My Mental Health Story: Mike Burke
I’m Mike Burke, CEO & Co-Founder of Joven Health, and this is my mental health story.
Honestly, I’m uncomfortable talking about my mental health story because our society tells us it’s something to be ashamed of. People may think I’m broken, weak, or maybe even crazy. Years of hearing comments like, “Why are you depressed? Your life is great!” or “Why are you panicking? It’s not a big deal,” drained my energy and made me feel like nobody understood what I was going through.
Even my closest family and friends will be surprised by some of the things I’m about to share because I never talk about my mental health story. However, I have learned there’s power in vulnerability and openly talking about uncomfortable subjects, so I’ve decided it’s time to end the silence. I want more people to see that mental illness is actually a pretty normal thing and it can be hard to spot – both from the outside world and even from within yourself.
If you’re a parent, I want you to understand that nobody in my world could see that I was depressed when I was younger – not my family, not my teachers, not my friends. I seemed like a happy kid, I got good grades, and I never caused trouble. The illness was inside my mind and I bore the weight alone because I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone else. The fact that your child is suffering from mental illness does not make you a bad parent and it doesn’t mean that you “messed them up,” that’s the stigma trying to shame you – ignore that impulsive feeling.
I want you to treat your children’s mental health just like you do their physical health – teach and model healthy mental behavior and habits, get regular mental checkups with a health care professional, and make sure your children continue to feel loved even when their health isn’t perfect.
If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced mental illness in your life, I want you to know you’re not alone, you’re not broken, and you are a valuable human being. I understand you, I accept you, I love you, and I stand with you. I urge you to share your story with the world, just as I’m about to. Together, we can create a future where a lifetime of mental health is the new norm.
If you’d like to share your mental health story on our blog, please contact me directly at [email protected]. Thank you!
*I’m not a mental health professional. What you are about to read is based solely on my own mental health story. My intention is to connect with you on a human level, not give you medical advice. If you need medical advice, please speak with a professional.
Teenage Angst or Serious Health Problems?
When I was 15, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder after a court-ordered therapy session. I remember laughing when I first heard the diagnosis; I thought, “What!? I’m not depressed, are you kidding me! The therapist makes me draw a picture of a tree and now he thinks he knows me?” In retrospect, the signs were there – I wish I would have listened.
I remember when the therapist gave me instructions to draw a tree. I immediately objected, saying something like, “I’m terrible at drawing. If I draw a tree, it’s going to suck.” He encouraged me to do it anyway and when I finished, I said, “See, I told you it would be terrible, you can barely even tell it’s a tree.” Now, maybe there’s some psychology magic in analyzing the drawing itself, but how I felt about myself was crystal clear – I wasn’t good enough.
Whenever the therapist and I would discuss anything even vaguely emotional, I would start tearing up and try to change the subject. Sometimes, I even lied to him because I worried that if he reported to the judge that something was wrong with me, I would be ripped away from my family and forced to live in foster care or worse – with my addict father in his one-bedroom trailer. I was a naive 15-year-old and I was no match for a trained mental health professional; he saw right through me and made an accurate diagnosis. But, I didn’t want to hear it.
There were other warning signs outside of the therapist’s office, too.
Anger
I would easily lose control of my emotions and have angry outbursts.
I once angrily threw crabapples at my brother, Tyler, as he was climbing a tree; he ended up falling and breaking his arm. I don’t even know if I hit him or caused him to fall in any way, but I felt so guilty and ashamed that I didn’t tell another soul what I had done for 25 years.
I remember furiously stabbing a pop can with a pen in 6th grade. I don’t even remember what I was mad about, but I remember missing the pop can and accidentally stabbing myself in the hand. I had to get 5 stitches.
Another time, my mom made me angry about something while she was swimming in our pool. I knew she hated getting her hair wet, so I angrily decided to retaliate against her by throwing a football into the pool to splash her. If it weren’t for my step-dad deflecting it, my throw would have hit her in the face.
I was court-ordered to therapy because I called the police after feeling threatened during visitation with my dad. When the police showed up and blamed me for instigating the dangerous situation, I lost my temper and started screaming at everyone.
Insecurity
I constantly put myself down, whether I failed or even succeeded at something. When I succeeded, I credited dumb luck or wrote off my achievement as “too easy,” and when I failed, I took it as just another sign that I wasn’t good enough.
I cried hysterically when I got my first C in middle school. To me, the years of excellent grades didn’t mean anything about me as a person, but the single “average” grade represented my inherent inadequacy.
