On waiting, mental health, and trusting the long game
My favorite song on the radio right now is, “Baby, where the hell is my husband?”
And as someone who has wanted a boyfriend since preschool—and who is currently almost 42 and single—I mean… where the hell is my husband?
It’s a fun song, but it also holds something tender underneath it. I can deeply relate to the experience of things taking much longer than I want them to.
That feeling shows up everywhere—in relationships, healing, careers, bodies, dreams. And especially in mental health.
When Pain Feels Permanent
One of the most difficult aspects of anxiety and depression isn’t just how uncomfortable they are, but how endless they feel. There’s a particular kind of fear that creeps in during these seasons—the sense that whatever you’re experiencing right now is not just temporary, but permanent. That it will define your life, your relationships, your work, your identity, your confidence, your body, and even your future.
Depression and trauma have a way of narrowing our field of vision. The present moment becomes everything. The future either disappears entirely or feels so overwhelming that it’s impossible to imagine something different.
A large part of my work as a therapist is helping people gently zoom out when their vision has become laser-focused on the now. Not to minimize their pain, but to help them see that what they’re experiencing—while real and heavy—is not the whole story. That they’re wearing blinders, and that those blinders can come off.
Taking them off yourself is incredibly hard. That’s one of the quiet gifts of therapy: someone else can see when your world has shrunk and help you widen it again.
The Long Middle
Lately, these ideas have been showing up for me in a different place—building a business.
Starting a business is a little bit like running a marathon. I’ve only ever run one, and I have no interest in running another unless absolutely necessary. Around mile 10, you look around and think, This isn’t so bad. Why don’t I do this more often? You feel capable. Optimistic. Almost energized.
Then somewhere around mile 24, everything changes. Your body hurts. Time slows down. You question every decision that led you there. You’re not thinking about the finish line—you’re just trying to survive the next step.
What people don’t talk about enough is how often that emotional whiplash happens. The hope. The doubt. The confidence. The fear. Over and over again.
At one point in our journey with NextTherapist, I worried we wouldn’t be able to get enough therapists to join because people were understandably cautious of something new. Then therapists did start joining. Now we’re focused on turning NextTherapist into a true marketing machine—so that when someone thinks, I might need a therapist, they think of us.
And even then, it takes time.
On average, people wait seven years between first considering therapy and actually booking an appointment. Seven years of wondering. Seven years of coping. Seven years of waiting for things to feel different.
Taking Off the Blinders
Whether it’s mental health, love, or building something meaningful, the hardest part is often the middle—the long stretch where effort doesn’t yet match outcome. Where it’s easy to assume that slowness means failure, or that discomfort means something has gone wrong.
So I find myself practicing the same thing I help my clients practice every day: noticing when the blinders are on. Pausing. Taking a breath. Getting my bearings. Remembering that pain doesn’t mean permanence, and waiting doesn’t mean stagnation.
Progress rarely looks dramatic. More often, it looks like continuing to show up. Putting one foot in front of the other. Trusting that movement is happening even when you can’t see it yet.
And sometimes, it looks like laughing along with a song on the radio and asking—half joking, half hopeful—baby, where the hell is my husband?
For now, that’s okay.
If any part of this resonated, consider it an invitation—to pause, to widen your lens, and to get support if you need it. Healing, like love and like building something meaningful, doesn’t happen on a schedule. But you don’t have to walk the long middle by yourself.
