Why is it so difficult for me to spend time thinking about anything other than job seeking / job comparison? UCLA is fairly competitive where many students make corporate ladder-climbing their entire personalities, and being placed in that environment along with familial and self-inflicted pressures to find job security has put me in a severe depressive state for the past two years or so. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way, and no matter how much I try to distract myself (through hobbies, socializing, etc.), I can’t seem to get out of that mindset of comparing myself to others. I genuinely can’t help but rely on external validity to the point where I know it’s doing serious, visible damage to my mental state, but it’s impossible to block out. E.g., I landed my first internship but I can’t even feel genuinely happy about it because I still don’t feel like I’m doing enough compared to my peers. Do I just need a therapist?