How I Got My Brain Back

Editor's preface: Once in awhile, we like to dust off our archives and resurface quintessential Every posts. The author of this 2021 article, Brie Wolfson, is one of our favorites. She shares her journey through pandemic-era depression, and the steps she took to regain control of her life. It's an honest and brave account of her struggle, and the tools and systems that helped her cope.

Just over a year* ago, I was hit with my first nasty—and I mean nasty—wave of depression. I made it 32 years without experiencing a crushing inability to get out of bed or a persistent lump in the back of the throat. It was terrifying to face these big, scary feelings without the tools or knowledge to deal with them. 

Before the pandemic, I was used to being on top of it all. Straight A’s. All-American athlete. Two-time novelist. I’d spent a decade-long career in tech working with so many smart, kind, industrious people. And then one day, I could barely muster the motivation to brush my teeth.

Depression is awful, and not everyone finds their way out. I was lucky. Although it took awhile, I eventually got to the other side of it. The experience forced me to figure out what makes me tick, shuts me down, and picks me up. I had to make big changes in my life and get comfortable with accommodating them. 

I wish I had done a lot of this work sooner. Given what I now intimately understand about depression, it feels strange to write those words and even stranger to publish them where anyone might encounter them. From my admittedly fortunate position, I’m grateful for what I learned about myself in the process. 

There’s no magic formula for escaping depression, and those who manage to do so walk many different paths to get there. I am only one person with one body, brain, and endocrine system governing me. But I’m going to share my personal journey, in the hopes someone else may find my experiences and discoveries useful. 

Going upside down

My depression came on a few months into the pandemic when the uncertainty of it all was at its height. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of five years and was living alone for the first time. The solitude was taking its toll. Friends and family were feeling further away every day. People I loved and respected were recommending books and movies they were sure I’d enjoy from my couch, but nothing could hold my attention. My inner world felt completely topsy-turvy. 

It didn’t take long for my outward behavior to start reflecting that chaotic feeling inside. Seemingly out of nowhere, I would suddenly have to turn my camera off in meetings. I would flake on plans and eject from phone calls without warning. You can imagine what havoc this would wrap on my life, my work, and my relationships. This kickstarted what turned into a cycle of guilt, anxiety, instability, shame, and frustration. But, I just kept plodding along like nothing was happening. 

It took me choking up in response to a cheery woman on the other end of a customer support line asking “how can I help you?” for me to consider that things might be more than a little off. Not long after that, I found myself in my garage with the ignition on, hesitating to open the garage door. That scared me enough to know I needed to intervene. 

What the heck is going on?

By this time, I barely recognized myself. I felt like I had become an entirely different person who I had no familiarity with. So, I decided to study her. The hope was that by getting better acquainted with the nature of these new feelings, and the person embodying them, I could better manage them all—avoid the triggers, run towards the good stuff, and maybe even more. 

I cannot say with any certainty what compelled me to pursue this direction. One hypothesis is that I’m naturally a relatively obsessive documenter. I’ve always felt at home in trackers and dashboards and metrics and lists and everything in between (I expect this might resonate with many readers of this particular publication). Another hypothesis is that I was desperate to create some semblance of order and control in my life. I definitely could not control the dizzying waves of sadness washing over me, but I knew that I could create a kick-ass tracker to help me get smarter about them.

I also think it’s relevant that I was already coming from a place of wanting to bring more self-inquiry into my life. I had been in therapy for about a year at this point and was starting to see glimmers of the benefits. Having a professional on the case and in my corner was not a silver bullet by any means, but it was a meaningful safety net. Even outside of the scope of my depression, working with a good therapist whom I trust has had the most influence on my overall happiness of anything I’ve done in my life. It is an enormous privilege to have the time and money to spend on it. 

So, alongside my work in therapy, I committed to a month of tracking my moods on both a proactive and reactive basis (though three weeks turned out to be enough).

My Reactive Tracking System took the form of a log of times I felt the sad wave. I logged the intensity of my sadness on a five-point scale and recorded the time, place, what I was doing, who I was doing it with, what was on my mind, and anything else that felt relevant. (I landed on five because I wanted to capture sufficient nuance without diluting the data.) I also made sure to log what I was doing in the hour before bed and in the hour after I woke up every day. My morning log always included a best estimate of how much sleep I got according to my Apple Watch. Over time I also included my own impressions of sleep quality (ie. how tired did I feel when I woke up?).

My Proactive Tracking System took the form of a system of randomized prompts to log my mood throughout the day. I used Yapp Reminders to send the prompt and Mood Meter (screenshots below) to log my moods. Of all the apps, I like this one best because I like the words it employs to capture the nuance of how I was feeling (versus a simpler rating scale). One cool thing about the app is that it also asks you if you want to maintain or shift your mood. This became a helpful data point.