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Yes, and I spent several years in therapy starting during my first real job, and then during grad school, which is where EVERYONE is crazy so you start to think you're normal. I filled a prescription for Zoloft towards the end of my therapy, before deciding against taking them... it was during one of the worst swings of depression and anxiety that I went through. That was after 2 years of long distance with my boyfriend, when we got married and then had 2 more months of long distance to get through--it exacerbated all of my worst mood/anxiety issues--but most of it settled down after we finally moved in together.
Being in Iceland for the last 18 months, I have recognized that I should still be in some kind of counseling for all kinds of family issues here, but I can't manage to do it with someone who is not a native English speaker (and culturally American, perhaps). So I'm waiting to get back to the US and get myself back into the swing of that, until I can get through that shit. My husband and close friends offer a band-aid form of counseling, though they certainly don't deserve to listen to my shit all the time--they're my husband and friends, not my psychologists. So I try to tackle a lot of it myself or by not venting too much to any one person in a short period of time, often writing in my paper journal to get things out, and look forward to getting home soon.
I would say that one form of mental illness or another is prevalent in quite a few of my family members, whether they realize it, had it diagnosed, or not... most of them have hidden/ignored their symptoms for their entire lives, and have subsisted on self-medication and/or becoming total porcupines or downright assholes who hurt everyone who tries to care for them. I don't want to be one of those people, and since I have the genes and environment for it, I have to work at it constantly. It never really goes away, but you learn how to carry it better with time and the right tools.
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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran
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