The Whole Truth: Reasons for my Depression & Anxiety and What Can be Done

It’s not very often that I rarely spend a post talking about myself. Generally, I try to take my experiences and use them to try to inspire someone. Maybe this will if I’m lucky. But what I’m trying to do here is another attempt at letting my loyal readers know the writer behind the posts.

Though it has gone undiagnosed to this point, I do believe I suffer from some form of anxiety as well as depression. I tend to get anxious in larger crowds, though I think that had a lot to do with spending a lot of time being isolated–for all intents and purposes, anyway– during the height of the Covid pandemic. Social distancing? I thought. I’m a gamer. I can do this without any problem at all. As I sit here now, however, I am painfully reminded of how incorrect that assessment was.

Before the pandemic and even before my fiscal irresponsibility forced me to do the unthinkable and move back in with my parents, I was a social person. I went to local bars and restaurants often, sometimes to eat and/or drink, but most of the time, I simply went out and about to socialize with people.

In my teens and early twenties, I was at my local bowling alley. Sometimes you would find me on the lanes. Other times, I’d be at the pool tables. Most times, I was wandering about the place and socializing with anyone who would give me the time of day. That continued to a lesser extent into my mid-twenties to early thirties. At this point, of course, I was old enough to drink. But, contrary to what most people may think based on how many of those nights ended, I was there more for the social interactions than the alcohol. At least that’s what I told myself when things got bad.

I have never thought of myself as someone with an alcohol problem. I rarely drink nowadays. There was a time, however, when I did lean on the bottle fairly heavily. There is no one I can or want to blame for this except myself. But during my time on my own, if you will, I found myself drinking very heavily. I can admit now that I found myself actively searching for triggers, excuses to “need” a drink. I would use it the same way anyone would use any other drug; it was a temporary escape from reality. As is often the case, that escape was very much temporary, and coming back to the real world, as it were, was a painful realization the next day.

Growing up different from everyone else, as I did, predisposes someone to have at least mild trust issues. I can’t speak for all. In my experience, however, trusting people was–and still is–difficult. Cynical as this may sound, you never know what someone is saying behind your back compared to what they say or do in front of you. The key is not to think about what people think of you. If you spend too much time worrying about what other people think or what you think they will say or do, you won’t get anything done. This blog is proof of how much easier following your dreams becomes when you stop worrying about what’s around and behind you and focus on the road ahead. That kind of change in mindset doesn’t happen overnight; it certainly didn’t for me. Depression and anxious moments are always going to be there. But once you learn how to contend with them and think the right thoughts, you start heading in the right direction. That’s my piece of advice for you today: Leave the past where it is and focus on the road ahead. If you spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror, you’ll always be in park. Think forward and put your life in Drive.