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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

>One piece of advice I have for you is to not take on the role of mental health professional in your relationship. This isn't your problem and you can quickly tire yourself out.

This is precisely the opposite of what happened in the post in question. Cause of anxiety was wanting to live a lifestyle and not wanting to work a stressful job. Marriage and "permission" to quit solved the issue immediately. None of the therapy stuff did them any good, she didn't need therapy as soon as the underlying problem was identified and solved by them. No amount of sleeping, exercising or eating kale would have solved that.

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I get a different impression from the post. Rather than quitting and marriage solving the problem immediately, I think she still has anxiety, because he wrote: "She still has anxiety, and I imagine she always will. But we are able to deal with this in a much more productive way. Sure, there are times where it all gets a bit too much"

I don't think it's correct to say "None of the therapy stuff did them any good" because therapy isn't mentioned in the post. If you meant counseling, he mentioned that positively, in the context of the useful decision to quit the job: "we found a private counsellor who could help get to the route of what was causing some of this anxiety — we then discussed a lot of these sessions and reflected on them and tried to put into practice some of the advice we were receiving. We also made big and brave decisions like my wife quitting her exhausting job up in London"

>She still has anxiety, and I imagine she always will.

Wouldn't it be strange for a human being to have no anxiety ?

>we found a private counsellor who could help get to the route of what was causing some of this anxiety

I understood this as the counsellor putting a rubber stamp on what they already knew, so that the decision could be made guilt free.

Feeling anxious sometimes and suffering from anxiety attacks are different things. Most people (I assume) don't suffer from anxiety attacks like described here. The people who do get anxiety attacks would like it to stop.

>> Cause of anxiety was wanting to live a lifestyle and not wanting to work a stressful job. Marriage and "permission" to quit solved the issue immediately.

I am goin to play the devil's advocate but it would solve all of my problems if I would marry someone ritch who pays my bills while I quit my stressfull job and follow my passion. And she should also write a blog post about it.

By switching jobs I went from anxious and uncertain to happy and outgoing. It's not complicated.

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