by Tammy Barlekamp
What is our incentive to get stronger, recovered, healed, and independent? It is rather maddening to me that the incentive to make our own decisions, choose our own path, follow our heart, take a risk, a leap of faith or a chance on our dreams is met with a mixed message. Does it ever feel like you only get attention when you’re feeling bad, angry, depressed, and anxious? You are encouraged to GO FOR IT, but then when you do, you find yourself alone and unsupported. OK, on the count of three we go for it!... but you’re the only one jumping?The Daily Struggles that Go Unrecognized
There seems to be a standard list of trials that are deemed worthy of support, encouragement, love and attention. You may recognize some on the list: death, disease, loss of job, divorce, just to name a few. These are acceptable hardships that receive sympathy and understanding. I agree that these are trials worthy of notice and support, but what about those struggling to grow away from anxiety and depression? What about hardships endured for the sake of bettering yourself and those around you? What about marriage issues that go on for years? Or temptations we battle with daily? Or struggles to parent our children when we have had little or no parenting ourselves?Getting Support for Daily Struggles
These issues are every bit as legitimate as the obvious struggles. They create fear, depression, anxiety, and other unwanted feelings. They, too, need support and recognition. It often seems like the invisible struggles are overlooked and disregarded if your visible life looks like you are making it. At church when they ask for prayer requests, most of the requests are for those dealing with a death in the family or illness. You don’t hear too many requests for the power to forgive a spouse or the courage to apologize to a friend.Daily Struggles Are Not Minor
These issues are not minor. Marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. Changing your heart, your attitude, or your coping skills is hard. Finding ways to change your thinking so that you don’t approach life from a perspective of anxiety, fear, and sadness is hard. We need love and support and understanding for this. But when was the last time you received a potluck dinner in support of trying to change your negative thoughts or overcome depression? If we just stick to the “visible” struggles, we may never change the more threatening “invisible” decay.Revealing the Invisible Struggles in Life
I was shocked this past year when our neighbors got a divorce after seventeen years and four children. They seemed to be the model family - coaching baseball, a business in town, out in the yard playing catch. Who knew they were struggling? I wish they had talked to my husband and me about the struggles. We could have talked about our own as well. Maybe we could have come up with some solutions together so that we could work on the relationships or at least learn to cope with the anxieties that our problems produce.But there we sat with our perspective struggles thinking the other was the model couple. We need to open up and encourage one another. We need to be more aware of the invisible trials that are present in us all. No matter what it appears to be on the outside, if you feel overwhelmed and unstable on the inside, you are feeling lonely and isolated. You can feel like a foreigner among happy people or couples. If someone looks successful, then they must be stable, happy, grounded, and confident. Don’t believe it. Successful people may need MORE support.
Broadening the List of Support Topics
My neighbors who looked like they had it all were the ones who needed support the most. Granted, they needed to expose the problem for others to support them, but how easy is it for us to air our struggles? Who wants to look like they are complaining? Or who likes to hear “why are you complaining? You have so much!!” The house, the car, the money, did not stop our friends and their children from the anguish they are going through now. Likewise, success doesn’t stop people from feeling anxious, depressed, unloved, or unworthy. You never know what lies inside the model person.Can’t we broaden our list of support topics to include those struggles that have been maybe not so visibly “dramatic” or traumatic to the world, but that have been internal uphill climbs and are challenging our strength and reserve?
What Are the Incentives to Challenging Anxiety, Depression, and Fear?
I can understand why so many give up trying to be strong and recovered. It is hard to persist while watching your support people drop out of sight because they feel you don’t need them anymore. What is our incentive to recover? Why struggle to the top to be lonely? Do we have to have misfortune to get support? Is our society hooked on drama and anxiety? Can we stop trying to out-tragedy each other for attention?I don’t want to have a traumatic life full of chaos and anxiety to get attention. We need to encourage those who appear to have reached the summit as well as those who are still climbing. And we are all both. No matter where we are in life, we reach our summits and keep climbing. Even Lucinda has trials. As successful as she is with overcoming her anxiety and in helping others through her business, she still has struggles to deal with. Maybe more because of her drive to deal with her own anxiety AND help others creates a larger burden than most people have.
Have you ever been isolated and lonely because of success? Success with isolation isn’t my idea of success. Any success is only as good as its ability to help others and further our goal of unity.
Incentives to Overcome Anxiety and Depression from the Forum
What is your incentive to successfully recover from anxiety and depression? Here are some comments from our Forum Friends:Ethrdg writes:
Maybe we go through degrees of recovering from anxiety and depression? Perhaps the first level is when we feel our worst, our weakest, and are most needing of help. The next level is when we feel stronger, more independent, and are determined to take care of ourselves and everyone around us without leaning on anyone for support. And maybe, just maybe, the highest level of strength and recovery is reaching a place of acceptance, where we are strong, where we can take care of our loved ones and ourselves, but where we accept our imperfections and are strong enough to be able to ask for help and support when we need it. Maybe what we’re striving for isn’t complete independence, but the ability to accept our humanity and see strength in our ability to reach out when we need someone to lean on without shame, not in spite of our anxiety and depression, but because of those of feelings.
Amethyst98 adds:
What is my incentive to recover from anxiety and depression? I’m just sick and tired of allowing problems to rule my life. I’ve had enough and I’ve had enough of thinking I need someone else to make it all better. We don’t. It is us who need to make life better and free from feelings like sadness and nervousness. Then we can enjoy the support others provide us instead of desperately hanging on to it.
I was tired of letting other people’s negativity and nastiness rule my life. I used to get hung up on negative comments to me. They would create so much sadness and anxiety. But now I understand that other people’s opinions don’t mean much. I used to let people I didn’t like bug me to no end. But I came to the realization that if I don’t like them, then why am I allowing them to cause me so much distress? I realized I didn’t need other people’s acknowledgments of my struggles; I could deal with them and move on!
I hope everyone reading this can find an incentive to recover from anxiety and depression. If you need support for symptoms of a mood disorder, ask for it. If you are having success - share it with someone. Brag a little. Give yourself the recognition you should be getting from others for recovering from anxiety and depression. DO NOT give up trying to recover because you have no support. Success brings new friends, new focus, new self-esteem and a new type of support. So everyone on the count of three….
GO FOR IT!
Tammy Barlekamp, Coach
