Someone recently asked me a question. And it was one of those questions that made me pause and then think. So much of the time we focus on the person with the mental illness, the person fighting the illogical brain. Sometimes taking a step back to look at what you are doing and if you are helping them is good too.
Sometimes we love someone so much that we do anything and everything we can think of to help them. This is a wonderful quality that so many people have. Often times people do not feel that they understand how a person thinks when their brain is being difficult. And this is true, through no fault of their own. People who are fighting an illogical brain often cannot articulate the way this makes them feels, or become so completely overwhelmed by their silent battles that they don’t realize they are doing anything that is out of the ordinary. This means that in order to get through to a person fighting the fight, you first have to try and understand what they are going through as well as how much control they currently have over how they see what they are going through. For me I had no idea that I was behaving in such an odd way. I genuinely thought that if I ate a salad and exercised in the morning, then did an 8 -hour workday and went to the gym after work I was behaving like everyone else. (I now know this is not the case but it took a while). However my family let me. They let me work through what was happening and didn’t tell me what to do or that I was doing something wrong. They didn’t take charge, they gently prompted (things like my mum buying higher calorie options to put in the salad, or asking to take the dog for a walk with me instead of me going to the gym). They showed that they cared and were interested (they still do) but at no point did they tell me what I was doing was abnormal. They could see it, clear as day. But they went with me along this journey of realizing something was wrong and working as a tribe to make it better. Recently a young man that I am very proud of asked I, how to help someone who is feeling very anxious. It made me pause for thought because I can only speak from my own experiences, and I often trivialize them because it seems to me that I sound like a drama queen otherwise. People who have anxiety imagine the worst things that can happen. They don’t go for the best because, quite frankly, they feel they don’t deserve them so it’s never going to happen to them. It might happen to people they know. Honestly anxious people make the best encouragers, they have already thought of every bad thing that could happen, which means by default that none of them will but in the delight of an illogical brain you then believe that it is only because you have thought of every possible bad thing. One of the most important things when dealing with someone who is feeling very anxious is to make them feel that they are not alone. For example: using words like ‘we’, ‘us’ ‘together’. When battling anxiety your brain makes you feel completely alone. Knowing that someone around you is working with you rather than, as your brain is telling you, that you are all alone. By using these kinds of words you also build a bit more of a safe area for the person who is in an anxious spiral. The next part is to try and break down what is causing the problem and how you can work together to try and make it better or more manageable. When you fixate on something with severe anxiety it can become all encompassing. You cannot see a way past it. Having someone break it down into smaller manageable chunks helps because you have lost the ability to do that yourself. Coming up with small solutions may seem obvious to some people but when you are spiraling it is beyond your brain. You have succumbed to your illogical brain and you effectively need a ‘kick up the bum’ in the gentlest sense to get you back in fighting mode. One of the best things that you can do is be present. I mean this is the sense of a hug, a physical presence. The feeling of touch, of something real can help to bring you back into the room. It can bring you back to where you are, rather than where your illogical brain wants you to be. This is one of the biggest things for me. It’s like people are telling me with a solid hug that they understand and I’m allowed not to know the answers to everything right now. Another thing is also not to force. In the tribe I am with we make it incredibly clear that if you can’t face today, then you don’t have to. Take a day and see how you feel tomorrow. This works well because it gives you time to process the suggestions you have come up with together and also allows you to recover from how exhausting your brain has been. The people who help when someone is spiraling with severe anxiety or depression are genuinely incredible. There are not the correct words in the English language to let you know how amazing you are and how thankful we are for all of you. If the shoe was on the other foot, we would do it for you in a heartbeat. We are enough, We are not alone. We are ok. You are enough. You are not alone. You are ok.
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