Anxiety, Depression and How To Help

So helping a friend with anxiety and/or depression is a big job and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression can feel overwhelming. This can be made more difficult if you are trying to deal with it alone. This often the case for people struggling with the symptoms of anxiety and depression. It often starts as a private and hidden struggle. A piece of advice I was given by Ms Firmin - Sarra is whilst it is important to be a supportive friend if someone close to you is struggling with any difficulties, it is equally important to practice self-care and ensure that you are looking after yourself and also get the support you need. Anxiety and depression can be very complex conditions to understand so it is always important that you seek the help of an adult/health care professional if experiencing or even supporting a person the myriad of associated symptoms. As anxiety and depression can present differently for each person, let's start with some information about the conditions themselves. Remember though, whilst the internet can give us some great information, sometimes google can give us so much info that we can be left overwhelmed. Remember, it's always important to seek the help and support of mental health care professionals to ensure the info we are reading is accurate.

Google's definition of Anxiety:
a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
"he felt a surge of anxiety"

worry, concern, apprehension, apprehensiveness, consternation, uneasiness, unease,fearfulness,  fear, disquiet, disquietude, perturbation, fretfulness, agitation, angst,nervousness,  nerves, edginess, tension, tenseness, stress, misgiving, trepidation,foreboding, suspense;

So it's important to mention that there are different types of anxiety and different things trigger different people. This link here gives you a name and description of each one:  https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/anxiety/types-of-anxiety

So my anxiety tends to be triggered by just the thought of stressful or dangerous situations. So theme parks are my enemy. The best way for me to control my anxiety when I'm anxious is by lying in bed or somewhere comfortable and just playing an app on my phone or scrolling through social media. 

When you're helping a friend through anxiety, being open to understanding what they're going through can be incredibly beneficial for both of you. So knowing what might and might not help is a big step in the right direction

Although well intended, sometimes things we say can feel unhelpful. Here's a few things to steer clear of saying to someone with anxiety:

http://www.realsimple.com/health/anxiety-what-not-to-say

Here are some things you might like to try saying:

https://themighty.com/2015/07/things-to-say-to-people-with-anxiety/

.

Google's definition of depression:
feelings of severe despondency and dejection.
"self-doubt creeps in and that swiftly turns to depression"

melancholy, misery, sadness, unhappiness, sorrow, woe, gloom, gloominess,dejection, downheartedness,  despondency, dispiritedness, low spirits, heavy heartedness, moroseness,  discouragement, despair,  desolation, dolefulness,moodiness, pessimism, hopelessness;

Similar to anxiety, knowing about depression and what it is, is really important. Depression is really serious but can be so easily misread as those synonyms above. It's important to remember that depression is very treatable, but it might take some encouragement to get your friend to seek help. I also encourage you though to see a counsellor yourself about how to help them.

As I did with anxiety, here is some information about depression:

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression/types-of-depression

So here are some things you should and shouldn’t say to someone with depression:

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20393228,00.html

Just recently I was talking to a friend with depression and I gave them a big pep talk about how they needed to find things that could help make them happier, whether that was drawing, running, or seeing a counsellor. They had recently gone through a rough time and they had accepted that they were just going to felt like this forever so it wasn't worth trying to fix it. I was listing off all the amazing things about them and all the great things they've done and how they need to take the steps to make sure everyone could see that side of them.  I guess when you think about it, if they could find their own happiness or snap out of it, they would. So it is really important to be there for them and help them through it.

Well done if you got this far down. I know it's a lot of information but anxiety and depression aren't things to be taken lightly. I encourage anyone reading this to continue reading and learning about it, whether you know someone suffering from either of these or not. Remember there are information sheets in the foyer of the Sophia Centre that you can grab (you can easily slip in without being particularly noticed). Please feel free to give me feedback on this article. Either through email, DM or just commenting. 

Thanks for reading xx