Far too late to the party but a lot of employers now have "Employee Assistance Programmes" and given Gaz is a teacher I'd hope the teaching union or the like have one.
Why do I know, well I finally hit the wall about 4 weeks ago and had to give them a call.
I'm not sure how I'd categorise how I'd been feeling, just a combination of factors that meant I'd often be sitting here at work just blindly staring at my office wall and not able to concentrate at all.
At the time, I thought it all started with my Dad passing away about 16 months ago, it was a fairly manic few months from when he was diagnosed in early February to passing away in early June. I did the almost 72 hour return trip twice in the space of 10 weeks and was on the ground in Scotland for a week each time so pretty much fly in fly out. I'd had a fairly fractured relationship with him for the last 15 years and I think that actually made the whole thing worse..
Since then, I started a new job thats turned out to be highly stressful with real overpowering bosses based in Australia who think nothing of shouting at you on the phone and we had our 2nd little boy 7 months ago who has turned out to be not much of a sleeper (although getting better).
Oh and we moved cities for the new job.
Fair to say we've packed a fair bit into the last 12 months and it all got the better of me, I've seen the therapist three times in the last three weeks and while I think it's slowly improving it's still hard work.
I made the call after the first appointment that I was going to start looking for a new job as well as I think that's a very large part of the issue.
In amongst talking to her though, it's become obvious there's more to it than I thought, I went through all the Christchurch earthquakes a few years ago and that reared it's ugly ahead again while talking to her, don't think I've ever completely got my head around those.
A bit of a ramble I guess and sure I've missed stuff, taken me half an hour to type as well but good to get it down.