I’m going to keep being open about my mental health situation–because my mind’s a mess right now and when I write about it people message me and say nice things.

I had been dealing with wildly intense anxiety for two weeks and on Monday I had an amazing therapy session and that flavor of anxiety has been off the table since. My therapist helped me identify the voice in my head with being the voice of another person from my childhood, and once that connection was made that inner voice no longer felt like “my” voice. I was suddenly able to find compassion for the source of that mean voice and compassion for myself.

In the peace that followed that therapy session swept in a crippling depression that’s lasted the past two days and honestly it seems just as intense as the anxiety. It makes me feel crazy. Oddly, and thankfully, the anti-anxiety medication seems to be pretty effective at knocking out the depression and I’m realizing just how related the two must be to one another.

What I know for sure is that my mind is way too messy now to be looking for work. I unsquirreled the small savings I had and have decided to do a full stop to job searching for now. I need to get my head in order and the job searching anxiety is crippling me. Tomorrow I am going to join the gym for the first time in years and I’m going to focus on working out and walking and whatever else will move me back towards a stable mind. Hopefully I will be in a better place in a few weeks.

Thank you to everyone for your kind words and support. I really appreciate it. One thing I’m grateful for for this experience is that already my sense of compassion for other folks has grown considerably, and that may not have happened if I didn’t get this chance to work through this myself.