Mental Health Awareness!

Fear Of Missing Out is real. There is no avoiding it, it is part of our psychology. One of the biggest culprits negatively effecting mental health in the NFT space. It shows itself as anxiety, stress, desperation, depression and insomnia. It results in poor decision making and losing ETH in more cases than not. With multiple projects launching daily, it is impossible to keep up and mint everything. We need to learn to manage our expectations and identify wants over needs and greed over logic. It is a gateway for scammers who prey on the weaknesses created by FOMO, and it is likely the most common reason people fall for scams.

The NFT world seems to run in a different time structure to anything else. A day seems like a week. A week seems like a month. A month seems like a year. As exciting as this fast-paced sector is, it comes with its negative effects on mental health. NFT’s do not sleep. There are mints in every timezone. Floors get swept and pumps or dumps happen in minutes. AMA’s and Twitter Spaces which are vital for managing your investments happen at all times of the day. It is a full time job being a fully committed NFT investor. Trying to manage this with your normie job can be a challenge. Work / NFT / Life Balance is extremely difficult. It is important to plan your time and prioritise what is most important to you, such as family and friends. Set aside NFT time and time for other hobbies in the real world.

The NFT space is a lot of fun and an amazing way to meet creative, passionate people from all walks of life. But, It can have a detrimental effect on the health of your IRL relationships. Being present with your partner, family and friends is vital for any healthy relationship. It is all too easy to slip into multiple digital chats and forget the real world exists. This can create unnecessary pressure on your IRL relationships, causing stress, anxiety, frustration and depression. If other people are noticing your passion is effecting your relationships - Listen. Identify where you can rebalance your time and commitments. If your portfolio goes to zero - you will only have those in your life that matter most.

This is a common cause of stress and anxiety in the NFT space. In such a fast paced, tech heavy sector where being early is generally the key to making generational wealth, we all want to know exactly what is happening and when. Unfortunately almost every project tends to work on extremely short notice. Weeks and months will pass as they build up to launch, only to announce the mint date and price mere days in advance. The stress of trying to ensure you have enough ETH for a mint at short notice is overwhelming. FOMO kicks in and poor decisions are made. Liquidating at a loss, purchasing ETH on credit, doing anything to gather funds for the impending mint.

There are a lot of gamblers in the NFT space. It is highly speculative and there is a lot of money to be made and lost. It is very easy to fall into an obsessive and addictive mindset as you try to flip your way up to financial freedom. The stress, anxiety and depression that can result when trades go wrong can be life destroying. There is also the feeling that you must have every new mint - this is not the case and will never see you becoming content.

The above touches on a number of causes and symptoms effecting people in our communities. By identifying these and discussing them we open the doors to creating a safer, healthier environment for our community. If you are struggling or causing harm to yourself or those around you, please reach out to friends, family or professional help. Most Discords of professional projects will also have a mental heath channel with links and references.