Ask HN: Feeling Depressed and Choked. How to handle it?

See a psychiatrist or therapist. HN is the wrong place for this kind of question. Your kid is 3mo old which most people would consider a good time to take some parental leave if they can afford it, which you can (that would ease the overload of juggling the kid with a job). I'm sure you have figured out stuff like that already: your immediate situation is just fine. So you are experiencing a psychological disturbance that needs a level of help by qualified practitioners who can discuss things with you in detail, potentially prescribe meds, and all that sort of thing. A computer nerd forum like HN can't possibly do that.

That all said, it's completely normal to stress out during life changes. So if this was triggered by becoming a parent, the upset should be a temporary situation that will pass, as long as you get through it in one piece.

I am unfortunately not eligible for parental leave, although I used up all of my vacation days already. I have to admit my workload is not so heavy though.

If you think it will help, ask for an unpaid leave of absence. You can afford it. That also gives you more freedom to pursue treatment for the depression if it persists.

Thank you, will look into it!

It’s extremely likely that a few weeks or months off (paid or unpaid) combined with therapy (to process everything that comes up) will do wonders to your well being, outlook and future goals. If you can afford it, do it.

US law requires them to allow you 12 weeks unpaid parental leave. I would highly recommend taking that, it will help a lot.

The first 0-12 months of parenting is a sleepless job, 12-24 is just slightly better. You may be surprised how much sleep deprivation impacts you, and is a very well known cause for depression. Unfortunately the parenting job doesn't let up and the sleeplessness is required to keep the baby alive. It's not really a pleasant time, but it will make you stronger.

Just consider that this year, and maybe next, aren't ideal times to start an external project. This is time to bond with your wife and baby, it's an internal startup that if executed well has an infinite upside.

In a couple years, you will be able to return to your other projects. Keep in mind what's important now, and know that depression is very common - for both mothers and fathers - after a newborn. Seek counseling if it's seriouse. Otherwise, this too will pass.

Be proud of your choices and congratulations! A family is a wonderful thing.

Hey man, thanks for reaching out. First and foremost, please please please talk to someone about these thoughts [1]. You mean the world to your partner and your child. Your life is incredibly valuable even if it may not feel like it right now.

I'm a software dev with two young kids and I definitely understand where you are coming from. Having kids is so hard and it completely changes your lifestyle. But the way I look at it is this is a season of your life where your time allocation shifts, but there will be other seasons where the allocation looks different. We are both in our 30s and life is long, there are decades of productive time available.

So try to take a deep breath, recognize you have accomplished a lot (including that 500k, that is a big deal) and try to take care of yourself for the sake of yourself and your family.

You can email me at evan058@gmail.com if you ever want to chat.

[1] https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

I had a lot of similar thoughts when my son was born. Start looking for a therapist, I cannot stress this enough. Postpartum hits fathers too.

Feel free to drop me a line. My handle + that email service Google runs.

Thank you, this is much appreciated. I will probably try a therapist and see if that helps. Will drop a mail!

I get what you're going through. The side hustle and the hope of being successful on your own is a dream, it's part of your identity and now it's impossible.

You have more choices than you think. 500k is a big run way. You could start your own business and sustain a family for a long time ( as long as you can live a low cost life style ). Alternatively you can put your dream on hold, work your day job and focus on your family. The thing that is choking you is the day job. Don't let yourself blame your family they are important and worth it.

If you pick a path some potential options will have to die. This is life. Pick one and run full steam at it. Life will come to another junction and you'll be able to make another choice. Just make sure you back your choice and run with it.

Your family can bring you so much joy and being single in your 30s is harder than you'd think. I did not enjoy it.

Maybe your day job just sucks and you could switch for another good salary?

Thanks, I was considering joining other startups and landed a couple of offers as well. It seemed like they're not willing to pay as much as my current job so still hunting for the right company.. this is in hopes that this can help improve my situation to some extent

Hold in there. Don't make any rash decisions. Give yourself some time to adapt to the pretty significant change in circumstances you have there.

You certainly can't walk two paths at once ... who can? You might be at a fork in the road or you might just be so tired you are seeing double.

Stop at a rest stop for a while.

Look after your little one, take it easy when you can, and be kind to yourself. All sorts of medical help is available.

Your skills won't go anywhere and your ambition will recover with your energy. Progress need not be linear.

From someone who has been in a deep depression for many a decade:

What makes you happy?

It seems like a difficult question, but it's not really. The first answer is usually the right one.

