lawsuits against the manufacturer of Effexor claiming severe birth defects and even the death of infants whose mothers were taking this medication. I thought to myself, “If this is happening to these infants what is this doing to me? I’ve been on this for 14 years.”
So I decided to slowly taper off this medication — three times slower than my psychiatrist suggested. And, getting off of it threw my brain and my body into this state of chronic emotional instability. I’d go from laughing to crying to crippling anxiety to debilitating depression all within a couple of hours. During this time I remember traveling to Jacksonville Beach to run a basketball camp. My flight landed, I got into my rental car and headed to the Marriott. When I went to the front desk to check in I was told they didn’t have a reservation for me. I knew I had made a reservation here. I checked my email. It was at a Marriott, but not this one. I got back in my car and just broke down in tears. The other Marriott was only 10 minutes away, but it was too much for me to handle. “What is wrong with me?”, I thought. “It’s 10 minutes away. You’re just driving a car there. This is nothing compared to the insane amount of physical and mental demands you went through in pre-season college basketball. You’re an athlete. You’ve trained 1st Round NBA Draft picks. You’re supposed to be more disciplined, focused, and resilient. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
After going through the withdrawal symptoms of an anti-depressant medication I was determined to never take another pharmaceutical medication again. Peter Gøtzsche, a Danish Physician and Medical Researcher has found in his work that, “It’s easier to stop heroin than it is to stop psychiatric drugs”. It was excruciating. So I dove deep into the world of holistic health, educating myself on the mind-body connection, and trauma healing modalities. Forget thriving — I was just trying to get to a baseline. At times, this approach worked. There was no anxiety, depression, or chronic pain. I felt freer, happier, and more alive than at any time in my life.
But in times of stress — that in the past I would have navigated with significantly more resilience — the symptoms were debilitating. Insomnia, mental fatigue, inability to focus, alternating between feeling numb and extremely sensitive to sounds and people, and an emotional weight I felt like I was carrying that was too heavy to just be my own. On top of that was the shame and guilt for feeling these things because I “hadn’t been through anything that traumatic” and was doing all “the work”. I poured over $100,000 into a plethora of healing modalities — both Western and Eastern — depleting my retirement accounts. The list is exhaustive.
Needless to say, I was suffering. In a conversation with a friend, she suggested that I try a low dose of gabapentin — a fairly benign drug — used off-label to treat anxiety. So I finally broke down and went to a psychiatrist to hopefully get prescribed this medication.
As I was sitting in his office going through the initial intake, he looked at me across his wooden desk filled with paperwork and asked, “Are you a vet?”
I paused, a little confused. “Vet?” I thought, “I love my dog, but I’m not an animal doctor. What in the world does that have to do with the things that I’m dealing with?”
I responded, “What do you mean?”
He said, “Have you been in the military? What you’re describing sounds like someone who has been through combat.”
I have never been through anything that resembles military combat (and can’t really comprehend what that must be like), but at that moment I started to cry. Maybe it was because someone validated the amount of pain I was in. Regardless of how I got here — developmental trauma, a verbally abusive relationship, and heroin-like withdrawals of medication. On top of this was the stress and volatility of remotely leading a business from halfway across the country. This WAS hard AF.
I’m not sharing this story for sympathy or to glorify the pain. I’m sharing this because I think there are universal lessons about resilience, leadership presence, and business culture we can leverage.
A Word On Medication For Mental Health
I’m not a mental health professional. It’s far beyond my scope of expertise, but here are my thoughts based on a decade of reading and research on mental health and trauma. Medication can be helpful to manage symptoms, short-term, if you are working with a trauma-trained mental health expert to heal the root cause. Anxiety and depression are not the cause — they are the symptoms of trauma. Since this experience, I’ve taken “as needed” pharmaceuticals along with a combination of nutraceuticals and nootropics. If you’re truly doing “the work” and are still suffering I hope this is a reminder that you don’t need anyone’s permission to give yourself self-compassion, which might take the form of medication. It’s impossible to lead others effectively when we’re in a state of anxiety or depression.
