Is Feeling Lost the Way of the Future?
The mental health field is having a moment just as depression and anxiety are on the rise. What to make of this disconnect.
Photo by Jordan Seott on Unsplash
By Jamie Mah @grahammah
Over the Christmas holiday, I found myself entering Indigo, that oh-so-big corporate bookstore where onlookers toil and saunter alongside hundreds of books, each awaiting a glance, a purchase, or a new home in a bookshelf of comfort. The many tables beset gave me joy and enthusiasm for each possibility — a thought or idea I’d yet to learn. As I wandered through the sections, that of self-help caught my attention. Before me sat stacks, each tuned to specific needs. While I marveled about the emerging interest in this field, I couldn’t help but wonder about something I’d noticed a lot of late — that so many seemed lost in their own lives.
One of my closest friends relayed to me recently, drunk, mind you, how he’d been struggling, how he’d found it hard to just get out of bed on most days. As someone who always seemed happy and well-to-do, his revelation caught me off guard, so much so that I thought he was joking at first. Once he confirmed that he wasn’t, it saddened me to hear him say, “I don’t know what to do with my life?”
Though troubling to hear, his revelation wasn’t uncommon amongst several within my inner circle. A few have recounted their confusion and uncertain states. How not understanding their place and destiny was fuelling a growing sense of melancholy and depression. This trend worried me even as I recognized how little I had to contribute towards help. I’m not a doctor, mentor, or psychologist. At times, I can barely run my own life.
Nevertheless, this issue got me thinking. So, I did a bit of digging.
To begin, there is truth and statistics to back up a growing tide of anxiety and depression within our society.
From The Hub:
In September, Statistics Canada released the results of their 2022 Mental Health and Access to Care Survey, and it shows that far more Canadians are depressed and anxious today than they were a decade ago.
Since 2012, the number of Canadians with major depressive disorder has increased by 62 percent. Today one in 13 Canadians, 7.6 percent of the population, qualify for the diagnosis. The number of Canadians with anxiety disorders has doubled, with one in 14 (7.1 percent) now suffering from social anxiety disorder. Rates of bipolar disorder rose and substance use disorder fell by 0.6 percent each, with the fall in substance abuse driven by declining alcoholism.
The numbers painted here are alarming but not surprising. The author, Jonah Davids, goes into extensive detail regarding why these statistics are on the rise. The obvious triggers are pointed throughout: social media, the pandemic, and high costs — the primary drivers of unhappiness. I don’t disagree with any of this as a lot of this, I feel, stems from societal conditioning and how we fundamentally perceive ourselves within the context of our peer groups and family.
These statistics fundamentally give weight to why there’s undoubtedetly been a growing resourse of self-help and guidance information all around. From Gabor Maté, Brené Brown, and Arthur C. Brooks, their works guide inner development while helping to deliver meaningful solutions to everyday struggles. In Brooks’ case, he’s had a weekly column and podcast on The Atlantic explicitly titled, How to Build a Happy Life. One of my favourite podcast hosts, Scott Galloway, also wrote a small treatise called The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning, a book I immensely enjoyed due to its simplicity and humanistic objective.
With that being said, I want to circle back to my original line of thinking. Why are so many lost in their own lives? If access to tools is better than ever and if our societal acceptance of mental well-being is at an all-time high, should so many of us still be mired in difficulty? I say this with the utmost sincerity that I am one such person. I don’t have all the answers, and as I try to navigate the details and steps of my journey, my curiosity can’t help but notice the stillness, sadness, uncertainty, and lost sense of self in so many around me. I find this reality unsettling and disheartening.
This leads me to wonder.
We’re raised to believe that life isn’t easy and that there’s a path to success and happiness in some sense if we hit specific markers. Go to school and get an education. Find a mate and have children. Buy a home and build a life. Travel and see the world. Retire and relax in a life of leisure. Hollywood and the Hallmark channel have programmed us into striving for this sort of existence, even if it is heavily simplistic in scope. Jonah Davids spends the brunt of his column discussing the issues surrounding these individual topics. However, even if some of us try our best to hit these checkpoints, so to speak, voids often appear. My friend appears to be thriving. He makes good money and seems to enjoys his career. Outside of having a mate, he’s a well-to-do young man in his 30s who is healthy and pays his bills on time. Thus, is his lost self a byproduct of our system of expectation and reward or a personal test for himself to resolve?
