Dear Stephen:

We all need a sense of relative safety. A series of events happened that took away the feeling of relative safety that you did have before:

– you had both parents alive for 51 years of your life, then three years ago both died in quick succession (your cognition started to decline then).

– you had both children living with you for a couple of decades or so, then both moved out and your son has been living many states away from you (you miss him terribly, you wrote)

– you felt comfortable enough at work for years or decades  but started a new executive role a year ago in which you no longer feel comfortable (“I’m not right for it”) and you fear retirement itself, not working.

– you lived in a dream house, but a decision to sell the dream house has been reached recently, yet to take place (and you feel very conflicted about it, guilty and anxious)

–your wife was happy with you and with the dream house, but now she is unhappy with the sale of the dream house and with your depression.

–you were … young and younger your whole life, you are getting older.

With all these changes, loss of the relative safety, “It feels like the walls are caving in all around me… I feel like my life has peaked and is rolling downhill now and I can’t seem to get it all under control”.

Having read all you tried, therapy, medication, yoga and so forth, I see only one solution to your great distress and that is, starting from the beginning.

Focus not on what you lost (the italicized above) and view the now in that painful comparison. (Interesting, though, it wasn’t that great, the past, was it?)

Your new life really can be better than what was, once you remove it from the comparison, from the “after the peak” position, in your mind.  No longer compare your life now with the life before.

Begin where you are, in a soon to be smaller house with no mortgage, a father of two grown, college educated (and free of debt!) children, one living many states away, a daughter who will probably be moving out again soon. A husband of a wife who is unhappy with him somewhat. An executive who is about to change role and later to either fully or partly retire.

You shared that you read the bible. The bible starts with “In the beginning”, may today be your beginning.

anita