YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I'm 46, and have been dealing with depression and anxiety for most of my life.

It's always difficult, but the last five years have been horrific. The depression accompanied a number of recession-related Bad Things (lost my job, savings and home), plus I lost my home again in Hurricane Sandy.

The depression itself ended in the spring of 2013, but since then I've been experiencing terrible, terrible social anxiety. I know I should join a support group, but I'm too frightened.

I've never felt as alone as I do now. I'm tired on a cosmic level. I'm just so sick of carrying this thing around.

I am seeing a psychiatrist & therapist, and we're working on it. But it's not getting better. Today I start a new med, and hopefully it'll do something.

I don't know if this is a positive or negative thing to say, but I believe anxiety is so deeply connected to our perceived basic survival, that dealing or healing our anxiety is connect with a great sense of threat and fear. For me, it does give me some relief from the pressure I put on myself, in the sense, that I can't be angry at myself for not making faster progress, because I'm working with changing my core survival view of myself and the world.

I had to be in an alert state all the time, otherwise I got myself in trouble and trouble always lead to abuse. So I just got used to be in a constant state of alarm and in my mind, that naturally lead to depression, when I got crushed by the accumulated fear/stress/worry.

I do recommend a support group, because there's something different to gain from telling your story to peers, rather than only to a therapist. I think they go hand in hand, therapy and groups, but I also think treating anxiety requires a leap of faith, which is almost impossible, when you're trapped by anxiety. Telling my story in therapy, helped me understand and accept what happened to me and how it affected me and my behavior in life. Telling my story in groups, but also hearing other people's stories, helped me too. When I heard their stories, I were able to feel compassion with them, to feel they didn't deserve what happened, to feel angry on their behalves and I think, that had an effect on myself, allowing myself to feel compassion and anger on my own behalf.

In short, dealing with anxiety is scary and deep rooted, so it's perfectly rational to scared and avoidant, when trying to change.

So it's okay to be frightened and sometimes you need time to build up courage to confront fear in therapy/groups ect.

Best of luck

I'm rooting for you and I'm rooting for myself.