i stopped going outside. i am a 45 year old man and i stopped going outside and i am telling you this because men don't usually tell this kind of story and i think more of us need to. it started after i lost my business in 2020. the combination of the financial loss and the isolation and something that had been building in me for years just broke. i had my groceries delivered and i told my kids i was fine and i sat in my house for 8 months barely leaving. my daughter finally said dad i'm worried about you and something in the way she said it got through. i started therapy. my therapist suggested meditation and i thought it was soft and i tried it anyway because i had run out of better ideas. what i found in the first few sessions was that i was terrified of my own mind. that the reason i couldn't go outside was not really about outside. it was about the thoughts that were waiting for me when i was quiet. meditation taught me to stay with those thoughts instead of running. running had stopped working. staying started to. i go outside every day now. yesterday i walked for an hour. it sounds like nothing. to me it is everything.