You are the main character: Therapist reacts to “The Search” by NF
“Last year I had a breakdown
Thoughts tellin' me I'm lost gettin' too loud
Had to see a therapist, then I found out
Somethin' funny's goin' on up in my house
Yeah, I started thinkin' maybe I should move out
You know, pack my cart, take a new route.”
“The Search” lyrics by NF
Something that I think is really interesting is that there are all these people in white in the video for “The Search.” It has this vibe of a psychiatric hospital, but also, the music in the background has this cinematic journey feel to it. That’s really interesting when coupled with the title of the song, “The Search,” which feels like something that could be a psychological thriller: like a movie, like a mission, like a quest, “The Search.”
To have this cinematic undertone is really interesting. I mean, there are so many powerful things in this song. His dialogue with himself is really interesting, but I think it's interesting how he calls it:
“Something funny is going on up in my house.”
He points to his head.
“Yeah, I started thinking maybe I should move out.”
His head is his home. His mind is his home.
“Clean up my yard. Get the noose out.”
That sounds like suicidality to me, but it's interesting to call your mind your home. That sounds painful. Living in your mind sounds painful, and that's what it sounds like is happening to him.
“It's probably going to be a long journey,
but hey, it's worth it though.”
That line alone is so encouraging in a way, that there's something that's shifting in the way that he's talking to himself. He’s like, it's probably going to be a long journey. A journey, an exploration, a search.
“Way that I been thinkin' is cinematic, it's beautiful
Man, I don't know if I'm makin' movies or music videos
Yeah, the sales can rise
Doesn't mean much though when your health declines.”
I think I've got it. What's really interesting about this is, we think about the idea of something being cinematic. When we think about a really great movie, we want there to be more. We want sequels. We want Lord of the Rings. We want Harry Potter. And when we think about the journey that each of these characters are on, we don't judge them based on one point in their journey going wrong. We actually expect that, because we acknowledge with movies and with characters that having something go wrong is just a part of their search for what's coming. But we often don't give ourselves that grace.
I think it's really interesting, these movie analogies that he's making. The word that he's using, “the search,” that's how he's framing his mental health journey: not as a problem to be solved, but a search. To be on a journey. To be a character in a movie.
In any good movie, there are lots of points of conflict. There are lots of places where they take a step forward, and then another one, and then maybe a step back. That's part of the process of them searching for more, of them getting what they're looking for, right?
It's just a search. It's not a problem, it's just a part of the plot.
“See, we've all got somethin' that we trapped inside
That we try to suffocate, you know, hopin' it dies
Try to hold it underwater but it always survives
Then it comes up outta nowhere like an evil surprise
Then it hovers over you to tell you millions of lies
You don't relate to that? Must not be as crazy as I am.”
We've all got something that we have trapped inside, that we try to suffocate, hoping it dies.
“Try to hold it underwater, but it always survives.”
We all have that. We all have pain that we try to shove down, that we're constantly trying to manipulate, trying to fix, trying to rip out of us, hoping that it dies.
Do you feel like you have something that's trapped inside that you're trying to shove down? That is always coming back and telling you lies? Go comment on our anonymous support forum and we’ll be there for you.
“The point I'm makin' is the mind is a powerful place.”
Earlier, he talked about his mind as his home. Now he's talking about his mind as a place. He's taking himself outside of it, so he's able to look at it. He's not inside his head, his home.
I don't think the mind should be anyone's home. I think our hearts, our souls, our true essence, our identities exist outside of our mind. But he's saying the mind is a powerful place. What does he say?
“What you feed, it can affect you in a powerful way.”
He just described something so powerful here that so many of us experience. There is a pain in us that we try to shove down, that we try to kill. That's one thing.
The other thing is it always seems to pop up at the worst moments, and it often shows up as thoughts in our mind that tell us millions of lies. Then it hovers over you to tell you millions of lies.
The point I'm making is that the mind is a powerful place when we shove pain down and we don't process it. That pain often comes up in our mind as thoughts about how terrible we are, and we can observe the way that the mind impacts us in what he's pointing to. We can observe it just by watching.
Picture yourself here, watching yourself talking to you in the mirror. That's kind of what he's saying. If every day you look in the mirror and you're telling yourself, “you'll never be great, you'll never be great.” Just watch what happens when that's the script that you're playing over and over.
That's what this song does. It allows you to pull yourself out of your mind as your home and move to your mind as a place that you can observe.
This is important. When we stop identifying so much with the mind as truth and start identifying with the mind as a tool that impacts us, our life, and our experiences, then that gives us power over it. Our mind has a pattern.
What we put into our mind impacts the output of our lives. So if you're always putting in hate? It's not that you're not good enough and that's why you're not going to be something great. It's that all you've been feeding your brain is hate, and that's impacting the output. It's not something intrinsically wrong with you.
When we identify too much with our thoughts, when we identify too much with our mind, then that becomes who we believe we are. But our thoughts are just thoughts. They're dependent on what we feed them. Our brain is just doing a job.
“On a road right now that I can't predict
Tell me "Tone that down," but I can't resist
Y'all know that sound, better raise your fist
The search begins, I'm back, so enjoy the trip.”
Framing mental health as a search instead of a problem gives you power. We are all searching for something. When we phrase it as a search instead of a problem, it gives us an invitation to step into the journey. The search begins, right?
This is my film, this is my plot. This is just how it's all unfolding. I'm the hero in this journey. I'm not a villain. I'm not something that needs to be fixed.
Part of that journey, a part of that search, becomes recognizing the way that our mind impacts us with the way that it tells us stories. “Oh, you're doing this wrong,” or “you're bad, you're not good enough. You'll never get there. You'll never find it.”
By becoming an observer to your own thoughts like you would to a movie — if you saw a main character in a movie that you liked going through something hard, and you watched them saying those terrible things about themselves too, you wouldn't say, “oh, those things must be true.”
You would say, “oh my gosh, they're going through something really hard right now, and they're just searching. They're on their journey. This is the part of their journey. They need to give themselves more grace.”
So you could observe the way that you speak to yourself on your search and try to frame it that way too, because that's what you journey is: a search. You're not a problem. Your mental health struggles might feel difficult to work through, but they're not something that's going to prevent you from success or feeling joy in your life.
Use this song to remind yourself of the importance of looking at your thoughts, of not just automatically believing them, of not identifying with your mind as your home.
If you want to be someone who helps other people on their mental health search on their journey, check out my five songs to be a better friend.
