Your brain wasn't built for juggling existential dread & financial worries & despair for your fellow citizens & fear of pandemics & nuclear threats & divorce & job instability all at once. Your brain was built for, "Shit! A bear! I gotta kill the bear! Wow, that was scary. Hey, bear for dinner!"

April 08, 2026 - 00:44 UTC

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🧵 It 'bears' repeating.
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I mean, I have a degree in neuroscience and one of my mentors was a big stress guy and this is pretty correct. Stressors are supposed to be acute, short term challenges and stress responses are there to get you out of emergencies safely. They become majorly maladaptive if sustained long term 🤷
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Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not a doctor or scientist. I'm a television writer with a liberal arts degree from a state school. But I have managed depression & anxiety my whole life, including three ROUGH years as a caregiver at the end of my mom's life, & I've learned stuff & formed opinions.
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Thank you all the same; your thread articulates something I haven't had the words for, even as I battle my own depression, while feeling despair over my deteriorating language skills, the reading slump, etc. There's so little space left in my brain right now non-emergency, non-essential stuff.
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Our memories too. “That little valley over there is where we lost Orok and also Dorok to that huge furry claw man. Avoid that little valley.”
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