Let's chat Animö with Carö

My adolescence was fraught with escapisms: there were some healthy ones, like skiing even at -20 C, drawing, reading, swimming. But there were some potentially damaging ones because instead of making me more in the moment like the healthy ones, they were in fact meant to numb my painful feelings:  rides at amusement parks, emotional eating, watching videoclips or movies, and yes, like many, spending too much time playing video games (we didn't have social media when I was a teenager). They are not only magnets for boredom but for insecurity, nervousness, sadness, or feeling empty. These time sinks attract all forms of suffering if we don't watch out. I look back at my younger self and have a lot of compassion for her, as she was trying to cope with her parents' divorce, their relative emotional unavailability, and all the difficult experiences associated with the various changes in my daily life. If you are in a similar situation, like being glued to your phone or computer ...

I have been through several phases in my life when I thought my world had just stopped, and I was sure I would never be able to laugh again. Whether after a loss, a betrayal, thwarted belongingness, burnout, or being forced to follow a sign that reads ''Unknown'' as our next destination, none of us is immune to experiencing a state of low mood and motivation, sometimes with hopelessness and lack of aliveness. Some call it depression, but I sometimes hesitate to use the word depression; as a psychiatrist, I know too well that this existential phase has been overly pathologized and medicalized, and many have mislabeled as such the very normal experience of people mourning for instance. To a certain extent, it can be a good sign to go through this at least once (it means you are human, and you have sensitivity, unlike a robot). Yet, it still carries some level of stigma, and I don't think the word fully captures the very unique expression of this experience that depend...