And in this case you already said it, it's your son.

Also $500k is not bad for being 33. 15 years ago in my 30's I barely had $200k. I'm now worth ~$2M without living on a CA salary.

You won't find it this advice here necessarily, but frankly, failure is absolutely okay. It's just what you do with it that matters. Whatever is that you think you're supposed to be good at, or whatever you thought you were supposed to be at your age, I can assure you. It's okay.

Your son will be the most amazing person in your life, and he won't care if you didn't become a billionaire at age 40.

The other good news is this, your kid likely has 4 years before developing permanent memories. So you have a few years to fix your financial situation to get to a place you want to be to spend more time with him.

From my experience in exactly this situation (except that I don’t have 500k :)

1. First few months of a newborn are extremely hard. Seek for any help whenever you can. Delegate as much as possible - from cleaning floors to cooking and buying diapers.

Eating well and sleeping as much as you can should be your only priorities (after taking care of the baby).

Career can wait for a few months. Just focus on what is important here and now.

Take unpaid vacation for a couple months or quit the job.

Looks like you can afford it, why then waste your energy on shitty job?

On the positive side just know that it will get better. And this experience will make you tougher and stronger.

2. If there are some psychological issues behind that - invest some time in finding a good therapist.

Not the one who would just drug you, but one, who understands deep mind-body connection and can properly diagnose if you just physically exhausted or have some anxiety-depression disorder to be addressed.

>Delegate as much as possible - from cleaning floors to cooking and buying diapers.

Already using delivery services for anything I needed to buy; On one hand I see bills shooting through the roof but at least that buys me time so should be okay.

>Eating well and sleeping as much as you can should be your only priorities (after taking care of the baby). I've been sacrificing a lot of sleep and also stopped working out ever since the baby was born - so I guess a mix of these two are definitely hurting me. Thanks for the insight. This might as well be the time for me to get back to working out a little

Congrats on your new family member, that's awesome.

He probably will never have any career expectations of you. He'll probably have parenting expectations of you. So if you want to optimize one of these platforms with him in mind, it'll be easier to focus your energy on the latter.

I had some tough but therapeutic discussions about this with my spouse a long time ago. At the time I was a workaholic. On top of that, I had 5% of your savings and just found out that I lost the client providing 30% of my income. I had just finished a guilt-filled workaholic spree to try to rebuild my clientele and almost wiped myself out. I had kids but no feeling of any reason to live, which I think you understand is pretty jacked up.

I eventually chose to reexamine my work life really thoroughly. My results were showing that it wasn't as important to me as I thought it should be anyway. I hired a business coach to help with that side. And I took all the risks I could with my work life, cutting down my hours and saying yes to more time with family.

Looking back now, I had suffered way too much by having zero boundaries. I think I thought that was a good thing, that I shattered through all of them like the hulk or something. But those boundaries were the line between "healthy, happy" and "good luck with that." it didn't work.

Whatever you decide, hang in there and give yourself time to think it over and plan it out. Make a strategy. You won't need to improvise. You can run tests and see results, find new ways of being and working. Take better care of yourself, look after yourself, no more martyrdom, it doesn't really help.

Any new approach you take is probably going to benefit from your thoughtful side, even just by dint of your posting and writing through it here. It will probably be better for your child as well. Take care.

Sorry to hear about your hardship. This post is an inspiration to me to keep holding the ground. Are you now self-employed btw?

I'm glad you found it helpful. Yes, I've been continually self-employed for almost two decades now.

On a side note. You have the most interesting about section I've ever seen on HN.

It's kind of you to say so, thanks.

If you have $500k in savings and still feel trapped, you’re living in the wrong city. You could easily take a 1 year off to rest up and still have a substantial safety net at the end of it. However, I’m presuming this $500k isn’t liquid.

As for advice, if I could stay at home and hang out with my 18 month old day, I would. Work is overrated.

Hi, sorry to hear that you're feeling this way. It sounds extremely similar to what I went through when my daughter was born. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it gets better. The first four months after my daughter arrived were the most unhappy I've ever been in my life, but after that things started to become easier and parental responsibilities felt more fulfilling.

I'd strongly recommend seeing a therapist. You might also want to see if you can arrange your schedule to get more sleep; I know it might seem counterproductive when you already feel a lot of time pressure, but sleep deprivation is absolute torture and makes everything worse. Getting my daughter on a regular sleep schedule was the single biggest life-satisfaction improvement I've ever experienced.

