Anxiety and its symptoms can be scary to witness, here's how to help!
This week we are starting to really get into discussing how you can help a loved one who is struggling with a mental illness. Anxiety is hard for a lot of people to understand. Anxiety, as a psychological condition, is defined as "a nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks." If someone is experiencing a panic attack and you've never seen it happen it can be really scary to witness and it can be very confusing about what you should do. So, let's talk about it!
One of the most important things you can do is learn more about what the symptoms of anxiety are, we covered a lot about anxiety in two of our blog posts (https://advocatementalhealth.wixsite.com/mysite/post/fast-facts-anxiety, and https://advocatementalhealth.wixsite.com/mysite/post/types-of-anxiety-disorders) but some common symptoms are as follows:
- Panic, fear, and uneasiness
- Sleep problems
- Not being able to stay calm and still
- Shortness of breath
- Heart palpitations
It's important that you learn about anxiety because as you learn about anxiety, you can start to recognize when these symptoms are getting to the point where they are leading to a panic attack and help your loved one start initiating their coping skills.
It's important for you to make sure that you aren't enabling anxious behaviors. As loved ones struggle with fears, our initial reaction is to get rid of the thing that is creating that fear. But many things that people are anxious about are regular parts of life that cannot be avoided forever. Enabling avoidance makes it easier for anxious thoughts to continue and spiral out of control, leading to more things that someone struggling with anxiety wants to avoid.
However, it's important to learn the balance of not enabling avoidance but also not forcing confrontation. "Flooding," professionally called "Exposure Therapy" is an incredible form of therapy that can greatly enable loved ones to overcome fears. But remember, you are not a therapist and it is not your job to do exposure therapy with a loved one and is only to be done with a professional. Encourage your anxious loved one to consider it, but remember that it is something gradually built up to and not just something to force upon someone (McGuire).
Anxiety is also something highly stigmatized and one of the greatest things you can do for a loved one is to help end the stigma. This means reminding them that their anxiety is not a weakness or character flaw, helping them to see that not all their anxieties are abnormal (some of them you probably relate to)(Boyes), and also maintaining positive language (Milligan). Helping them to see the positive sides of who they are as a person and helping them to not see this as permanent is an awesome skill that you'll find helpful in a lot of situations, not just helping someone out of a panic attack (Boyes).
Remember that this does not mean that you encourage reassurance-seeking behavior. If you don't know what this is, it's where someone with anxiety comes to you repeatedly asking for your assurance that "you won't leave them", or if "you're sure they don't have cancer", or even something as simple as "you're sure you're not angry with me?" (Boyes). This kind of behavior can spiral out of control and lead to manipulation out of fear and it's important that it needs to be curbed if it starts to get out of control. Discuss with your own therapist or even go to therapy together to start building healthy boundaries together.
Now, let's talk about what to do right in the moment when someone is having a panic attack. I want you to remember two things. First, this person does not want to have this happen, especially if it's in a public area. Drawing attention to it is the worst possible thing you can do and will make their anxiety attack get worse. Second, panic attacks manifest in different ways. For some people, it's a full-on seizure, while for others it's heavy breathing and rocking, or even curling into a fetal position and disassociating.
So what can you do?
Ditch the phrase, "Are you okay?" Common sense would tell you that anyone who looks like they are freaking out is not okay. Just don't say it, it wastes time and makes them feel like an oddity you're gawking at (Princing).
Instead, ask if they would like a glass of water or a hand to hold. First off, asking is important because you don't have permission to touch this person just because they are having a rough time. Second, it shows that you are sincerely interested in them being okay and that you want to support them while they are having a rough time. Third, giving their brain something else to think about is a great way to help slowly ease them out of a panic attack or prevent it from getting worse.
If they are very far in their panic attack, a great coping skill that is very good to just know is the 5 Senses coping skill.
This is where you ask the person to name 5 things they can see, 4 things they can hear, 3 things they can feel, 2 things they can smell, and 1 thing they can taste. Do this as needed to help basically reset their brain and take the focus off the thing they are panicking about. If you know any of the other coping skills that they have, feel free to help them use those too!
Remember that even as much as you love this person, you don't have permission to touch or grab or force while they are struggling.
Anxiety is hard to fully understand and so a lot of the time you may want to ask your loved one what it's like, or what triggered an attack. These are great things to know and it's awesome information to have to be more helpful to them in the future and also help develop your empathy! But I want to leave you with one thought, talking to them right after a panic attack is not kind. Please don't do it. Wait for a couple of hours or even a couple days before approaching them and asking them if there was a particular situation that was upsetting or if there was anything that could have helped more. It's okay to be curious, it's not okay to be rude. So please, remember that you're not a therapist and it's not your job to know and fix everything so don't make it your job. Just love and support in the best way you can without compromising your mental health!
Learn More:
1. McGuire, Joseph. “How to Help Someone with Anxiety.” How to Help Someone with Anxiety | Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2020, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/how-to-help-someone-with-anxiety.
2. Boyes, Alice. “How to Help Someone With Anxiety.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 13 July 2016, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201607/how-help-someone-anxiety.
3. Milligan, Amanda. “How to Help Someone With Anxiety.” Mental Health First Aid, 27 Dec. 2018, www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2018/12/how-to-help-someone-with-anxiety/.
4. Boyes, Alice. “Seven Ways to Help Someone with Anxiety.” Greater Good Magazine, 25 July 2018, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_help_someone_with_anxiety.
5. Princing, Mckenna. “What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone with Anxiety.” Right as Rain by UW Medicine, 18 May 2018, rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/mental-health/what-say-and-not-say-someone-anxiety.
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