Kind of personal story, though not directly about depression. A while back, I noticed my blood pressure skyrocketed. Then a bit later, I started having chest

Kind of personal story, though not directly about depression. A while back, I noticed my blood pressure skyrocketed. Then a bit later, I started having chest pains. My heart was racing and my heart beat was irregular. Sometimes it felt like it just stopped and then wham it would kick in again. Sometimes it felt like a horse was running around inside my chest. My chest felt heavy, like someone had put a 25 kilo weight on it. Every breath hurt. I went to the hospital and they hooked me up to every variety of machine imaginable. The result? Apart from my blood pressure, everything was fine. They wired me up to a recorder and recorded my heart for 24 hours. The result? Everything was fine. The symptoms lasted for a week (!) and finally slowly subsided. The blood work they took said that everything was fine. I don't know what was going on, but my doctor said to me, "It's probably stress. Has it been a stressful time lately?" It really hadn't. Everything was the same as always. True, I had been quite upset about work. But when was I not upset about work? I love working and I'm serious. I go at it full throttle. True, I had been working some stupid hours. I work remotely and I'm 8-9 hours shifted from the rest of the team. I often start at 8 am, work all day and then work again in the evening when the rest of the team gets in. I'm tired at the end of the day, but I like working hard. But you know, even if all the tests in the world say that I'm fine -- I was definitely not fine. I was convinced I was going to die during that week. A body is not supposed to feel that way. And so I decided to take it easy. I like work, but I like other things as well. I decided to be strict on my hours and rely on my team to fight fires in the evening (even if I started them during the day!). I decided to take a different view of my role on the team. Instead of trying to drive the team to success, I'll let them drive where they want to go and watch out the window. Occasionally I'll say, "Turn left at the next stoplight. I think you'll enjoy the view", but that's the extent of my navigation. I fee better now than I have in ages. I just want to warn people: stress will kill you. I never really appreciated that before. It will actually kill you, just like any other super killer disease that haunts your nightmares. Be aware of your mental state. You can't go through life thinking your are invincible. Or, you can, but that life will be cut short. A lot of this stuff is in your control and it's simply a choice to be healthy or be ill. Of course, there are people who have mental illnesses for which they have no control. But there are a lot of people, like myself, who just don't understand the harm that they are doing to themselves by putting themselves in unhealthy places. Just try to be aware and to take action once you see that there is a problem. I hope that helps some people. I'd rather other people no have the experience that I had.