I'm a 37 year old IT Cloud Engineer, I have a great job, great house, love my family, but recently I lost my dad to cancer after a 16 year battle. My brother likes to say cancer had to cheat to win, it was all because he broke his back and had to be taken off his treatments for to long. Cancer is a fickle bitch...
Prior to losing my dad, I lost my best friend, who apparently dropped dead in his backyard. I don't know the specifics and frankly I don't want to know. Either way, these events effected me, and I started having massive panic attacks and anxiety issues, constantly afraid for my health even though there's nothing wrong with me. It took a few months of therapy to realize I needed medical help.
I was put on antidepressants and everything changed, I was a human again for the first time in like a decade. I was happy, I was successful, but now, idk if I'm just having a midlife crisis, or if maybe I'm just feeling depressed again, but I just feel lost. I've lost one of the few people in my life I've modeled my success after, my father, I lost the other person I could hang out with and empathize with, I have my wife and I love her to death, but my friend had been that person that was just there to hang out and make you feel better, and now they're gone. I'm still struggling to cope and it's just really hard and I need a place to vent.
Anyone have any ideas on how to cope and move on as well as control the anxiety without the need to be medicated?
TL;DR: Lost my dad and my best friend in the course of two years and it's been rough. Now I feel lost and confused constantly. Cloudy brain and I just don't want to be complacent in life and need some advice. Thanks for reading.
Edit: just wanted to say thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I'm going to take the advice I've been given here to heart and try some new things to try and give me some direction. Thank you all again so much for the help, it really made me feel a lot better.
It took me a while to decide to respond to your post because I lost my father in 2017, a month before my 40th birthday, and a family friend's child 2 weeks later. That time of my life was really a blur of raw grief and anxiety.
This time in your life is going to be so full of it that you feel like you can't focus on anything else and it's okay to feel lost. Grief comes in waves. At first, they are so big that every time they hit they knock you down and they hit you multiple times a day, but you have to hold on to the fact that over time, those waves will come less often and be less fierce. Every once in a while you'll get one that is a doozy but it will happen less and less often. The strength of your grief is directly proportionate to the strength of your love for them.
You've been getting great advice in this thread and you've already got meds and a therapist which is great. I also suggest journaling and meditation like some of the other posters did. I personally found the teachings of Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh helpful, too. There is a podcast called "The Way Out Is In" which is run by a student of his and you can listen to for free. They have guided meditations at the end of each episode. Even if you're not into becoming a Buddhist, listening to someone very calmly and rationally talk about how they know your pain and then guide you through sending your good thoughts out to your loved ones is so soothing to the soul. You can search out episodes that are specific to situations you may benefit from. The lesson in breathing in and out and sending out your thoughts to them is one you can hold on to.