I went through middle school and most of high school without having a girlfriend because I couldn’t understand why anyone would be attracted to someone as worthless as me. These childhood feelings of insecurity are so deeply ingrained I still sometimes wonder what anyone could possibly see in me.
My dad struggled with addiction until the day he took his own life in 2012 – I hadn’t spoken to him for 10 years. He missed large chunks of my childhood because he would go on a drug binge or end up in jail or rehab. Like all kids, I was taught that drugs are bad, so I was confused about why he seemed to love drugs more than he loved me. If drugs are so horrible and my own father prefers them to me, what does that make me?
Fear
I was afraid of everything, especially being abandoned or socially outcast.
By the time I graduated high school, I had lived in 7 different houses and changed schools 4 times. Two divorces taught me “dad was bad, so we left him” – therefore, I learned the lesson: “If I’m bad, my family will leave me, too.” I started doing whatever I could to please people for fear that they might think I’m not good enough and abandon me.
After changing schools in the middle of 5th grade, I decided to compete in a Quiz Bowl competition with my old school instead of the new school. My old school team won and I was feeling on top of the world. That’s when a kid from my new school approached me and threatened to beat me up at recess for helping the rival school win. It was very hard to make friends at the new school because I was so afraid.
Guilt and Shame
All of these experiences, along with my Southern Baptist upbringing, taught me the two emotions I’ve become most familiar with: guilt and shame.
My intention with what I’m about to say is not meant to insult Christianity or any other religion, but I do want to show how damaging religion was for me, personally, because of my mental illness.
Christianity really struck a chord with me for many reasons. It confirmed what my life experiences had already taught me: I am inherently inadequate. It gave me the compelling father figure that I never had. My involvement in Christianity would also please my religious family, making it easier for them to overlook my emotional outbursts and not ask too many questions about my emotional health. After all, a good, loving Christian boy must be on the right track – nothing to see here.
Religion taught me that I’m an unworthy sinner who deserves to burn in hell. It doesn’t matter how much good I do in the world or how many people I help – I’m a guilty sinner, inherently deserving of an eternity of brutal punishment. I was taught to be ashamed of myself for being such a disgusting sinner when God had done nothing but love me and provide for me.
Christianity taught me to feel guilt and shame as default emotions. Breaking the law was a sin, so I was ashamed of even going 1 mph over the speed limit or crossing the street against the signal. Sexual attraction in practically all forms is vilified, so I became ashamed of any kind of sexual attraction. As a result, even the very thought of expressing attraction to a woman I liked induced extreme guilt, shame, and anxiety. These toxic emotions were a daily occurrence for me as a 15-year-old boy going through puberty and greatly inhibited my ability to form healthy relationships with women for years.
As my shame grew, so did my sense of self-loathing. I hated myself so much, I would do anything to avoid having to feel my emotions or get in touch with my worthless inner self.
Coping
Without a knowledgable mentor guiding me through these complex emotions, teaching me about cognitive distortions, and challenging my negative thinking patterns, I came up with my own immature coping mechanisms.
The anger inside me caused me to hurt my family, both physically and financially. Feelings of insecurity constantly reminded me of my own worthlessness. The joy from winning the quiz bowl quickly turned to fear of being attacked by the kids who were supposed to be my new friends. Years of constant guilt and shame reminded me that everything was my fault and there’s nothing I can do to redeem myself.
From these experiences, I decided all emotions were bad, and even feeling them was bad. I began to numb myself to all emotions, no matter the cost.
As a result, I totally lost sight of the amazing eternal being inside me. I lost all internal direction and became crippled with uncertainty unless someone else was giving me explicit direction. I was easily irritable. I stopped caring about things that I used to love. I restlessly distracted myself with constant TV and video games. I gained more than 30 pounds in the summer between 9th & 10th grade, forcing me to move from quarterback to lineman on the school football team.
Do those symptoms sound familiar? In hindsight, I was obviously depressed.
Rediscovering Myself
My mental health story wasn’t always such a negative one. Before learning all of these painful lessons about the world, I was fearless, bold, confident, and full of joy.
When I was about 4 years old, I left home while my mom was distracted on the phone and hiked through half-mile of cornfield because I wanted an orange soda from the store up the street. I couldn’t even afford it – I only had a couple of nickles and pennies – but that was irrelevant. I knew what I wanted and I pursued it without hesitation, permission, or fear of the consequences.
This was my true nature.
"Those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own soul are bound to be in a wretched state."
When I was a kid, my dad’s side of the family called me “Mikey.”
Mikey was playful, free, and full of joy. He was self-assured, creative, and great at making people laugh. The problem with Mikey was that he reminded me of my father. He was immature, reckless, and emotional.
