“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

― David Foster Wallace

Back at the beginning of 2021, I was feeling overwhelmed with everything in my life. From running a business to coming home to a house full of kids and responsibilities. Instead of accepting any of those feelings, though, I pretended they didn’t exist and kept trudging away at the monotonous tasks of daily living. Over time, I gradually felt worse, but still refused to speak up.

I don’t know why I felt like I needed to shoulder the weight of everything on my own, but I did.

The pressures of running a business and protecting a family through the pandemic were finally starting to show their gnarly teeth and take a bite. I thought I was doing fine, but I was just avoiding the inevitable. I was pretending not to have feelings about everything happening around us, from the negativity of news outlets, to lost family connections, and everything in between.

At work, I stopped managing my employees and addressing necessary issues. Instead, I just let them do what they wanted. Sometimes they came to work, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they finished projects at the deadline, and sometimes I scraped through and stayed late to finish them myself. Instead of handling it, I lived in fear and was completely trapped by my anxiety. It created a lot of issues. Obviously clients were getting pissed with the quality of work they received, and other employees felt like things weren’t fair. The more everyone complained, the less I gave a shit about any of it. I wanted to watch everything go up in flames, knowing I held the lit match and gasoline, even if that meant tearing down the very thing I worked so hard to build.

I was restless and off beat. I started books and never finished them. I was half listening to podcasts, but never getting to the end. I was in conversation, but only passively. Literally everything was half-assed and unfinished.

At home, it was the same thing. We were overspending and dipping into our savings. We were making large purchases and trying to cover up the discontent with pictures of all the fun we were having and places we were going. Sure, we were having fun, but we were also being incredibly reckless with the choices we were making, and all that would eventually come back around to bite us in the ass. It was almost as if I was deliberately trying to create chaos in all aspects of my life. From the outside perspective, it looked like we were living the dream and figuring out the ropes of life, but inside I was demolishing the very thing we had spent so much time building. We just didn’t care anymore.

My wife and I stopped going on date nights that months prior we raved about the importance of. We stopped communicating and finding any time for each other. With a house full of kids and commitments, it made it easy to blame everything else for our lack of intimacy. Anyone else would feel the same way, wouldn’t they?

Our kids got the leftovers after a long day, which was usually a crabby ass tired dad who didn’t want to do shit with anyone or listen to kids ramped up and screaming throughout the house. I had no energy. I couldn’t bring myself to get down on the ground and play. So many times I stayed late at work and avoided coming home because I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t want to read any bedtime stories, cuddle on the couch, or hear about big events, or attend those big events either. I wanted space and silence, lots of it. I just wanted everyone and everything to go away and leave me alone.

I knew I was being selfish.

I was depressed. My anxiety was through the roof. It seemed like no one noticed that I needed a shoulder to lean on. I needed someone to carry me through the darkness to the other side, and when they didn’t notice, it made me feel even more unimportant.

As with all things, when you avoid them, they eventually come full circle.

There was a big part of me that didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t feel like I could carry the weight, that I could stand to deal with the hard or easy things anymore. I spent more time than I want to admit researching how my family could collect my life insurance if I gave up, how I could make it look like an accident. I dreamed of abruptly turning the wheel off the highway at high speeds, and just letting the universe take me into a different, easier life, with no responsibilities and commitments.

It was this weird mix of guilt for feeling this way, while also not feeling like I could do anything about it.

From an outside perspective, depression seems easily fixable, like the person should drink the self-help kool-aid and then be fixed. Read the books, listen to the podcasts, take long walks, meditate, work on your breathing, get lots of sleep, etc. But when you’re deep into those dark foggy feelings, getting out of bed feels like work. Showering feels like climbing Mount Everest. You stop answering your phone and responding to people who care about you, and that you care about as well. Everything just feels like work.

I felt like I may not come out the other side of my depression. I mean, I’ve been depressed and felt pretty shitty before, but nothing compared to this.

What Changed?

A few months later, a friend mentioned how important and helpful therapy had been for her on her Instagram story one day, and it got me thinking. A small nudge of curiosity, but not enough to tip me over yet.

I had always contemplated going to therapy. I knew I had lots of childhood trauma that needed worked out, and current problems I could use some guidance in, but I was scared. I don’t know WHAT scared me so badly, but it seemed like a massive step to take. Would people judge me? Would my kids think something was wrong with me? Would my partner be embarrassed of me? Would I dig something up that I didn’t actually want to deal with? Would I have to confront family members and create boundaries in my life? Would it even make me better? What if I don’t want to be better?

All these questions rattled through my head, creating more space between launching myself into therapy and running the other way.

Plus, my small town had limited resources for mental health, so it probably wasn’t meant to be.

Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

Here are a few more excuses I used:
My insurance probably won’t cover it.
I don’t have enough money to pay for it out of pocket.
I don’t have time to meet someone every week for an hour.
It’s a small town, and I don’t want everyone to know my problems.
What if I get paired up with a therapist I already know in person?
I don’t even know what I would talk about.
Are my problems even real?
Maybe it’s too late to fix me.

But they were all just excuses, because it felt uncomfortable. Discomfort means facing and admitting I have some shit to work through.

Next Steps

Eventually, I realized that by avoiding getting the help I desperately needed, I was making everyone’s life around me miserable. I welcomed chaos and negativity instead of fostering growth and conquering hard things. I didn’t want to teach my kids that. I didn’t want to be that person.

I found a website called Psychology Today where I could search for therapists in the Portland area (or anywhere) within specific parameters that I found important. Like insurance coverage, issues I wanted to work through, sexuality, types of therapy, etc., which made it easy for me to find a therapist that might fit my needs. I emailed multiple people in my search and waited for a reply (which can take a while). Definitely don’t get discouraged if they don’t all write back or if you don’t mesh well with the first one that reaches out.

After having a short 10-15 minute call, I found a therapist I wanted to work with. They fit all my needs, and my insurance covered everything. The nice part about this was it checked off multiple aspects of the things I was worried about. I didn’t have to meet with someone in my small town, which meant I wouldn’t know them beforehand. My insurance covered it, so I didn’t have to worry about a lot of out of pocket expenses. This eased some of the stress and worry that came along with doing something out of my comfort zone.

But I was nervous as hell for my first appointment. I was worried about what I would say or what we might talk about. I was shaking and incredibly quiet for the first 10-15 minutes of our initial teletherapy appointment, which was basically just going over standard questions and nothing life altering.

What I realized after that initial appointment was that I grew this fear into a massive monster that felt bigger than it actually was. Sure, it was scary and uncomfortable. Talking about your problems is never an easy task, but taking the first step was the hardest part. Getting to a position where I had the courage to say I needed help was difficult.

Sometimes it takes stepping back and reaching out to someone who may have experienced similar feelings or scenarios to get comfortable. If I hadn’t reached out to that particular friend I knew was going to therapy, I probably never would have been brave enough to take the first step myself. But curiosity got the best of me, and I took the plunge.

Turns out it was worth it.

We all need a safe place to work out our shit and bring to the surface things about our past that were never addressed. It doesn’t make us bad, or wrong, or unloveable for needing to work out the kinks. Everyone has kinks, some of us are just too afraid of what that might look like on the other side to ever get the help we desperately need.

I hope you don’t let fear and embarrassment decide for you.

Here’s a short after therapy audio review fresh out of my first appointment: