Six Life Lessons I’ve learnt from Depression and Anxiety

HazelNutt
HazelNutt
Aug 28, 2017 · 7 min read

1. Emotions are the most challenging things in life

It almost sounds counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t losing a loved one or being made to sit in a room for a week straight with a speech from Donald Trump playing on repeat be more challenging? But if you break it down, it’s the emotions that arise from said situations that make the events challenging. Without emotions — pain, grief, fear, anger — we wouldn’t find the events challenging at all. Mum died? Oh ok, guess we should bury her and sort out the will then. Simples! But while this might be obvious in more extreme situations, we tend to forget this in daily life. Whether we’re overloaded with work, feeling too anxious to spend the day getting to know new people, or feeling unexplainably angry with a stubborn family member, it’s managing our emotional responses that makes the situation challenging. And sometimes we just don’t feel able to manage them properly. Whether we’re over-tired, over-stressed or just over life, sometimes we just don’t have it in us to tackle the emotions that arise in a difficult situation. And that’s ok. I’ve learnt to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if you can’t take on everything in one day. But it does matter that we know how to navigate the day when we’re struggling with the overwhelming emotions. I don’t know why we’re not taught such techniques in school, but considering so much in life depends on how well we manage and understand our emotions (relationships, jobs, goals, self-esteem, mental and physical health) it seems just as necessary if not more so than standard classes such as maths and science. Why do so many people have to wait until they’ve hit rock bottom or find themselves in the midst of a crisis before they seek out the tools that we will all inevitably need to manage the biggest challenges in our lives?

2. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped

I’ve been on both sides of this story. It can be so frustrating and painful to watch someone you care for continually hurt themselves or sabotage their chance of happiness, veering off the happy-life path into a thicket of misery. Especially so when the answer is in front of their eyes, or when they know exactly what they’re doing wrong yet still end up doing it over and over. But I’ve also been that person — had people give me good solid advice (eat right and do regular exercise, don’t be so hard on yourself, get involved in an activity that will get you out of the house and make friends, talk to someone if you’re struggling) but the thing is, often, when I’m on struggle street, I know exactly what I ‘should’ be doing, yet I still find myself doing the opposite. And I think this is because sometimes people are just not ready to be helped. Sometimes we need to get lost in our own inner-world before we can find the path back out. And while that inner-world is an unpleasant place where the intensity of the thoughts and feelings overshadow even the possibility of a solution, I think sometimes it’s necessary to work through it before we are able to accept help. Just to be clear though, I’m not suggesting that people stop offering help to those who need it, nor am I saying that people who are depressed are that way because they want to be. What I’m saying is have patience, because it’s a process, and you can’t fast-forward the process. But, for me at least, the constant reassurance that help is at hand and loved ones will keep offering it regardless of how many times I reject them was a necessary part of the process. It was the guiding light that brought me out of the forest and into the place I needed to be to actually accept the help.

3. Fear is no reason to avoid something

Unless of course it’s fear of having your arm ripped off if you were to tackle a wild tiger, or something sensible like that. Avoid that. But in terms of anxiety fear, or fear of the unknown, obeying that will only limit your experience of life and your capabilities. I’ve spent so many nights at home alone because I was too anxious to go to a social event, spent a lot of my teenage years wagging school because I was too anxious to actually go to school and be in a room with a bunch of actual people, but where did that get me? Sad and alone! It might be obvious, but avoiding something only makes it harder to face later. Note point 2, but at some stage you have to face the fear and plough on through. And when you do, good things happen. I read a great article here that points out how painful socializing can be for introverts — but also notes that you have to put in the hours of awkward, meaningless conversations to actually build a friendship and get to the part where you can feel connected and relaxed around someone. In the end, doing the anxiety-inducing thing will be worth it. And even if facing your fears doesn’t get any easier (I still on occasion have to avoid people because of crippling anxiety, despite having pushed through it for many years, 1 billion trillion times before) at least you’re proving to yourself that you can handle life’s situations, regardless of how you’re feeling or how scary it might be.

4. It’s ok not to be ok

We can’t be happy all of the time. That’s not real life. Life is full of ups and downs, yet it’s only the ups that are displayed in the snapshots of success. We’re lead to believe through marketing, social media and entertainment that if we’re not happy there is something missing — something wrong with us that needs to be remedied. But the reality is we all have bad days, and bad experiences, and allowing ourselves to acknowledge our struggles without also beating ourselves up about it allows us to move through the stages in point 2 much more quickly. And there are days when we just need a time out from life. Sometimes when I’m not in a good place all I need is a cry, a tub of ice cream and a good night’s (or day’s) sleep and then I can get back to life. And that’s ok! We’re not robots — and even robots need to recharge once in a while.

5. We create our own reality

This is the point I have the most difficulty with, because it’s one thing to understand that we create our own reality and it’s another thing to actually be able to create a positive reality that you love. Social anxiety highlighted this to me though. When I am in high-anxiety mode, all I can think about is how super awkward I am, how terrible I am at conversations and how I must be a really boring person. This, of course, makes it very hard to actually engage in conversation with anyone about anything other than the thoughts running through my head, being the fact that I’m super awkward and terrible at conversations. This in turn results in me actually being super awkward and terrible at conversations. The trouble I have is I haven’t figured out how to break out of that cycle of obsessive over-thinking when it takes hold — if anyone has any tips feel free to share! But my point is our thoughts influence how we behave and the impression we create in the world, which influences how people react to us and how we interpret their reactions. This works in a positive way too, of course. People who believe in their own abilities and worth are often the most successful and well loved. Many of the strategies for managing depression and anxiety focus on re-writing the stories we tell ourselves in our head to something more neutral or positive. And while it may only begin as a story we tell ourselves, if we can learn to project positivity in our minds our reality also becomes more positive — we change it into a story we tell other people too. I’m not saying we can simply think our way out of depression or anxiety, but I think it is important to acknowledge how much of an impact our thoughts have on our lives and how subjective experience is. More on this point later.

6. Life goes on

I used to hate the passing of time. I’d wish so hard that I could pause the clock and take just a bit more time to prepare myself for whatever I didn’t want to deal with. I used to avoid going to sleep because that meant that all of a sudden it would be morning again and I’d have to go to school or work and face all the things I felt like I just couldn’t face. I’d spend weeks, or months even, worrying about an approaching event and all the ways I could avoid it. Most of the time though, the waiting period was actually the hardest part. I’d get to the event, get through the event, feel relieved it was over, and then move on. And eventually I learned to actually be thankful for the passing of time, because if I were able to pause time I might never move on. But life just keeps going, and really you just have to keep going with it. Whatever happens, you’ll deal with it because, well, what other choice do you have? Time keeps going regardless of how prepared you feel, or how badly you think you’ve messed up, or how much pain you’re in. And sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to get yourself back to functioning mode, but when you do, life will pick you up again and sweep you away with it.

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