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.

  • LostCause@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I‘m probably not a good advisor, a mess of a person really, and a therapist is maybe best for that situation (and not every one will do, took me like 4 different tries to find one which worked for me).

    However, I felt compelled to post cause I can relate cause my Dad died of cancer too. Though I was much younger than you and it was much quicker for him. He was also my most important person and witnessing this was a total hell. I‘d seen other deaths, but to have the most important one ripped away like this. Truly, there is no words to describe this pain to anyone who hasn‘t felt it. It doesn‘t truly get better either, at most you keep going and forget it for longer periods of times, then sometimes it comes back and hits you all over again. I‘ve also had the depression, anxiety, panic even, I went to the hospital multiple times cause of it.

    For the midlife crisis, which may well be an existential crisis, I dealt with something similar by reading an insane amount of philosophy until I came to a sort of conclusion about life and what I desire to be my purpose in it, that worked for me. I‘m not going to go and tell it to you like some sort of preacher, just saying that trying to gain a sort of understanding of human existence and suffering and so on gave me a feeling of contentment and acceptance which nothing else before gave me (and I tried a lot, drugs, meds, self help, distraction, hobbies, etc etc).

    Though I think what I also realised is, we are all so different from each other, what works for one person won‘t work for the next. Which is probably why finding a good therapist is decent advice, it helps with reflecting on yourself and discovering your values and needs.