Mostly just thinking out loud from a throwaway account. Not even sure what my question is other than "what should I do with my life?"
I truly think I'm one of the luckiest humans on the planet, born in the right place at the right time to the right parents for everything in my life to be as easy as possible. I'm a 6'5 Ironman who speaks four languages fluently, have an engineering degree from one of the top schools in the US, friends across the world and a $350k net worth at age 35. Nobody in my life other than a few grandparents has been seriously ill or died, I've never experienced violence, war, or abuse of any kind. I haven't even had to work full time in several years since I switched to freelancing and cut down to 3-4 days a week.
All that said, I've had a chronic anxiety problem for pretty much all of my adult life. My best description of how I feel is that I became severely depressed in my late adolescence from being a nerdy teenager scared of never getting laid, and my brain seems to have found a way out by dulling all my negative and positive emotions so that the world feels slightly unreal, pretty much 100% of the time. Being in this state both induces even more anxiety and makes me depressed (what if it never gets better?), causing a vicious cycle. My diagnoses have been for anxiety and depression although for a time I was convinced I had depersonalization disorder - from learning more about the latter over the years, though, I've come to think it's more a garden variety anxiety issue with a dissociative aspect or feeling.
I've tried lots of different combinations of talk therapy, prescription drugs, and non-prescription substances to improve this condition. The only thing that seems to have made a dent was my first few days on bupropion, and a few of my experiences with psilocybin. Both of these I think worked well because I believed before and during their use that they were fundamentally different from the things I'd tried before and thus might work, and as soon as something happened, they managed to unlock enough genuine optimism that the cycle was broken, at least for a time.
I'm at a crossroads now with one of my bigger freelance gigs ending. I feel like the vast majority of the people in the world would kill to be in my position. A bunch of money in the bank, no obligations, and many many options. But I've just been paralyzed by dread about making a decision on what to do next. The rational part of me thinks that my top priority needs to be addressing my mental health. But I'm not even sure what that means - the only viable tool that I feel I haven't fully explored is psychedelic therapy. If it were someone else, I would encourage them to focus on their life and try to ignore anxious feelings, as feeding them tends to just make them worse - but I've been dealing with this for more than fifteen years and that hasn't really made things better.
Some of the options for next life steps I'm considering:
1. Take a $150k/yr job offer in another city where my brother lives. I applied on a whim to practice interviewing and was surprised to get the offer. I don't particularly want to move from the city I live in (although the weather is better there) and this could be a bit stressful professionally but if I were career-driven, it would be a no brainer as it's a pretty high profile company in my industry, and I enjoyed all the people I met during the interview.
2. Try to start over with my ex in another country. I broke up with her a year ago, we still love each other deeply and have been in touch a lot since then, but I felt we weren't a good long term match partly because she leans toward wanting children and I lean toward not wanting them. Also she has some issues with depression herself which is both a blessing and a curse as she's very understanding and empathetic to how I feel, but both of us being in a negative place at the same time can be kind of heavy. I do miss her and feel better around her, but dragging things out if it's not going to work out in the end feels cruel to both of us.
3. Leave everything for a while and take a trip for a few months. This feels more like an escape fantasy than an actual plan. But I wonder if really letting go of all obligations and expectations for a while, and taking some time to explore the paths to healing that have resonated with me could be the best choice.
Every time I feel like I settle on one direction, the pangs of fear and guilt from missing out on the others grip me and I start seriously doubting. Mostly I just stare at the screen and engage in various mindless distractions like reading the MMM forums to procrastinate on making a decision.