Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

Don’t worry about things you can’t control. The news is full of things you can’t do anything about. Do the things you can do stuff about—raise awareness of issues that concern you, give whatever you can to whichever cause you feel passionate about, and also accept the things you can’t do.

Remember, looking at bad news doesn’t mean good news isn’t happening. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening right now. Around the world. In hospitals, at weddings, in schools and offices and maternity wards, at airport arrival gates, in bedrooms, in inboxes, out in the street, in the kind smile of a stranger. A billion unseen wonders of everyday life.

One thing mental illness taught me is that progress is a matter of acceptance. Only by accepting a situation can you change it. You have to learn not to be shocked by the shock. Not to be in a state of panic about the panic. To change what you can change and not get frustrated by what you can’t. There is no panacea, or utopia, there is just love and kindness and trying, amid the chaos, to make things better where we can. And to keep our minds wide, wide open in a world that often wants to close them.

Although most of us are in a better place in life than the guests at the Joel Centre, its ethos is a good one to adopt. And deceptively simple. Accentuating the things that make you feel good, cutting back the things that make you feel bad, and letting people feel truly connected to the world around them.

That is the biggest paradox, I think, about the modern world. We are all connected to each other but we often feel shut out. The increasing overload and complexity of modern life can be isolating.

Added to that is the fact that we don’t always know precisely what makes us feel lonely or isolated. It can make it hard to see what the problems are. It’s like trying to open an iPhone to fix it yourself. It sometimes feels like society operates like Apple, as if it doesn’t want us to get a screwdriver and look inside to see what the problems are for ourselves. But that’s what w...

The paradox of modern life is this: we have never been more connected and we have never been more alone.

In theory, it has never been easier not to be lonely. There is always someone we can talk to online. If we are away from loved ones then we can Skype them. But loneliness is a feeling as much as anything. When I have had depression, I have been lucky enough to have people who love me all around me. But I had never felt more alone.

How to own a smartphone and still be a functioning human being Don’t feel you always have to be there. In the not-so-olden days of letters and landlines, contacting someone was slow and unreliable and an effort. In the age of WhatsApp and Messenger it’s free and easy and instant. The flipside of this ease is that we are expected to be there. To pick up the phone. To get back to the text. To answer the email. To update our social media. But we can choose not to feel that obligation. We can sometimes just let them wait. We can risk our social media getting stale. And if our friends are friends they will understand when we need some headspace. And if they aren’t friends, why bother getting back anyway? Turn off notifications. This is essential. This keeps me (just about) sane. All of them. All notifications. You don’t need any of them. Take back control.

How to get out of bed Wake up. Pick up phone. Stare at phone for 72 minutes. Sigh. Get out of bed. Alternatively, once in a while, try skipping stages two to four.

And the great thing about this—the liberating thing—is that if our anxiety is in part a product of culture, it can also be something we can change by changing our reaction to that culture. In fact, we don’t even need to consciously change at all. The change can happen simply by being aware. When it comes to our minds, awareness is very often the solution itself.

The problem is not that the world is a mess, but that we expect it to be otherwise. We are given the idea that we have control. That we can go anywhere and be anything. That, because of free will in a world of choice, we should be able to choose not just where to go online or what to watch on TV or which recipe to follow of the billion online recipes, but also what to feel. And so when we don’t feel what we want or expect to feel, it becomes confusing and disheartening. Why can’t I be happy when I have so much choice? And why do I feel sad and worried when I don’t really have anything to be sad and worried about?

I was a human being with human illnesses, which other humans have had—millions and millions of humans—and most of them had either overcome their illnesses or had somehow managed to live with them.

Note to self Keep calm. Keep going. Keep human. Keep pushing. Keep yearning. Keep perfecting. Keep looking out the window. Keep focus. Keep free. Keep ignoring the trolls. Keep ignoring pop-up ads and pop-up thoughts. Keep risking ridicule. Keep curious. Keep hold of the truth. Keep loving. Keep allowing yourself the human privilege of mistakes. Keep a space that is you and put a fence around it. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep your phone at arm’s length. Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. Keep breathing. Keep inhaling life itself. Keep remembering where stress can lead.

