In this monologue Dr. John A. King argues that depression, anxiety, low self‑esteem and negative self‑talk function like addictions because they are driven by recurring neurochemical releases. He explains that the brain habituates to the chemicals associated with these negative states, making it difficult to shift to a healthier mental state. Drawing on his book Deal With It, he introduces the “happiness coefficient” – a personal metric of how often one experiences positive versus negative chemistry. King stresses that overcoming these “addictions” requires conscious changes in self‑talk, mindset, and future outlook, essentially re‑training the brain to accept new, healthier chemical patterns.
Chapters
Hey, depression, anxiety, even poor self-esteem, negative self-talk, they're addictions. They're not just addictive in terms of a habit that you're in, they're an addiction. I talk about it in my book, Deal With It, when I talk about the happiness coefficient. When you're addicted, you are— what you're addicted to is a chemical response that is happening within your body. When you get into depression, when you get into anxiety, when you get into self-doubt, Your brain is actually releasing a chemical. And when it releases that chemical, your body gets used to that chemical. If you stay in that state for an extended period of time, when you try and move out of that state, your body goes, hang on, I'm not used to this new state. I like this old familiar state. It doesn't know that that state's bad for it. It doesn't have any, any moral application to that state. It is just used to that chemical release, that feeling of being depressed, that feeling of being anxious. If you're going to overcome depression, anxiety, and I'm not discounting things, there's a range of things that are involved in each of those areas. But you also have to be aware of the state and the condition of your mind, what your self-thought is, what your self-talk is. Because if you're truly going to move out of negativity, out of anxiety, out of depression, then you're going to have to deal with it. You're going to have to change the way think, change the way you talk about yourself, change the way you view your future in order to move yourself from your now to your next.
