Shutting off social media at least a few times a week isn't a suggestion. It's a requirement. Social media is highly addictive and can cause changes in the way we experience connection and gratification - but more importantly, it can alter our perceptions of ourselves and our place in the world especially if all we see is the echo chamber of our social media platforms. So, I make it a point to NOT check my social media constantly. I don't let myself instinctively reach for my phone each time I hear the "ding" of someone posting a comment or sending me a DM. I check my social media only when I am on a break from other activities - the social media does not determine where my attention and focus go. The same goes for those emotionally charged comments and facebook updates. When I'm feeling particularly charged up about something, I make it a point to NOT POST IT on social media. I sit. I process what I'm feeling. I remind myself to "taste the words in my own mouth to check for venom or bitterness before spewing them out to the world". And when I see someone unloading something heavy or emotionally charged, I do my best to not see them as that post - to see them as a human behind the screen, just like me. Less social media. MORE authentic and intentional connections online or off. That's how I relax for my mental health.

"Asians don't have mental health problems." Nobody has actually said those words out loud to me, but it is an unspoken understanding, especially within my family. In hindsight, the aversion of all things relating to mental health may explain why my family has such a history of undiagnosed struggles. Addictions, depression, and the long-standing throughline of impulsivity, explosive anger, and the constant instability that seemed to haunt the members of my family were considered to simply be part of our heritage, never to be questioned. In 2017 I worked as a life coach and counselor. I spent little time helping my clients heal. The vast majority of time was spent developing words and definitions for their struggles - things that had been normalized for them generation after generation to the point where there weren't any ways to describe how they were feeling - how they were REALLY feeling, and how to begin addressing those pains without feeling guilty for blaming the family, blaming their parents, blaming society. It was clear to me that we had a big problem. A problem rooted in the cultural narratives we hold about people of Asian heritage both in the US and abroad. Asians are far less likely to seek support for mental health challenges not just because of pride, or a sense of superiority - but because many of us have never had a real conversation, have never been shown the words to use, and never been allowed to feel and express without shame or guilt. To make matters worse - Asians who are neurodivergent are virtually non-existent. Not because they do not in fact exist within the population - but because there is no narrative that includes them. There are no Asian advocates for autism or ADHD - a fact that I learned only because one of my clients is a young man in China, who never knew that ADHD and autism are very real neurological conditions that can still apply to adults. Before we worked on identifying ADHD and autism, his life was full of failed attempts to fit in, never able to connect with other people due to "poor social skills" - never once being recognized as having high sensory sensitivity and requiring specific skills and tools to navigate social situations. This awareness alone helped him begin to understand why decades of his life were spent in isolation, in anger, in resentment about a world that never understood him. I continue to advocate openly now as an adult who grew up with undiagnosed mental health challenges, struggled with long bouts of major depression and crippling suicidality, brief homelessness, and constant instability. My facebook page is no longer for socializing. It is my soapbox - one from which I was able to reach people from every part of the globe who began to resonate with my words and begin to share their own stories - and to seek help, support, and diagnosis for themselves. I changed the stigma of the topic by changing the way I talked about it, and encouraging others to do the same - or at least to feel seen and validated through hearing stories like mine. People don't make changes in policy, let alone changes in worldview, until they resonate with the truth of a story. To change the landscape of mental health for underserved and misrepresented populations - advocacy must adapt. We must become artful, brave, and critical without being blameful. We must make stories of mental health HUMAN again, one person at a time, and take ownership of our narrative.

"Uber, Bank Transfer, Portland" were the main things I highlighted when I wrote out my suicide plan in 2017. I was going to transfer all of the money I had left to my sister, and would take an Uber to the airport and book a one way flight to Portland, where at midnight I would walk to the middle of the downtown bridge that hangs above the Willamette River... and end my life in the waters beneath after taking enough sleeping pills to ensure I wouldn't have enough strength to swim back out. I went through major depressive disorder without knowing it, and without getting any help. At some point, I figured that the rest of my life was simply going to be more of the same pain combined with the same numbness, and I the most reasonable, logical thing to do was to end my existence in the least troublesome, least gory way possible. Many people tried their best to help, to "empathize" with me - but nobody actually understood. I wasn't feeling "bad". Nor was I morbidly suicidal. Death was not in any way my ultimate goal. It was simply the fastest, most accessible way for me to stop having to feel what I was feeling. If anything, to simply "stop" was all I wanted. My major depression and "suicidal ideation" lasted for nearly two years. And only after going through it did I begin to fully appreciate the fact that during those long, lonely bouts with existential dread, somehow my sense of reality became warped beyond recognition. I wasn't "crazy". I stopped thinking "what if how I feel about myself and my place in the world right now is wrong, and this will pass?". I started thinking "What if how I feel about myself and my place in the world right now is how it has always been, and I've been deluding myself with momentary escapes and distractions?". What if I WAS RIGHT about the decision to end my existence all along and only now am I truly seeing things? That is the kind of dangerous reasoning and logic that nearly took me to a place that I would never come back from - and it is a place that I, as an adult man with undiagnosed ADHD and a family history of mental disorders, am at far greater risk of revisiting over and over during the course of my life. I was lucky to have gotten through that particular bout with major depressive disorder, and it opened my eyes to the reality of how many years of my life had been spent unsuccessfully "coping" and "functioning" my way through life not knowing that within me was the ticking time bomb of major depression - let alone the fact that my undiagnosed neurodivergence led me to decades of misspent years trying to catch up and live like everyone else and invariably failing. There were very good, very solid reasons for why I struggled for so long, and things I could do about it, as well as how to prepare for, and minimize the extent of depression symptoms when they reoccur. But none of this was taught to me by a teacher, or a therapist, or a mentor. There wasn't any clear way for me to navigate these issues as an Asian Male - which stereotypically meant that I should be immune to mental health issues and any problems I struggle with probably have more to do with my overbearing mother. We don't "do" therapy. We don't "do" mental illness. We certainly don't talk about it or address it in the family. It took me years of personal research - watching youtube videos, finding out about what ADHD really looks like in undiagnosed adults, parsing through the misinformation online, learning about neurodivergence and comorbidities and why the undiagnosed continue to go undiagnosed for so long - and why we suffer a particular set of challenges later in life as untreated and undiagnosed adults. I became a subject matter expert not because the subject was fascinating - but because the more I learned and uncovered about this dimension of mental health - the more my own life began to finally, after many lost decades, make perfect sense. I turn 40 this year - and recently went back to school to pursue a master's in clinical psychology - because I believe we need to do better about how we communicate mental health issues. I believe that nobody should have to turn 40 before they begin to learn about why they lost their 30s and 20s, because of things they should have been supported with when they were 10. In 2019 I began advocating neurodiversity awareness and spoke with my friends and peers about mental health. Since then, many of them have gone on to seek diagnosis and attain support and validating awareness around their struggles and for the first time they feel seen, understood, and finally not alone. But I can only go so far without a degree, and without a license to practice and reach more people. So here I am at 40, going back to school and after burning out decades ago without the support I never knew I needed - in hopes that I can continue to reach a wider population of those quietly suffering, quietly coping, and writing suicide plans of their own today because they haven't been reached by people who have been exactly where they are. -Joseph Kou