Bryan Johnson spent ten years chronically depressed, with church services triggering severe anxiety and shutdown. His young son would rub his back when he got home, offering wordless comfort in moments when Johnson felt death was the only relief. A depressed mind cannot imagine a future without depression, making even the afterlife feel hopeless.
Was there a moment that you knew you had hit rock bottom? On Sundays, they were my worst days. I would come home from church. Church was such a triggering event for me. I would break out into sweats. I would just shut down. I'd come home, I'd lay on my bed and my son would come up and rub my back. For some reason he knew. I don't know how he knew. He was 6 or 7 at the time. In that moment, I just desperately wanted to die. There's just nothing that would bring me relief of thought except for the idea that I would die. And I didn't. You know, in that religion, it was like you would have an afterlife. And I thought, I don't want an afterlife. Because when you're depressed, you cannot imagine not being depressed. Your imagination shuts down. Existence just seems eternally depressed and you cannot change your mindset out of that.
