Anxiety is the nearly unexplainable for someone experiencing it. It takes many years of introspection and for me, many moments where I didn’t realize what I was doing until I had destroyed a friendship. It is the most grueling trial and error process imaginable.
Mental health is part of being a human. To deny that really seems to be insane to me but there are many (religious) people who do claim that you just need Jesus in your heart when you tell them you’re depressed/worried. No, you don’t need a fictional being in your blood-regulating organ. He would not fit. You can’t fit upright Arabic men into a bodily organ. Stop speaking in metaphors that make no fucking sense.
The stigma associated with mental health is real, though. Not just from a dogmatic religious view but from people who really don’t bother to understand what some of the signs or reactions mean. For example, if a person with anxiety is upset over something and it seems illogical, it probably is but they don’t know it. (Sometimes, worse, they do know it and can’t keep from feeling it. Ever in bed and open your eyes but feel like you can’t move your body or anything else and you’re almost paralyzed? It is a very similar feeling of being a passenger in a runaway car and the brakes don’t work.) The person they may be speaking to during that moment might say “Stop being that way” or “You’re being unreasonable.” but they’re preaching to the choir.
A better approach, I have found from experience, is for the person dealing with the anxiety-individual to try to understand what the root cause of the episode is. If someone is upset and feels neglected, you can tell them to “Get over it” like that is a magical option in the brain we are just opting not to choose – or you might look at things you can do to help us get over it because that’s really what we are asking. We can try, but if you care and care enough to try too, you can help us with what is essentially a disability.
Anxiety can’t be controlled, just like depression. The feeling is a little difficult to describe but imagine a deafening worry that you can’t silence in your ear, almost like a ringing after a loud noise. It goes further than you considering it and you experience the emotions of it. If you are thinking of something, being intelligent, you consider all of the possibilities. You play the scenario out in your mind, which is usually worst-case scenario, and it becomes reality to the bearer of said-ideas.
Before long, you find yourself really concerned that this may be what is happening and you’re trapped in a panic that you desperately need out of. That’s when you reach out to someone. Unfortunately, that also seems to be when the proverbial train goes off of the rails.
Most people in my experience are very condescending to someone dealing with anxiety. Even many of the best people I know can sometimes be incredibly hurtful, unawarely offering advice like “get over it” which, as I mentioned before, they usually know about because we ARE TRYING TO get over it!
Let’s say I have anxiety and I mention something that is bothering me, probably playfully at first hoping someone catches on. They don’t, they make a joke of it or they think you’re simply kidding when you are light-heartedly saying “Help me, please.” So, as usually happens, the anxiety gets even worse now that your effort to get some kind of assistance from this person has failed. Again, lot’s of possibilities but what will the person with an anxiety disorder pick? The worst one, and then dwell on it. The worst possibility, always at this point, is that the person you are dealing with just does not care about you or your feelings. You aren’t important. You’re an afterthought.
By the time that person with anxiety is ready to, embarrassingly for a second time, practically beg for a concerned show of help, there is usually a burdensome frustration setting in from considering that someone does not care at all about you. The very natural response that many have is to not care about them, too. This is where things usually go bad. Derailment. You approach them with a mildly offended request to show more affection, compassion, concern or basically, just attention. Simply by asking a person to show you more love, you’re humbly and vulnerably exposing your feelings and your weaknesses to someone. So what do they do?
Hopefully, you get something similar to the requests now twice or several times made and hinted at to someone. Just some level of affection, compassion and attention to make you feel better. All too often, though, that is a dream come true.
Usually, the reality is far more harsh. “What’s your fucking problem?” “What’s wrong with you?” “You’re crazy.” “You’re being paranoid” “You’re just wanting attention.” “You’re being insecure.”
When anything like this is dropped, it is the knife in the heart to someone with anxiety. I can’t really even explain this feeling but in that moment, you feel like you’ve been crushed for trying to care. Someone you care for can hurt you far more than anyone else and this capitulation of the anxiety attack unfolding is that.
Things can get worse from here but there is no need for me to even try to relive that. As you can imagine, it is a horrible feeling for the person that can’t stop worrying. What is worse is, the anxiety will usually wear off and the person, in a guilty state of mind, blames his or herself for not being able to “not give a fuck.”
It is a gruesome, vicious cycle. It is depressing. It is sad. But due to the very nature of what I just mentioned, it is also very lonely. That can be the hardest part of all.