Ironically, as I began writing this, the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt came to mind as his most recent and upcoming book digs into this issue, albeit focused most prominently on Generation Z. In 2018, I read The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, one he co-wrote with Greg Lukianoff. At the time, their book garnered a lot of positive press as it presented a new perspective on some of the challenges youth of the day were having as they matured into adulthood.
From Coddling of the American Mind:
“First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths — and the resulting culture of safetyism — interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.”
I’ve come back to this book several times and have always returned engaged to understand further the last sentence presented here — it makes it harder for them to navigate the bumpy road of life. This decree certainly applies to most of us as our stories are never smooth sailing. Life has a way of surprising us. For that reason, from the narrative of their book, in addition to those recent statistics I mentioned above, are we as a society not asking the right questions of each other? Have our social spaces been lost to text threads and scroll time alone at home?
My friend feels lost even though he’s probably ahead of the game compared to most. In my opinion, his lost sense of self possibly stems from an internal void of not satisfying what truly drives his life. I don’t pretend to say that this is the correct solution to his predicament, but this is where my curiosity has led me to wonder.
To dig deeper into this topic, let’s look at what a recent high school graduate faces. A surmountable issue for any student at that age is not knowing what to take in university. It’s often a confounding problem. It was undoubtedly for me when I attended the University of Saskatchewan in 1998. At the time, I thought taking kinesiology was the way to go since I loved sports. After three years of poor grades and missed classes, I dropped out. Now, despite never graduating, I’m still grateful for the experience.
So many of us face or have faced this obstacle. It’s one of the first proper adult tests of our lives. Does it make or break our future? Not necessarily, but how we respond to the positive and negative implications of our choices at that stage in life can signify what matters to us moving forward.
Our priorities in life are what drive our choices. From my understanding, we make decisions based on emotions and use logic and reason to justify our answers. My 20s were filled with self-doubt and uncertainty as I crashed and burned my way through one thing after another. Being lost is part of the process.
Scotty Galloway wrote much of what those at that age are going through recently on his blog. The numbers aren’t good.
From No Mercy/No Malice:
“There’s one risky behavior young people are increasingly engaging in: suicide. Between 2007 and 2021, the suicide rate among Americans age 10 to 24 rose from 6.8 (per 100k) to 11.
This is the tragic tip of an iceberg, the teen mental health crisis Jonathan Haidt predicted a decade ago. Since 2011 the share of high school students reporting “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” has risenfrom 28% to 42%. A recent study of rising suicide rates found that “the increase in the prevalence of depression among young people during the 2010s was so large it could explain nearly all the increase in suicide mortality among those under 25.” Take a pause. What’s the fucking point of any of “this” if 50% more of our children feel hopeless?
Gen Zers tell us why they feel so bad. They face insecurity on every front: Their careers will be gigs on Zoom calls with low pay and no health care. They’ll struggle to pay off their student loans or buy a house or have children. Mating and sexual dynamics have become increasingly risky, if not plain demoralizing; over a third of Gen Z identifes climate change as their biggest single worry. And, always in the background, is the knowledge that their life has a permanent, public record: 49% of Gen Zers say their online image is in the back of their mind when they are socializing … or drinking.
It’s tempting to write all this off as teen angst and the struggles of young adulthood, but these are fears that didn’t exist 30 years ago. How would you have handled any of this? Were you a thoughtful model of grace at 18?”
Every part of this is disheartening and revelatory. This except came out last month, two months after Jonah Davids’ reporting and a few months before Jonathan Haidt’s newest book comes out. There’s language all around this topic from all angles. I’m writing today not to fix a problem or suggest solutions; I’m actively curious about my friends, family, and colleagues, those of whom I’ve seen, heard, and witnessed a lost sense of self. Is this state okay to endure? Sure. We will all feel this emotion at some point in our lives. To say that it’s happening more frequently is alarming.
The path for youth today seems as complicated as it ever has been. My friends are in their 30s and 40s, and it still hits home. We are more lost than ever, even as solutions appear as bountiful. Connection fuels who we are no matter what our inner drives are. Having a purpose and meaning to what and who we are is the essence of life. Being lost is a byproduct of not knowing what that is. Some find theirs while others struggle. However, a path can be found. There is a way.
Despite the society-wide patterns we’re seeing, the irony of this issue is that, as individuals, we are still responsible for figuring our shit out. Growing through painful experiences and taking time to develop ourselves and our interests appear to be significant first steps to navigating out of lostness.