I am, like you, working through some "shrapnel" -- i.e., my life is in considerable disarray after three years of feeling incapable of interrupting that process. I am poverty-stricken at the moment, among other things.

I had what many would consider "help", at times -- I saw a therapist for a year, through sometime in 2013, but to be honest and it's no reflection on anyone else's experience with these things, but I found it derailing. I found anti-depressants a distraction from progress, and I found the therapy environment to likewise be counter-productive, distracting and derailing.

I've only just turned this corner.. that I feel I've regained some psychological control, although regained is not the right word as I have very much had to re-emerge like the phoenix. My old ways of pushing through, soldiering through, telling myself everything would be alright (the old "fake it til ya make it") was just not going to work for me this time around.

I do think there are good therapists out there -- but I can't personally advocate counting on finding one, because that's just not been my own experience. I've had one in my lifetime that was worth his salt, and he was great. Diamond in the rough. I don't say it to discourage people who are confident in their therapy regime -- if you find something that works that's great -- but I say it to discourage people from believing that they can't do it alone, because sometimes we do find ourselves alone, and it's definitely better not to think of that as a death sentence. I am actually totally alone right now, I can't even explain to you how much. My best friend of 25 years died just a few years ago, and then my husband of 10 years not too long after that. Then I moved out of state for a job opportunity without giving myself much chance to grieve, and as I've struggled with this depression the other people that love me haven't known what to do and eventually have come to be in little to no contact with me. I don't begrudge them this; sometimes people don't know what to say in these situations. Sometimes they are afraid it will be catching and that's actually quite real -- a person's depression can be truly triggering to those that love them and have been depressed themselves before.

I really believe the size and shape of my depression was exactly proportionate to my true sense of grief though, to all I needed to process (more than that grief alone; many things). It did become complicated by some other comorbidities; anxiety and PTSD, and the trifecta of those three together can be quite overwhelming to say the least. I accept there was a purpose for it in my life though, and I found it helpful to do so even before I fully understood what that purpose was.

But I have turned the corner! I am being gentle with myself in my navigation of it, but not fearful.