1y ago

My name is Wil Wheaton. I Live With Chronic Depression and Generalized Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed.

My life is, by every objective measurement, very very good.
And in spite of all of that, I struggle every day with my self esteem, my self worth, and my value not only as an actor and writer, but as a human being.
That’s because I live with Depression and Anxiety, the tag team champions of the World Wrestling With Mental Illness Federation.

89 comments

It's good that he's been able to find help, it's good that he's advocating for more help. But let's be real. For most of us in the here and now, we're better off hiding it.
Being honest about mental illness is a great way to get fired or never work again. Especially if you can't afford or don't have access to help.
If anyone has tips for disguising long gaps on a cv, that would be genuinely helpful.
- If anyone has tips for disguising long gaps on a cv, that would be genuinely helpful.
  Long COVID
  Taking care of a sick relative
  Helping with a completely made up company that your sibling made that they unceremoniously gave up on before launch
- Especially now in the USA where every job application asks if you're disabled; listing anxiety and depression as disabilities. HR would never use that against anyone... I refuse to identify on my applications, but I don't know if that's a black mark against me. It makes me more anxious and depressed.
- If anyone has tips for disguising long gaps on a cv, that would be genuinely helpful.
  Failed start up.
  If it times right, you worked at circuit city or bed bath and beyond or another defunct company. There's no company to verify this with.
  
  Oh wow, somehow I missed the news that Bed Bath and Beyond had gone bankrupt.
- CV tips.
  Just lie. They rarely if ever check.
  Also, you don’t have to go that far back so just put recent experience. If they ask then you can provide more information.
  As for the lying, you can just extend how long you actually worked there. Or you could have a family member say you worked for them. They no longer have the business. Same for friends etc.
  
  As a person who has done a lot of interviewing don't lie. Good chance you'll give yourself away and come across as dishonest. Do say something basically true but without detail and that is something the interviewer can't follow up on. Examples:
  "I had some savings built up and I took some time off to travel/hike/paint." If you want to embellish: "I'm really thankful I had that opportunity and I'm looking forward to this next step/building my career/opportunity/blah blah".
  "I needed to take some time off to care for a family member." (You're a family member, right?)
  etc. Make it something personal that they shouldn't follow up on. As an interviewer I want to know your experience and you should come across as honest. I don't want to know your personal life. If someone asks follow up questions about the sick family member you really want to avoid working there.
  Personally I rarely ask about gaps, but some recruiters and interviewers will just do that to check the box.
  So be honest but don't share personal stuff.
- Also is a great way to watch all your friends disappear.
  Fucking magical.
- This is terrible advice. Just terrible. And largely untrue. I had over a decade gap in my cv and claimed it was due to "running my own business". When I got a good job it had infrastructure to support mental health and my life made me ashamed to ask for help. Luckily, I've had managers who aren't ashamed to ask if I need help and I've had opportunities to get support. More importantly, I had three relationships where I didn't ask for help because I was ashamed and it took a very special person to tell me to seek therapy that turned a lot of my shame around.
  You're operating on shame. Regardless of how you feel about seeking help, please at least recognise that and do what you can to be open about your feelings and sense of self.
  
  You are lucky to have a company that supports you.
  When I was honest about mental health issues and took doctor mandated mental health leave, I was fired for unrelated reasons, but told to my face that it was because I had been to honest. This was at a fortune 500 company.
  Now imagine what it's like for someone working construction or a low level job. This is the reality for many many people. Hell, people were fired for not turning up to work with covid. There are literal laws in the US which prohibit companies firing people with cancer. They'd do that too if they could get away with it.
  Be glad that it isn't your reality, be angry that it still happens and act/vote accordingly, but do not discount the very real experiences of those less fortunate. Reflect on your privileged position and realise your experience is not universal.
- Just put self employed or flat out lie.
- Lie. Say they gave you an NDA. They lie all the time and make it so that your job description could fit any position they need you to fill when that person is out or they layoff people. Just lie. Fuck ‘em.
- Yeah. I tried talking about once with my grandma because I had been failing college courses after my mom lied about vitamin pills and forced me to take them, (they were prozac) and it fucked with my brain chemistry so bad I couldn't eat or sleep and the world felt like a dream where anything outside a small bubble simply didn't exist to my brain. Like I could see it but my brain would not acknowledge it's existence. The exact words I got back from her were "What such bullshit!" in a very angry tone.
  I haven't even been able to think about mentioning anything related to my anxiety and depression since then to anybody I know irl because I'm afraid of that response again. There's a really bad social stigma in the states about only weak minded people have mental disorders and we can't get the help we desperately need. It's especially worse if you're a male because then you're not real man in the eyes of your peers. It makes trying to function at work nearly impossible, it makes trying to go out and do basic errands difficult, it makes keeping social relationships difficult. I've lost count of the friends I've lost contact with because all I want to do is just sit in a dark quiet room by myself most days. The isolation is crushing. I have a friend that keeps trying to get me to "come back" as it were and I'm trying, I really am but I struggle to find the energy to do so and I don't know what to do anymore at 36 years old. Life gets just a little shitter every day and I already feel like I'm well beyond my breaking point and the only think keeping me going is fear of being homeless.
- You can always say you were self employed doing consulting.
  
