A hard thing is that as an anxious person, and/or one who deals with depressive episodes, you learn to kind of distrust your instinctive levels -- to say yes, I'm feeling panicky, but that's probably not rational. Obviously, there's more reason to be more upset than usual. (1/)

But my challenge right now is figuring out where I should be trying to get to. Like, what's a reasonable level of not-OK to feel, and what's a medically motivated one? I worked very hard to learn how to calibrate what's a functional and manageable anxiety level. (2/)

And now I feel like I have to calibrate a subcategory for "pandemic normal." So when people ask how I am, it's like, "I am ... not sure?" (3/)

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is that everybody has a reason this is hard, and you never want to imply that your way is like *importantly* hard. But if you're in the basic anxiety/depression club, and you sense that this is hard partly because of that, just ... same.