That's good advice. Alternatively, instead of risking additional side-effects with a medication like Xanax, a psychologist could work with the original poster on non-pharmaceutical therapies like CBT or ACT, which have proven as effective as medication (often more so) in multiple studies over the past few decades. Sometimes CBT or ACT also use medication initially to help get started, but the goal is to move beyond it quickly.

(Note that that applies only to basic depression and/or anxiety; more complex diagnoses, like bipolar, will almost certainly need medication as part of the therapy.)