Good talk. Your method of writing down what the worst case scenario falls in line with what is known as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is the recommended m

Good talk. Your method of writing down what the worst case scenario falls in line with what is known as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is the recommended method of working through mild-to-moderate depressive episodes. In fact, as a physician observing the HN community, I have acquired a folder of bookmarks, "Depression in Entrepreneurs", mainly centered around Andrews and Thomson's analytic-rheumination hypothesis, which highlights exactly that component of CBT as the cornerstone of successful coping: identify the problems, the worst possible outcomes, prioritize, and start working through them. My brief summary of the AR hypothesis ======= Your hippocampus, home of working memory, gets overwhelmed with all the problems. Something like this: ==== It's still crashing!? Wait, I have that widget sitting in /usr/bin still. I'm so hungry. Maybe I should take ritalin, I wouldn't be hungry. My girlfriend is totally pissed because I haven't taken her out in forever. I have to make payroll, but I can't quite do that unless I skip some meals, I can't tell Mr Investor that I can't go to lunch, because I need money. I can't talk to my girlfriend about Investor's lunch because it will just remind her .... shit, was that in /usr/bin or /sbin. Payroll. Lunch. LUNCH! I'M LATE FOR LUNCH WITH MR INVESTOR! AND THE SITE IS DOWN!!!! GREP! WHY DID I CHOOSE BSD! ==== So, CBT is a hack, which shunts some of that linguistic processing over to the only other area that does linguistic processing: Broca's area. But you need to verbalize to activate Broca's area. So you need to talk to someone. But not someone who's got a dog in the fight, not your girlfriend, not Mr Investor, not employee #1, not your business partner. Because then you'd just be doubling the load on your hippocampus again. So, talk to a counselor, priest, somebody who doesn't have a dog in the fight. Explicitly enumerate your problems, worst case scenarios, and some branches and sequels. ======= Here's the current contents of that folder, if anyone wants them... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734449/pdf/nihms129978.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734449/pdf/nihm... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depressed-people-use-the-internet.html?_r=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depress... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.ht... http://muddylemon.com/2011/05/depression-burn-out-and-writing-code/ http://muddylemon.com/2011/05/depression-burn-out-and-writin... http://blog.asmartbear.com/burn-out.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/burn-out.html and newly added: https://elasticsales.com/blog/2012/08/03/entrepreneurial-depression-happiness/ https://elasticsales.com/blog/2012/08/03/entrepreneurial-dep...