It makes sense that shopping centers aren’t easy places to be in. A shopping center is a deliberately stimulating environment, designed not to calm or comfort, but merely to get us to spend money. And as anxiety is often a trigger for consumption, feeling calm and satisfied would probably work against the shopping center’s best interests. Calmness and satisfaction—in the agenda of the shopping center—are destinations we reach by purchasing. Not places already there.

Distraction is an attempt to escape that rarely works. You don’t put out a fire by ignoring the fire. You have to acknowledge the fire. You can’t compulsively swallow or tweet or drink your way out of pain. There comes a point at which you have to face it. To face yourself. In a world of a million distractions you are still left with only one mind.

Breathe. Breathe deep and pure and smooth. Concentrate on it. Breathing is the pace you set your life at. It’s the rhythm of the song of you. It’s how to get back to the center of things. The center of yourself. When the world wants to take you in every other direction. It was the first thing you learned to do. The most essential and simple thing you do. To be aware of breath is to remember you are alive.

We also don’t really know how to talk about suicide. When we do talk about it we tend to use that verb—commit— which carries connotations of taboo and criminality, an echo of the days when it was criminal. (I have recently been trying to say “death by suicide” but it still feels a bit forced and false on my tongue.) Many people struggle to deal with the very idea of taking your own life, as it seems a kind of insult to us all, if you see suicide as a choice, because someone has chosen to give up on living, this sacred precious thing, as fragile as a bird’s egg. But personally I know that suicide isn’t such a clear-cut choice. It can be something you dread and fear but feel compelled toward because of the new pain of living. So, it’s uncomfortable, talking about it. But talk we must, because an atmosphere of shame and silence prevents people getting the right help and can make them feel more freakishly lonely. It can, in short, be fatal.

C. S. Lewis once put it, “The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’”

We should work toward making this a world where it is easier to talk about our troubles. Talking isn’t just about raising awareness. As the various successful types of talk therapy have shown over the last century, talk can have medicinal benefits. It can actually ease symptoms. It heals the teller and the listener through the externalizing of internal pain and the knowledge that others feel like we do. Never stop talking. Never let other people make you feel it is a weakness or flaw inside you, if you have a mental health problem. If you have a condition like anxiety, you know that it isn’t a weakness. Living with anxiety, turning up and doing stuff with anxiety takes a strength most will never know. We must stop equating the condition with the patient. There needs to be a more nuanced understanding of the different pressures people feel. Walking to a shop can be a show of strength if you are carrying a ton of invisible weight.

“. . . this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.” —James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

But because of that luck, we need to cherish this life we have. And if we can not only feel lucky but also other things—calm, happy, healthy—then why not? Why not know what the world can do to us? Because that knowledge can help us.

The website also adds that “people who can admire a beautiful model but say ‘I could never look like her but it doesn’t bother me too much’ are the people who are least likely to fall victim to problems with food.” Maybe there is a lesson for all of us here: in that disconnect between the images we see and the selves we are. We need to build a kind of immune system of the mind, where we can absorb but not get infected by the world around us.

How to be kinder to yourself about yourself Think of people you have loved. Think of the deepest relationships you have ever had. Think of the joy you felt when seeing those people. Think of how that joy had nothing to do with their looks except that they looked like themselves and you were pleased to see them. Be your own friend. Be pleased to recognize the person behind your face.

Don’t worry when people don’t like you. Not everyone will like you. Better to be disliked for being you, than being liked for being someone else. Life isn’t a play. Don’t rehearse yourself. Be yourself.

Never let a stranger’s negative opinion of you become your own negative opinion of you.

If you’re feeling bad about yourself, stay away from Instagram.

When people talk about mental health stigma getting better they may be right about an improvement in conditions for people suffering from depression or panic attacks. They probably aren’t talking about alcoholism, or self-harm, or psychosis, or Borderline Personality Disorder, or eating disorders, or compulsive behaviors, or drug addiction. Those things can test the open minds of even the best of us. That’s the problem with mental illness. It’s easy not to judge people for having an illness; it’s a lot harder not to judge people for how the illness occasionally causes them to behave. Because people can’t see the reasons.