  These, most certainly these. Also, do not forget to "white font" to get past AI filters. 🤘🏼
  (ie. Feed the job description into ChatGPT, and have it pull out the keywords, then add them to your cover letter/resume and change their color to white to make them only legible to the AI filters — get that Grade A USDA Approved stamp and progress to the next stage of livestock assessment, fellow pleb.)
- Just make shit up. Shit that no one can verify of course.
- Start your own personal business. Doesn't matter what you do, and whether you do anything at all.
  Works great as a cover for whatever the fuck you've been doing during that time period. Gives a bit of flexibility regarding the storytelling about your own experience and roles as well.
- Regarding dealing with the gaps in resume. You can deflect by saying you were dealing with health issues, either personally or those of a family member. Both are truthful, you are a member of your own family, right. Tbh I was super psyched out about applying for jobs after a few years of doing nothing and not really having anything to say about it. I had a recruiter friend who I was completely honest with suggest this to me and it worked! People interviewing you do not want to pry into health issues. They want to hire you. They don't want to ask awkward questions. They want to see if you know your shit and will be able to contribute to their group. You're still gonna have to deal with the rejection of applying to 100s of jobs online and getting maybe a few callbacks and 1 or 2 interview requests, but that's a topic for a different day. Make a good resume (with lots of keywords that a bot can find in your skills section), spam resumes to job sites every day (I recommend searching through LinkedIn or anywhere other than Indeed), and just be patient. I've been in your shoes and thinking the same way, and I'm still not quite where I want to be in life, but don't psych yourself out. I'd also recommend looking into the STAR interview method online. Most places seem to use that now and there's some good YouTube videos that can help you with job interviews.
  TLDR; Spam resumes, be patient, explain job gap as taking care of someone with health problems in your family.

He's very privileged to have access to the care he has access to. My experience has been more like hearing the stuff his parents said to him, but from doctors. You're so dramatic. You can't possibly feel that bad, you look fine. You're just lazy.
- I'm very fortunate in that my parents mostly took my mental health issues seriously. We should all be so lucky. Where I was told I was exaggerating was pain from the dentist.
  As an adult, my dentist told me that people with reddish hair (in my beard, not my mop) are less susceptible to Novocaine. She jacks me up with more than the standard dose and I'm fine. Teenaged me suffered badly at the hands of dentists.
  But, getting back to the original topic, a specific mental illness seems to run in my family. I'm not the only one, so getting recognition has been more of a "I have the same experience." I can't imagine if I was the first and had parents who considered it alien.
  We need to treat mental illness with compassion. Thank goodness I didn't live during the era where it was expected that someone just toughen up and suppress their feelings or "be a man" about it.
  
  Huh. I have (or had, it's mostly grey now) red hair in my beard despite having so dark brown that it's almost black hair on my head. I wonder if that's why novocaine never seemed to work on me. I got two wisdom teeth taken out under gas and novocaine and I felt it. I don't know why the dentist didn't stop because I know I was struggling and not keeping my mouth open.

Wow, I kinda feel bad for mocking his Wesley Crusher now, I wonder how much the near universal hate for that character has affected him.
- I'm a huge star trek fan and had a major crush on Wesley Crusher when I was a kid in the 90s. I honestly had no idea his character was universally hated. Wesley is wonderful. Reading his blog made me so sad, he hated acting so much.. https://wilwheaton.net/2022/05/yes-i-was-forced-to-be-a-child-star-it-was-never-my-dream-or-my-idea/
  
  From another one of his posts:
  “Hey!” He shouts at the bouncer. “What’s the problem? Don’t you know who I am?”
  The bouncer rolls half a million eyes at once. “We know exactly who you are.”
  This has big Hitchhiker's Guide energy and I love it.
  
  I hated Wesley as a kid, for most of the reasons Wil has detailed in various places over the years, and also did not like Wil because of the association.
  That changed after reading some of his posts from the early 00s. I'd gone specifically to laugh at him for being a failure and came away a big fan of his.
  I credit Wil's blog for helping me grow as a human. I got his books as well. Very good reads all of them.
  
