Dr. Scott Eilers

Thursday

It can be incredibly discouraging when a treatment works for someone with the same diagnosis as you but doesn’t work for you. It’s easy to either blame ourselves for this and assume we did something wrong or didn’t try hard enough or to simply assume defeat and conclude that we’re hopeless and beyond help. But it usually doesn’t mean any of those things…

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My reaction to people who don’t have chronic mental health issues telling people who do have chronic mental health issues that they aren’t trying hard enough. Re-post from 2021.

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Thank you all so much for the listens, ratings, and reviews! Looking forward to continuing to bring you insights and strategies on living your best life, even with chronic depression and anxiety!

Anger, more than other emotions for most people, is a feeling we generally try to avoid. Anger is seen as unsafe, destructive, and out-of-control. And is certainly can be these things.

But anger is not inherently more damaging or dangerous than any other feeling. It’s simply part of the spectrum of human emotion, and it plays a critical role in our relationships with ourselves and with others. Anger is also something we tend to feel more often when we’re depressed or anxious.

Any emotion can destroy your life if you don’t know how to handle it safely, even pleasant feelings like love or pleasure. So many of us are taught incorrect strategies to manage our anger, and that’s what leads to these problematic outcomes. That’s why skillfully managing anger is the topic of this week’s YouTube video and podcast episode.

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You cannot improve your mental health by simply absorbing information. Knowing and understanding coping skills provides no value whatsoever if you cannot put them into practice. If you want to win this war, you have to train your mind to use the tools you’re learning about.

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Why is this half my caseload right now? They’re working so hard 😫😫

Putting your experiences, beliefs, values, and feelings out there into the world can be terrifying. But if you really think about it, keep them inside should be even more terrifying…

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Book 2 has a name! It’s coming along really well and I’m incredibly excited to share more with you.

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These are two paragraphs of a five page PDF that will go out next week! Hit that link in my bio if you want more!

I don’t live the way I do because I’m trying to “get rich or die trying.” I don’t do it because I think my life is worthless if I don’t achieve fame. I don’t do it because I’m trying to get ahead of anyone else. I’m just trying to stay ahead of my enemy.

I’m going to be very, very busy in the second half of 2023 (and probably also for the rest of my life 😂). If you want to keep up with everything I’m doing and get a TON of FREE content including lots and lots of book 2 chapters, you’re going to want to sign up for my weekly newsletter. The link is in my bio.

I want this statement to die. I’m sure people who say this mean well in most cases, but you have to really think about what you’re telling people. “Everything” includes a lot of heinous, evil, senseless acts.

Everything you take in has to get through your mind and your body before it can mean anything to you. If you neglect your most important task - taking excellent care of yourself - everything you build around yourself will be of limited value.

Support from friends and family. Pride and accomplishment from work and school. Joy and relaxation from hobbies and interests. All of these must first pass through your physical and mental barriers before they mean anything to you.

Neglecting the care of yourself to focus on external factors is an act of diminishing returns. Your physical and mental health will ultimately have a much greater impact on your quality of life than anything you can build or achieve in the external world.

It’s really easy to fall into patterns of inaction and burnout when dealing with depression and anxiety. When a break involves shutting your mind and/body off, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get going again today. Try to find ways of taking a break that keep your mind and body active so that you can get back to your main task once you feel ready.

Not every unpleasant emotional experience is your fault. Not all of the sadness, anger, frustration, or hopelessness you feel is a result of your depression or your anxiety.

Sometimes we look for the negativity. Sometimes we take a good situation and scrutinize it, looking for every flaw, every way it could go wrong, every part of it that isn’t what we wish it could be.

And sometimes we cannot help but see these things because they’re front and center in our experiences. Some of what we experience is objectively unpleasant.

Try not to blame yourself, shame yourself, or invalidate yourself for these feelings. There is value in differentiating between when you’re “being negative” and when you’re dealing with an inherently negative situation.

