On Monica Lewinsky, panic, depression, and self-acceptance.

"Dinner with Monica Lewinsky", by Ed and Deb Shapiro, isn't really about the world's most infamous political intern -- it's about the destructiveness of guilt and the importance of self-forgiveness, about how "[h]olding on to past guilt hurts us . . . and doesn't change what happened one iota," and about how to let go of guilt and get start living your life more fully.

This resonates for me, for reasons intimately related to my experience with panic. Shame entered my life with my first panic attacks. To panic was to be weak, as I saw it then. Panic was something to hide from the world. Since then, as panic, agoraphobia, and depression have caused me to miss important events (weddings, dinner dates, job interviews), lose longtime friends, and fail to build a career I'm very proud of, the shame I feel has only increased.

I'm betting I'm not the only person with panic disorder who's struggling to accept him- or herself. We're self-critical control freaks, after all; of course we're going to have a hard time forgiving ourselves.

The Lewinsky piece offers valuable perspective to help the process along, as do this and this.