  I didn't feel much about his character when I watched the show during the original run. I have read why people didn't like Wesley and I sorta see it. He did basically take over every episode he was in. Somehow boy genius is there to save the day each and every time literally hundreds of experienced professionals failed.
  In any case I think he did add to the show and Wil himself is a pretty cool guy.
  I can't prove it but I think that the plan for him was to connect Picard with Hornblower and all the writer changes of the first two seasons botched it up. Picard was supposed to be modeled after Hornblower (Patrick Stewart has confirmed this), problem is Hornblower was young in the novels. I think their solution was to pair him with a kid.
  
  I'm a HUGE trekkie, and I loved the character. Maybe it makes a difference that we didn't watch the show until it had been out for like 20 years, so we didn't take it so seriously. We'd pause it and make fun of how Troy would inexplicably get blocked when it was convenient to the plot, how everyone said "SensORS," Riker's affable intergalactic ladies man persona, and yes, even the peppy Wesley Crusher with his runaway science experiments and ability to disappear for months at a time without anyone questioning it.
  I wonder if Wil would consider a cameo on one of the new series? I know he says he hated it, but wouldn't it be cathartic to kind of poke fun at that?
  There's like 5 new series that I've heard of, and I seem to hear a lot about how they're revisiting old characters (although I haven't seen any. I'm old and have no idea where to find them or what order to watch them in.) But Wil is just as much a part of the nostalgia as the rest of them, and his behind the scenes story makes me so sad. That was a Grade-A show, the only character I didn't like was Q.
  
  Thanks for sharing that.
- He's talked about it affecting him negatively before.
  
  Given the horror stories that come from even some of the best child actors, I'm wondering when the tech will reach the point that child figures in shows/movies can be played through filters/fx on an older actor.
- He's not universally hated, I'm not sure he's even majorly hated, but those haters are loud AF

I got in a rabbit hole of his blog articles and my word, this poor guy really had it bad his whole life. I'm glad he's better now.

Wil, your candid and earnest discussion of mental health has been refreshing, uplifting, and honestly incredibly helpful while dealing with my own mental health
Keep on keeping on, homie

Shut up, Wesley.
JK. You're awesome, bro.
- Agreed with this one. You're one awesome guy Wil :-)

I wish him well.

Thank you for sharing. Anyone who says "you cannot feel" however is patently wrong. We all feel how we feel, and don't need to justify those feeling to anyone. I grew up watching TNG, and Wesley has always been an inspiration to me. Especially seen in retrospect, that show, and it lessons, were very formative for who I am now. No matter how many blessings one has in this life, the world as it is can grind you down. You aren't alone in your struggle.

I caught the first episode of Table Top when it launched. It was so amazing that I went out and bought my first board game. And started a weekly game night that I've kept going ever since. I now have somewhere around 200 board games.
I used that game night to work on cooking challenges. Feed the people and they show.
Because of that show and it's impact on my life I am now the Executive Chef at my hospital. I still run games every weekend. There was a butterfly effect started by that show that impacted my life and now the lives of everyone I feed. And everyone I introduce to board games.
You might struggle with self worth. But to me, a guy in Montana that you've never met, you're the most influential and inspiring person I know of. Fyi.

Thank hunamity for medicine lol.
- Seriously. My anxiety meds are the best thing I've ever taken.

Boy's looking healthy on that photo in the blog post. Congrats to him!
- He looks quite a lot like Jonathan Frakes when he was playing Commander Riker.
  
  I looked up pics of him from 2023 and thought the same thing 😂

I don't have neither anxiety nor depression as own disorders. But I have ADHD, and it can bring home and rise anxiety and depression as honorary subdisorders. I have ASD too. And I know what anxiety is, because I had it while I wasn't diagnosed.
I speak from my own point of view, from an European country, so don't take this advice blindly. Wil is right, there is no need to be ashamed about telling what you suffer. People can be mean to you, but that's not your problem. That's theirs. Fortunately, society in my country is removing its blindfold regarding mental illnesses, thanks to other celebrities with mental illnesses, some politicians, and some media outlets.

Wil is awesome and he makes one of the best Imperial Stout beers out there: Stone w00tstout, try it!

MDMA treatment is almost there. I look forward to it.

Depression and Anxiety, the tag team champions of the World Wrestling - could not have put it better myself

This man did Serial Apeist 2, he has no shame. /s

Yes Will, we know.

I started reading but couldn't get past "I want to warn you that this talk touches on many triggering subjects" because I got triggered. I really hope that more sites implement pre-triggering trigger warning. :(
- Oh! You're one of those snowflakes you're so triggered by
  
  I guess so. There really should be more safe spaces for people who trigger easily. Life's hard as it is. A lot of us just see a word "trigger" and get triggered. I got twice just writing this.

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