I never thought I needed to talk to someone about how I felt.

I developed symptoms of depression and anxiety in undergrad, but hoped that they would sort themselves out after I was finished with school.

Then…. I decided to attend more school!

I wouldn’t say that graduate school made my mental health any worse, necessarily, but I definitely didn’t feel myself getting better the way I wanted to. And for the first few years, the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the stress I already felt, so I put off the idea of going to therapy because I figured everyone was feeling what I was feeling amidst a global pandemic.

Once 2023 hit and I still felt anxious and sad, at times in ways I felt were uncontrollable - I knew it was time to look for someone to talk to.

First, ever practical, I wanted to find someone who took insurance. As it turns out, not all mental health professionals do- I had no idea until I started looking for someone to talk to about my anxiety that some folks are only open to private payment, which is not in the cards for someone on a graduate student stipend.

Once I found someone who was within my insurance network, I made a list. This list had everything I wanted to talk about on it- from school concerns, to broader life concerns, to things that I wanted to discuss about my family. I wrote down as many things as I could think of that I wanted to get another, objective, third-party opinion on.

I also wrote down everything that made me anxious, so I wouldn’t forget when I got there. Lastly, I wrote down what I was hoping to get out of therapy: tools to manage my emotions and keep my anxiety under control.

And then, the final, scariest step: actually going to see a therapist, for the first time. I was so nervous- the irony wasn’t lost on me, either, that I was so nervous to see a therapist about my anxiety. My hands were shaking as I drove there, I was worried they would judge me for the things I wrote down or that I wouldn’t have enough to say.

Luckily for me, the first session was a lot of easy questions- turns out, my lists answered a lot of the first things they ask you when you go into therapy for anxiety, which was validating and made me feel a lot more sure that I was doing the right thing.

So if you’re thinking about looking for help, my advice to you is- write it down. Write down why you’re thinking of going and what you would want to get out of it. And once you do, go talk to someone about what you wrote! Once you do it the first time, it only gets easier.