I’m a 37 year old IT Cloud Engineer, I have a great job, great house, love my family, but recently I lost my dad to cancer after a 16 year battle. My brother likes to say cancer had to cheat to win, it was all because he broke his back and had to be taken off his treatments for to long. Cancer is a fickle bitch…

Prior to losing my dad, I lost my best friend, who apparently dropped dead in his backyard. I don’t know the specifics and frankly I don’t want to know. Either way, these events effected me, and I started having massive panic attacks and anxiety issues, constantly afraid for my health even though there’s nothing wrong with me. It took a few months of therapy to realize I needed medical help.

I was put on antidepressants and everything changed, I was a human again for the first time in like a decade. I was happy, I was successful, but now, idk if I’m just having a midlife crisis, or if maybe I’m just feeling depressed again, but I just feel lost. I’ve lost one of the few people in my life I’ve modeled my success after, my father, I lost the other person I could hang out with and empathize with, I have my wife and I love her to death, but my friend had been that person that was just there to hang out and make you feel better, and now they’re gone. I’m still struggling to cope and it’s just really hard and I need a place to vent.

Anyone have any ideas on how to cope and move on as well as control the anxiety without the need to be medicated?

TL;DR: Lost my dad and my best friend in the course of two years and it’s been rough. Now I feel lost and confused constantly. Cloudy brain and I just don’t want to be complacent in life and need some advice. Thanks for reading.

Edit: just wanted to say thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I’m going to take the advice I’ve been given here to heart and try some new things to try and give me some direction. Thank you all again so much for the help, it really made me feel a lot better.

  • banana_meccanica
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I found my kind of happiness by not having any friends, probably not the best advisor for you, dealing with others makes things much harder because we are all actually ghost in this lifetime, I mean we live for a very few moment in an endless time and family and friends can dissaper in any second, society want to feed everyone with the wrong message that we are immortal and bonds matters most of everything, but this is not correct, we are very mortal and your experience confirm it like everyone at some point addressed, we only live the present and that’s all, we are in fact animals not gods. This is mine position to dealing with anxiety and depression, sure this discussion are more complex of this point. Condolence for your losses.