Hi there, appreciate you writing here and the help, this means a lot. Any idea on how to find a therapist? Thanks again

I guess my advice is US-specific, so apologies if this doesn't apply. I'm assuming you have health insurance either through your employer or your partner's. If so, they most likely have a portal that will help you find nearby specialists who are on your insurance network. Take a look there and research a few therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists. You might have to meet a few before you find one who clicks. The good news is that many (most?) are doing virtual consultations these days, so there's a lot less friction to having a meeting.

Thank you. Yes I am living here in California and my employer's insurance is decent. I will definitely make sure to try connect with one.

You are mourning your lost life. You are attached to a past vision of yourself that no longer exists. Killing yourself doesn't help anyone including you.

You can try to return to your former life by leaving the wife and kids and debt behind. You still would need to pay child support.

You could change your debt structure by selling an overpriced home which would allow you to leave your area for cheaper living and remote opportunities at more creative roles.

You could accept this is where you are now and things will slow down. Use the time to dream up ideas of what you really want to be doing. When you get the chance you will just create pieces im short bursts and it will be satifying.

Extremely sound and logical advice. Unfortunately, a person is usually in a state of depression or isn’t ready to accept this type of advice yet. They only get to this level of clarity after learning the hard way, which is then based on experience.

The purpose of our life is happiness

Happiness is determined more by ones state of mind than by external events

Happiness is how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have. Our feelings of contentment are strongly influenced by our tendency to compare.

Frame any decision we face by asking ourselves 'will it bring me happiness?' A state of happiness that remains despite lifes ups and downs and normal fluctuations of mood, as part of the very matrix of our life.

Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness

Identify and cultivate positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states.

First of all: Life is worth living. Your son needs you, your family needs you, your friends need you. Even if this is a minor thought in the back of your head, please talk to someone about it.

Second, being a new dad is hard! I’ve been there. Trust me: it’s gets better. This too shall pass.

And if you one day want to start a company, the opportunity will come up. Have faith.

Finally, as one of my good friends likes to say, “When you’re going through hell… keep going.” Sometimes the key is not to overthink things but just to take it one day at a time.

Good luck!

Thank you, somehow these words bring positivity in me.

I'm a little older than you, without kids, and its still a challenge to work on my projects and other things in life (relationships, fitness, etc).

I've seen a friend of mine get up earlier to do side project work while then attending to their child, and perhaps this is a conversation to have with your partner, so you can support each other (carve out some side project time) to continue with that goal too, your partner may also be wanting a bit of time for themselves as well.

Thank you! Would you mind sharing what other challenges you do see that get in the way of working on your projects? just curious!

500k again? In reference to the other HN poster with 500k and still unhappy.

Isn't 500k a lot of money? which presumably would give some financial freedom to pursue one's interests.

There is a trade-off in raising a kid but there are certainly rewards to it such as happiness in terms of relationships. But of course, the constraint is that it will limit one's freedom on pursuing own interests.

Reminds me a bit of Paul Lutus[1] who purposefully decided to not get married or have children even though he has a lot of financial resources. His reasoning was that "his ideas are his kids". Basically, kids are people's legacy but for some people, like Isaac Newton, their legacy is their ideas that we've all benefited from.

Anyway, this comment is just to say that I think I can relate to your situation since even though I'm single, I can imagine how being married and having a kid would consume my nights which I normally spend on a side-project.

[1] https://corecursive.com/remote-developer/

Talk to your mom or dad. I think its the change in your life that increase your anxiety and will pass in a months when things stabilize.

Btw, youre doing better than most >American households had a median balance of $5,300 and an average balance of $41,600

Read or listen to book by Dale, How to stop worrying and start living.

https://youtu.be/B-jBJ4DOY28

I'm also in kind of similar situation (not depressed though).

Seems like you're also from India, $500k in India is actually enough for retirement and that is my goal to achive FI/RE.

This is something I was thinking about, but not sure if the family wanted to move back. Maybe this is not an option for me

The baby is probably disrupting sleep, take care of your sleep if you can. Do whatever it takes to manage your recovery time around a baby. possibly hire some help?

Other posters have already said, this but you are currently in the most demanding and tough phase of being a parent. Remember you are dealing with

1)Sleep Deprivation

2)Lower Emotional, Physical and Mental Resilience due to sleep deprivation

3)Learning a new set of skills (taking care of a child) while being physically, mentally, and emotionally overloaded.

4) Supporting your spouse, who probably has all of above (probably to a much greater degree), plus a hormonal system that is completely out whack.

