Have you heard this one before?

I obviously don't like being anxious, but it's how I drive myself. If I (meditated / went to therapy / got on anti-anxiety meds / etc), I would lose my edge.

I've had multiple close friends use some form of this argument to justify why they avoid working on their mental health: that their demons (anxiety or anything else) fuel their success, and that they couldn't succeed without them. Even if we grant that "keeping your edge" is a worthwhile goal, in my experience this argument doesn't hold up factually. The reality is instead:

In childhood, your demons did shape your ability to be successful, but that's done. As an adult:

  1. They're not helping anymore.
  2. They're actively holding you back.

I once heard someone articulate the argument succintly:

Imagine that you had schizophrena, and that you frequently hallucinated being chased by monsters. As a result, you spent a lot of time running away from these monsters. What would happen after you got treatment, stopped hallucinating the monsters, and stopped needing to run? You'd still be in great cardio shape.

The problem with the "my demons give me my edge" perspective is that it fails to distinguish between developing skills and using those skills. If, as a child, your demons made you feel like you had no choice but to succeed, then you spent your childhood pushing yourself, becoming comfortable with hard work and stress, and generally cultivating habits, traits, and skills that allow you to succeed as an adult. But now that you are an adult, the development is done. Your success is predicated on your having certain skills, not on the factors that led you to develop those skills in the first place.

What's more, your demons are likely holding you back by driving you to waste your energy on unimportant things.

The more severe the mental illness is, the more people believe [the false projections of] their mind.

– Dr. Alok Kanojia

Mental illness impairs our ability to rationally assess what is required in a given situation. To expand on the hallucination example, while it's useful to be in great running shape, it's actively harmful to feel driven to run all the time. If you're always running, even when it's not necessary, then you'll always be exhausted. On the occasions when it really is necessary, your energy will already be spent. What you really want is to have the judgment to know when running is justified, and otherwise to conserve your energy. To paraphrase the Serenity Prayer:

Give me the calm to rest when I can, the fitness to run when I must, and the mental health to be able to tell the difference.

So if you find yourself avoiding working on your mental health because you're worried you'll sabatoge your own success, consider that not working on your mental health may be the real act of sabotage.