Managing a human life is a monumental task. It’s utterly overwhelming and almost incomprehensible at times. It’s completely understandable if you find yourself frequently feeling burnt out from the stress of it all.

But if you don’t consciously select and execute the direction your life is headed in, someone else will choose it for you. Or nobody will. Either way, ending up with a life you enjoy is about as rare as winning the lottery if you chooose one of those paths.

That’s why, despite all of the difficulties that go along with, I still recommend option #3. Nobody is more qualified for that job than you are.

Many people assume that I’m relatively unbothered by stress because I generally manage to maintain a positive attitude despite being extremely busy. I actually despise stress and structure my life in a way that is designed to avoid as much unnecessary stress as possible.

It’s often the transitions that drain us so much more than the busy parts of our days. It takes tremendous physical and mental energy to go from being inactive to active. It can take hours of stress, threats, bargaining, and caffeine to go from being awake to being functional. That’s why I structure my days so that I only transition into and out of being busy once per day, and I allow for each transition to be gradual and gentle.

I like to think of my days as resembling a plateau. Upon awakening, there is a smooth and gradual transition into being awake, alert, and functional. My peak is the entire middle of my day. After that I start to wind down, making sure to complete or defer any remaining tasks well before I go to bed so that I can have a clear mind and calm energy when I’m trying to sleep.

Mental health IS physical health.

And this is NOT a full list; just a few examples.

People are dying from mental illness. Please take it seriously.

Do not underestimate the healing properties of spite.

You don’t have to forgive someone, let them back in, or trust them again just because they’ve apologized. They owe you an emotional debt and they need to actually pay it, not just commit to paying it.

This is just a comment I made yesterday but I felt like it could be it’s own post so now it is.

Being severely depressed the year “The Matrix” hit theaters was really unfortunate timing…

Staying regulated when someone is dysregulated is helpful; minimizing or invalidating their feelings is not. The intensity of their emotional response will increase rather than decrease because they feel misunderstood and alienated.

So many people don’t know this word yet so many experience it. There’s nothing quite like it. It feels a bit like how I imagine having your soul ripped out of your body would feel.

You can’t reasonably expect to excel at anything in life if you treat it like a side quest.

Life can change dramatically in a short period of time. Sometimes it’s just a matter of finally getting your foundation in place.

You don’t choose a survival response. It happens instantly, like a reflex.

If this lands for you, look into the Yerkes-Dodson law. The relationship between stress and productivity is nonlinear.

These days my biggest verbal aggressor is myself. I have to keep that @$$hole in check sometimes.

Sometimes I get worried because my kids seem more “childlike” than I remember being at the same age. But then I ask myself, isn’t that the point? We “grow out” of childlike behaviors when life demands more out of us than we have. If I’m able to delay that process for my children a bit longer than it was delayed for me, maybe that just means I’m doing a good job.

Don’t panic or quit if the people closest to you don’t instantly respond positively to changes you’re making. It doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It just means you’re doing something different.

And you’re usually left to do it alone since you’ve been isolated from your support network.



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Thank you for being willing to challenge the lies the world has told you.

Thank you for wanting more from life than the bare minimum.

Thank you for recognizing that you did not make yourself this way.

Thank you for understanding that you are the most powerful being in your life.

Thank you for reading my words.

Thank you for sharing your own words with me.

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🥲

Sometimes people request information that they don’t deserve to have.

This is so very misunderstood. A person only has so many resources in a day, and the amount of resources it takes for us to care for ourselves varies dramatically from one person to the next. Some of us can work OR take care of ourselves but cannot do both at the same time. When we try to work and aren’t able to take care of ourselves we eventually become unable to work because of the decline in our health that results from being unable to care for ourselves. This is a completely valid form of a disability.

SO MANY of my therapy clients!
Thanks to for this incredible reminder.

Put your resources in the places where they create the most positive change.