A Solution to Depression and Anxiety

I suffer from depression. It has been a struggle my whole life. Lately, it has been accompanied by crippling anxiety. Monday I wasn't able to leave my apartment. I didn't take phone calls. I didn't return texts, or check my emails.

I watch and read on this issue as much as I can. I focus on how I can get better. I have tried the drugs, but they leave me an emotional zombie. I don't feel anything, and I don't think that is a path to wellness. It is a path to making a drug company rich, but not to wellness. I know they really help some people. I am not knocking drugs, if they work for you fabulous. They don't work for me.

Now in my study I learned that connection is the answer. While depression and anxiety tend toward personal disconnection, it is in finding connection that people get better. One of my goals for this year is to really connect. For personal reasons in my job, and other factors in my life, I have been disconnecting on a universal scale.

Colleagues are useful, and good to have, however it is not the same as a real connection with a friend. Due to a variety of factors the one friend I had that was also a colleague got a dream job. All of this led to feeling adrift, and alone. Matters only got worse when I lost my job.

Depression and Anxiety are not logical. In fact they are absurd. It is absurd that someone who communicates for a living finds it so hard in "real life." It is absurd that someone who has a doctoral level degree and almost 10 years of experience in a communications field, finds real communication so challenging. Let alone the thought of leaving my apartment makes me vomit on my worst days. It doesn't make sense. I know that. But knowing that, and feeling differently about it are two different things.  Spending hours on esoteric questions, that I can't do anything about is pointless. I am aware of that. Again, it doesn't help knowing it.

As you can imagine with my background I don't trust easily. However I am a man of solutions. If connection is the answer then that is my goal. I have no way of knowing if I am doing this right. My plan is to mentor one person, and find a mentor. Additionally it is to really connect by the end of the year with people I have known for at least five years who proved themselves worthy of trust. 

Facebook doesn't count, because people on the internet spend so much time pretending to be someone else, the connections aren't real. It is only in real life, that we can find the types of connections that allow us to know and be known. And it is in these real connections that we find the solution to depression and anxiety.

Since I find writing very cathartic, I am working on writing more blog posts, and shorter ones, with less time spent on adding photos and videos, and a slightly different format. I recently outlined a script with a suicidal main character. It's sort of a rom com without the rom, because that doesn't happen for everyone, and rom coms are so full of lies that too many people believe already.

I am also looking for my readers to submit some of their healthy recipes for the cookbook, so this post doesn't have a recipe. Because I would like to include some of your recipes. I know you read these posts, because when I meet you in person you tell me how much they mean to you. So I want to include you in the conversation. I want you to connect with me, and with each other.

It is in the connections that life gets its meaning. This is why love is something so many people spend so much of their time searching for everywhere. I remind myself everyday that I have good friends, and while I may be single I am not alone in the world.

Good journey my friend.