It started over the course of the pandemic. I’ve always been a bit of an emotional person, but I found myself struggling near daily with anxiety and depression in a way I was not used to; a more aggressive, life-limiting way that ultimately signalled to me that something was wrong.
As a 42-year-old, it is known, and even somewhat expected, that with the passage of time a heightened sense of insecurity, dread, and even panic can start to set in. Many call this a midlife crisis. For me, it became a near daily struggle to remain positive in the many roles I play in my life – reporter, partner, father, friend – leaving me exhausted and frustrated on my best days.
I turned 40 in October 2020. While I was sincerely moved by a video assembled for me of friends and family sending me messages of love and friendship, it was no replacement for the real thing. Like many people, I slammed headfirst into the pandemic like a car with no brakes hitting a brick wall.
I grew up in the 90s, as part of an Italian Canadian family, where I perceived strength as the thing that mattered most. Men were pillars of strength for their families, and providers. I learned those lessons well as a youngster and have spent the better part of my adult life wrestling with them, doing my very best to be the kind of man I felt I needed to be to fit into my perceived lineage.
If you had talked to me 10 years ago, when I was working for an installation company doing large-scale jobs in and around the GTA, I would have balked outright at the idea of seeking outside help for the problems that, at that time, were just starting to rear their ugly heads in my life.
Anxiety, depression, these were words I knew, I understood what they meant, but they didn’t describe me. How could they? I was working hard every day to put food on the table and keep a roof over my family’s head. I was doing the things I was supposed to do. But as I aged, and as time became a more existential threat, the old me began to slowly disappear. Replacing my previous confidence in myself and the life I had built was a creeping dread.
That dread took on many forms: it was the concern I felt watching society change around me following the election of a certain US president who shall not be named. It was the realization that my parents are aging and won’t be with me forever. It was the whiplash speed with which my daughter was growing up. It was a feeling that somehow, despite all of my best efforts to the contrary, life wa passing me by, and I couldn’t stop the process.
In other words, it’s been rough. The simple truth I failed to see then, and struggle even to see now, is how universal these issues are. We all face them; some are just better than others at processing them. Me, not so good at that part.
“You don’t need to talk to someone,” I would tell myself, believing it superficially, while knowing deep-down what a big lie it was.
Over the course of my 40-plus years on this planet, I’ve lived through a lot of societal progress. One of the biggest (and best) examples I’ve seen is the push for men to open up about these types of difficulties, and to normalize taking that first step toward finding help.
Last year, after a couple of years of living in that less-than-desirable headspace, something in me snapped, and I decided it was time for me to stop fighting myself and my own self-destructive, deeply nonsensical beliefs about seeking help, and seek that help.
Enrolling in a virtual, 12-week long cognitive behavioural therapy program, I met my counsellor once a week and set about the act of seeing what I could do to fight back against the growing darkness I found myself living in.
What I learned was, sadly, there is no magic button you can push that makes it all go away. Instead, it’s a daily grind, and a battle. That doesn’t change, but with the right tools, I found ways of confronting the fears consuming me. I learned techniques, like calm breathing, to help me through challenging emotional moments. I learned to use a spreadsheet to work through a complicated emotional reaction to a challenge presented by life.
Most importantly, I learned to stop catastrophizing my own life. That not every misstep in life was fatal, that it’s okay to live safely in the moment instead of projecting into a future that doesn’t exist yet and may never.
It’s not easy, folks. I still struggle with the same issues I struggled with before seeking help, but in the act of seeking it, I have changed fundamentally as a person. I feel proud of myself for doing it, especially given the mental knots I needed to untie to get there.
So, I did it in 2023, and I challenge you to do it in 2024. Of course, not everybody struggles the way I have, and therapy or counselling is not going to be the perfect fit for every single person, but if you, like me, have been struggling with these issues and haven’t known what to do, give yourself the best gift you can: acknowledge it, and do something about it.
As someone whose outlook going into 2024 is GREATLY improved from the outlook he brought into 2023, I can tell you, unequivocally, that it is worth it.
Happy New Years to all.
