oh, it’s mental health awareness week. okay.

four years ago i was diagnosed with moderate-severe depression. one of the manifestations is anxiety — social anxiety, nausea, agoraphobia.

i’m learning to predict how this colors my life and my view of the world.

you are not alone.

one of the most interesting exercises for me has been to revisit events and decisions of my past and realize how my depression affected them; what i thought was misfortune or oppression or misunderstanding, was, in fact, depression clouding my view from the truth.

this perspective has let me view current things more accurately. i can now catch — almost in real-time — when i am inaccurately assessing a situation. my biggest problems now, are when i don’t catch it immediately, and the spiral has begun.

the next step of my improvement is to recover the spiral before it gets too deep. i am working on this with meditation, introspection, sitrep and exercises that break me out of looping thoughts and obsessing.