5)Being on the treadmill of nap/bedtimes times, pooping, diapers, feeding, and translating a lot of crying too what the baby needs.

6)New fights and disagreements at home due to all of the above.

Now is not the the time perform a rational evaluation about your career. To use an Analogy, imagine you find yourself in a burning building. Is that the right time to wonder about your career? No - you need to get out of the building first!!

Somebody already said this, but the first 2 years of a child's life are tough. The first 12 months are the worst. Even when your child reaches the point where they sleep 8 hours without feeding, that still means if they go to bed at 8 they wake up at 4 to eat. So the sleep deprivation lasts well beyond the naive definition of "sleep through the night." When your child sleeps from 8PM-6AM and you can get 6+ hours of uninterrupted sleep, that's when your mental fog starts to lift.

At least for me, I had a child soon after some major or changes in my well-paying job led to me having a horrible manager and even worse skip-level manager. It was awful because I wanted to be a good dad+husband, but dealing with my job situation almost caused an internal panic about my future. I definitely felt trapped.

What I did was basically said "Until the child is 1, forget all this job stuff. If you take your job seriously, your family will suffer. And if you are sleep deprived and cranky, you are not going to succeed at your job. Do you want to fail at your job and as a parent, or just fail at your job for a while" When my child was one, I decided to make that "Until your child is 2, forget your job crap."

I ended up taking the full FMLA unpaid, which probably harmed my career at that job. But given that I didn't like my manager or skip-level, my career was not going anywhere anyway.

When your child is 2.5, you will be sitting at a restaurant and you will be surprised to realize your child wants to eat by themselves and talk to you. At that age, some type of daycare (even just part time) is necessary for them to get the interaction they need and many people in the modern world (a nuclear household) can no longer provide. You'll start having some time and mental space.

At 33, you've got at least 30+ years left where you can choose to be an entrepreneur. Your child will be 1 year old in 1/30th of that.

Finally, one last point. Many moms don't get enough support during this time. But if a mom gets 20% of the support they need, Dads get 0. Only a few people asked my spouse how she was doing and provided emotional support. My wife was the only person who asked me how I was doing. Nobody else did.

>Finally, one last point. Many moms don't get enough support during this time. But if a mom gets 20% of the support they need, Dads get 0

Lol I guess this hits the nail right on the head. Weird enough I even kept telling my wife that I was feeling depressed and she dismissed it in an instant asking how it is possible.

>What I did was basically said "Until the child is 1, forget all this job stuff. If you take your job seriously, your family will suffer. And if you are sleep deprived and cranky, you are not going to succeed at your job. Do you want to fail at your job and as a parent, or just fail at your job for a while" When my child was one, I decided to make that "Until your child is 2, forget your job crap."

Not sure if I was getting this right, but do you mean that it was getting tight to focus on your job for the first 2 years? Is that mostly because of baby duties?

>Lol I guess this hits the nail right on the head. Weird enough I even kept telling my wife that I was feeling depressed and she dismissed it in an instant asking how it is possible.

I am lucky enough that my wife recognized I was struggling too and acknowledged it. Honestly, I reached out to some caring dads I knew when I first became a dad and all of them said they really struggled as well, and most days they just put one foot in front of the other and just kept walking. If you care about being a good parent/spouse, it's really tough.

>Not sure if I was getting this right, but do you mean that it was getting tight to focus on your job for the first 2 years? Is that mostly because of baby duties?

I don't know what you mean by the word "tight" but what I meant to say that I realized that I simply didn't have a mental state or energy to excel at any job. But by simply taking care of the baby, cooking basic meals when needed, throwing out the trash, paying the bills (I mean this literally, such as writing a check and mailing it), letting my wife sleep an extra hour when the baby woke up at 5:30AM, etc, I was able to be a good parent. So what was the value in doing a half-ass job with my career AND as a parent, as opposed to doing the bare minimum in my job and doing a good job as a parent and spouse.

Even with this realization, there were lots of times where I sat on the couch the first year and just felt like I was drowning and life was over. That happened in the second year as well, but less after the child was 18 months. And by ~2.5, it's a lot better!

Also, in my reply I forgot to say - Get help in the house. Have a maid come every 2 weeks. If somebody can cook for you, do that. If you want to get one of those Hello Fresh style meal services, do that for a while. Do what it takes to reduce the load. There's more to "get help" than seeing a therapist.

It's expensive to get help, but it's more expensive to recover from a mental breakdown