The Unseen Mental Health Battles
Some people around you are fighting battles that you can’t even comprehend. On the outside, I looked like I had it all together. A business where we worked with two NBA MVPs, NBA Finals titles champions, and 3 years in a row we had clients hit game–winning shots in March Madness. But on the inside, I felt incredibly broken. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus, constantly agitated, and on top of that was dealing with chronic pain. Forbes research suggests CEOs experience depression at a rate double that of the average population — 40%. In some cases, a position that society puts on a pedestal might be dealing with more than you can imagine. If you’re in a leadership position and desperately trying to hold it together for your company, the people you lead, and your family — I see you.
Resilience Through Connection and Community To Enhance Culture
America’s cultural conditioning of rugged individualism has us isolated, lonely, and burned out. Why? This individualism is based on one thing. Fear. More specifically scarcity. We are the most financially abundant country in the world and yet scarcity runs rampant.
What’s helped me navigate this experience has not been more ice baths, plant medicine, and breath work. It’s feeling seen, heard, and understood by someone with tremendous presence. It’s sharing an experience and having the response be,” Me too. We’ll get through this together.” Bruce Perry, a child trauma psychologist who co-authored What Happened To You with Oprah Winfrey, shares that, “connectedness has the ability to counterbalance adversity.” What if we truly trusted that in my team of ten, everyone has my back? Feel into a deep sense of trust for a second. What does that do for the collective? Everyone wins. This is why in a hyperconnected, yet disconnected world, the work of people like Smiley Poswolsky on belonging matters more than ever. If you’re looking to find community and build connections, start with doing an activity you love and you’ll find your people. That could even mean starting a group or club through your work.
See The Unseen Mental Health Through Empathy
Understanding someone’s entire life story isn’t necessary, but it’s crucial to empathize with their emotions. Feel into it with complete presence. It’s in the presence of that feeling that incredible bonds are created with the people you work with or the people that you lead. It’s how you make them feel safe to be bold, take risks, and dare I say fail. It’s those connections, togetherness, and sense of belonging that cultivate the collective resilience to move through adversity together.
However, to extend this empathy to others, we must first cultivate it within ourselves. When we feel into our own emotional pain we’ll be able to feel that in the people we lead. Self-acceptance, being an example, leads to acceptance of others and results in feelings of connection and psychological safety. The quality of the relationship that we have with the people that we lead is a direct reflection of the relationship that we have with ourselves. Research from two doctors in South Africa shows that part of leading ourselves is learning to love ourselves.
Giving The Gift Of Presence To Yourself and Those You Lead
In sharing my journey through PTSD and the challenges of seeking effective treatment, I hope to shed awareness on the unseen mental health challenges many individuals face. Whether it’s the pressure to conform to societal expectations or the struggle to find holistic healing amidst a sea of pharmaceutical options, the road to well-being is often ambiguous and filled with obstacles.
Despite the hardships, there are lessons to be learned. We must recognize that most people carry burdens unseen by others, even those who appear successful and composed on the surface. True resilience is cultivated through a culture of connection and community, where individuals can find solace in shared experiences and support one another through adversity.
Empathy is the cornerstone of understanding and healing. By learning to empathize with both ourselves and those we lead, we create environments where vulnerability is embraced, and collective resilience can flourish.
So, I encourage you to give the gift of presence—to yourself and to others. I used to think this was something you could only extend to others, but I’ve recently learned the cathartic power of giving it to yourself by fully accepting and acknowledging how difficult this period of my life has been.
“I’ve been repeating this to myself over with my hand on my heart and it is so healing. To love is to be there. We cannot love if we are not fully breathing into each moment…May we have the desire to show up for ourselves no matter what. May we put our hands on our hearts and speak in a gentle voice, Dear One, I am here for you.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
We also gift this presence to others. Through genuine connection and understanding, we can create cultures where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued, regardless of their struggles or titles. This presence, I believe, is a major piece of true healing. It’s where transformational leadership lies. And, where the next generation of leaders will be born.
