Hello, this is Richard Jacobs, executive director of the Finding Genius Foundation, also host of the Finding Genius Podcast. The journey through the world of anxiety and depression continues. Unfortunately, last week, I had my own unintended excursion through some depression and anxiety. I don’t really want to describe all the details but my youngest daughter had kind of a mental breakdown and so, all of last week was incredibly tough. It put me into a state of anxiety and depression.

Not too heavy and I think I’m out of it and everything but by being one in the crowd for a week, I’ve learned even more about the situation. So, again, mine wasn’t acute, it wasn’t chronic. I’m not normally suffering from depression and anxiety, thank God, I know a lot of listeners are. I just have a little bit more empathy and compassion even though I did before in my experience. But here is something else that I learned from it.

During that week, my emotions were raw. I was like an exposed nerve and I got much angrier than I should have been at a certain situation. I got much more upset and sad about certain things that I normally would. All my emotions were amplified and heightened and more on a hair trigger. So, I realized when people are having episodes of anxiety or depression, PTSD, whatever it may be, they are going to be in that state as well.

So, let’s say you know somebody or you are somebody that suffers and you react to a situation and someone is telling you that you are overreacting or you know you are overreacting, it’s understandable because you are in that state and if you are dealing with someone that’s in that state on a consistent basis or on a periodic basis and you are aware of that then all their emotions are going to be heightened and they are going to be incredibly sensitive to anything, any statement that can be construed incorrectly etc.

I just believe it may help, if you are in this situation yourself, to recognize what is going on and to counteract it somehow or if you know someone or if you care about someone in that situation, to get more inside their head and to understand what’s going on with them. So, I found this to be a very useful insight. It’s going to be added into the codex and I wanted to let everyone know, like I said, every step of this journey that I go on, I’m taking you with me. So, as I always do at the end, I asked you to go findinggeniusfoundation.org.

If you haven’t yet, download the codex which is a quick summary document of this effort we are working on and just to recap the effort, our thought, our goal is to do a massive literature survey, literature meaning videos from scholars, peer reviewed papers, interviews of people that are depressed or anxious, every resource we can, authors of books on anxiety and depression and PTSD. Put it all together and offer it as a low cost or a no cost resource to people suffering and to people that people know are suffering