I vividly remember a billboard on West 72nd Street in New York City that read:
“Depression is a flaw in chemistry, not character.”
This was in the 1990s, right near Gray's Papaya, and I must have passed it dozens of times on my way to my girlfriend’s apartment. At the time, the billboard seemed progressive. It challenged the old stigma that depression was a personal weakness.
But looking back, I can see that this message replaced one false story with another.
It told me that depression was a biological defect—something broken in my brain that needed to be chemically corrected. I didn’t know then that the “chemical imbalance” theory was never solidly backed by science. It was more marketing than medicine, but it shaped how I saw myself for years.
I was, and still am, pro-science. Back then, I read the Science Times every Tuesday. I still have cutouts of old articles I had found interesting. (Yes, we bought physical newspapers back then, kiddo.)
And yet, science gets things wrong. That billboard told me there was a biological error in my wiring that needed pharmaceutical correction. My therapist told me the same thing. It was my serotonin, or so I was told.
It was never the serotonin
I wish I had known back then that I was being sold a theory that was never solidly grounded in evidence. Zoom ahead a few decades and the serotonin theory has largely collapsed under scrutiny. Modern research has found no good evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin or a chemical imbalance.
For those who haven’t yet heard this news, this might seem shocking. It can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you. As someone who has always been pro-science, this wasn't an easy pill to swallow for me either. It feels like a betrayal.
But this wasn't just an innocent mistake. It was a convenient fiction, told for decades by doctors and drug companies. The story held on long after the evidence fell apart. Not only that, but you weren’t told the truth even after it became evident. For example, in 2022, a comprehensive review of study after study totally demolished the serotonin theory of depression.
It was a myth. A profitable one, but a myth nonetheless. This doesn’t mean your pain isn’t real. It means the explanation you were given for it was not. And that fact changes everything.
I spent most of my twenties convinced there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I was told I wasn’t just sad or anxious—but actually defective. Like I was missing some essential piece that everyone else got at birth. I’d watch other people navigate life and jobs and money and think, How the fuck do they make this look so easy?
Today, I want to go back and tell that struggling young man that his racing thoughts and emotional overwhelm weren’t character flaws. I want to hug him and say:
“You’re not broken. You have ADHD, my boy.”
The pathology machine
I had no idea I had ADHD until my forties. This is a common phenomenon. It’s not that more of us have ADHD than in the past; it’s that psychiatric medicine is finally labeling it better.
Not that ADHD is a good label. It’s not accurate. I don’t have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder because it’s not a disorder. It’s a neurotype.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—the bible of mental health—looooves to pathologize things like ADHD. It doesn’t see a nervous system responding to stress and overwhelm. It doesn’t see a natural brain variation that probably served our hunter-gatherer ancestors for millennia.
The DSM just sees a disorder. Even if your anxiety is a totally normal reaction to, for example, the utter collapse of democratic institutions in your country—the DSM will try to label it as a pathology.
I was misdiagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in my 20s, and now I'm misdiagnosed with ADHD in my 50s. ADHD is much closer to the truth, but I’m still seen—incorrectly—as someone with a disorder.
You don’t need a label to heal
Had I gone the full pharmaceutical route, there’s a good chance I’d be dead. Over 50% of patients don’t get results from antidepressants, and I would have been one of them. I was misdiagnosed. I didn’t need antidepressants, and I’m glad I couldn’t afford them back then! If anything, I needed support for my nervous system—not pills for the wrong “disorder”.
I don’t knock those who use ADHD meds. They can be a game changer. But I just don’t need them. Qigong gave me what I needed to regulate my nervous system. It helped me all those years even though I didn’t tell it that I had ADHD.
Qigong didn’t care if my depression came from ADHD, low serotonin, or living paycheck to paycheck. It just went straight to work, from day one, healing my nervous system and getting my vital energy flowing. It doesn’t need a diagnosis to work.
In fact, qigong did such a good job that I made it all the way to my late 40s without even needing an updated diagnosis. It regulated my nervous system enough that I could function, adapt, write a bestselling book, and heal without ever knowing why my brain worked the way it did. And it didn’t do this by masking symptoms or numbing me out.
You were never broken
Your nervous system is responding to life, stress, and its own unique wiring exactly as it was designed to. Your sensitivity, your big emotions, your empathy, your racing thoughts—these aren't bugs in your system. They are aspects of your authentic self.
This is what qigong taught me. It showed me that the goal isn't to become "normal" or fix what's wrong with me. The goal is to learn how my nervous system works—and then work with it instead of against it.
I'm not against medication or therapy. But whatever tools you choose, remember that you're learning to regulate your nervous system, not correcting a design flaw.
Your brain works the way it works. Your nervous system responds the way it responds. And there are practices—like qigong—that can help you work with that reality instead of fighting it.
I wish I could have told my twenty-something self that his struggles weren't character defects. His racing mind and emotional overwhelm weren't evidence of being broken, and he wasn't missing some essential piece everyone else got at birth. So I wrote this article for him, and now I’m sharing it with you.
Perhaps your younger self needs it too. If any part of this feels familiar, maybe it's time to stop trying to fix yourself and start learning how you work instead.
About me: I’m Sifu Anthony, a longtime teacher of qigong and tai chi, and the author of the bestselling book Flowing Zen. These arts helped me heal from depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and ADHD burnout—when nothing else did. I write for people who’ve been failed by the system but haven’t given up on healing. People who value science but also know what it’s like to be dismissed, misdiagnosed, or gaslit by it. I don’t teach mystical fixes—I teach practical tools for mental health, trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, ADHD, and pain relief. I live quietly in New Mexico with my dog, my garden, and a view of the Sandia Mountains. More about me →
I cried again. I believed I needed fixing for a long, long time. I'm trying to unlearn that now.
Great words as always Sifu.