After the court-ordered therapy, my father decided to give in to my request to sign away parental rights – I no longer had to go to visitation. When I was no longer forced to reconcile with my dad’s side of the family, I totally shut out that side of myself for many years.
My father no longer existed. My grandparents and sister no longer existed. Mikey no longer existed.
In the blink of an eye, I lost half my family and I lost myself.
Mike Without Mikey
Once I disconnected with Mikey – with my innermost true nature, my very soul – I lost touch with myself. I had no form of inner direction. I had no choice but to look for the outside world for direction.
Being disconnected from my true nature, I lost track of those things that made Mikey so great. I stopped being playful and became very serious at all times. I stopped being free and became very uptight and reserved. Self-assuredness turned to insecurity, I suppressed my creativity, and I stopped sharing myself with the world.
Without a deep connection to myself, I didn’t know what I truly wanted out of life and I began to just accept whatever the world gave me, whether it made me truly happy or not. I stayed at jobs that I hated, I dated people who didn’t appreciate me, I was friends with people who took advantage of me.
I had no confidence and no self-esteem.
By the time I turned 30, I was making a six-figure salary, I had a couple of technology patents in my name – from the outside world, I had a successful life. I also weighed 380 pounds, I had no friends, and I needed constant distractions from my toxic negative emotions.
The outside world couldn’t tell, but I was at my own personal rock bottom. Something had to change.
Face the Changes
Once I realized something was wrong, I started picking up some books that helped me get in touch with myself. Some of them that impacted me the most are:
- Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
These books helped me realize how far I had strayed from my true nature, but more importantly, they helped me realize that I could reconnect with myself.
I reflected on what I loved when I was a kid. I started reconnecting with Mikey and remembering the things he loved. I started identifying things that I wanted to try – most of them terrified me.
I recognized my playful, creative nature and I wanted to foster it. After doing some research, I discovered improvisational theater and read many articles about the benefits of practicing improv.
After starting improv classes in 2017, I fell in love with my creative side – and I was good at it too! So good that in 2019, I was already on two theater-sponsored improv teams and I was selected for a competition-style show called Denver’s Next Improv Star.
Improv helped me to stay present to the moment, listen to other people instead of being stuck in my head, and taught me to stop holding myself to such perfect standards and just allow the words to come out.
Improv taught me so much about how to learn and practice emotional intelligence skills. Exercises taught me things like controlling my emotions in order to embody different characters and respond realistically in absurd situations. I learned that I could apply this skill to my normal life and I began taking control of my emotional outbursts. I learned to sit calmly and listen to another person criticize me instead of getting upset and lashing out at them as I would do before.
I learned how to start interesting, engaging conversations with people in my normal social life. Instead of the normal “boring” conversations that fizzle out after 2 minutes, I began having amazing conversations with complete strangers. One time, I walked up to a group of people I didn’t even know and offered to improvise a freestyle rap for them based on whatever word was stuck in their head. They were awestruck to meet someone so free and playful in the face of total strangers.
I started challenging myself in other ways, too. I started giving presentations at work about topics like emotional intelligence, maintaining composure while accepting critical feedback from colleagues, and the amazing benefits of practicing improv. I even performed “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd – just me and my guitar – in front of the entire office.
People started telling me I was an entirely different person than the Mike they met just a year or two earlier. I had a new kind of confidence in myself and I was more in-touch with Mikey than ever before.
That newfound confidence allowed me to take the biggest risk in my life. I had always wanted to start a business that would make a great positive impact on the world, but I had always convinced myself I would be a failure and make a fool of myself, so what was the point in trying? This time, though, I decided to go for it. I left my six-figure corporate management job in February 2020 and teamed up with my brother, Tyler, to create Joven Health.
Building a Better Future
Without guidance, I taught myself self-limiting coping mechanisms in childhood that I am still working to overcome as a 33-year-old man. Some people never overcome and end up living a lifetime suffering from mental illness.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can create a better future where people learn positive mental health behaviors from childhood and grow into healthy-functioning adults. It’s not going to be easy and it might not even happen in my lifetime, but we must start investing in the future of our children’s mental health today.
We are leaving future generations with massive problems in the world: global warming, police brutality, a massive wealth gap, and many others. If they’re going to solve the problems we were unable to solve, they’re going to need the confidence, social skills, and excellent mental health habits that our generation has failed to develop in ourselves.
This is why Tyler and I founded Joven Health. With your support, we can create a world where a lifetime of mental health is available for everyone in the world. The future of humanity depends on it.
You can get started today by checking out Joven Health services. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments about our services, or if you would also like to share your mental health story, please contact our clinical care team or contact me directly.
