"I know what it's like to have anxiety and depression. I feel anxious and depressed sometimes, too!"
There's something distinctly obnoxious about having mood disorders that also fall into the realm of words that everyone uses to describe themselves whenever anything mildly unpleasant happens to them. They're always so pleased with themselves, because they can actually understand what someone less fortunate is going through, which is a noble and wonderful thing for them to do, they think. As well-meaning as they may be, of course, they're wrong. Feeling a little bit down once and awhile isn't the same thing has having a clinical depression, which makes you feel really, REALLY down, more often than not! Feelingly mildly anxious when doing something that's generally regarded as being stressful isn't the same thing has having Social Anxiety Disorder, which entails heart-pounding terror when doing things as simple as checking the mail!
You can blame it all you want on simple, harmless ignorance, but making such rash assumptions about things that can actually make people so very miserable is anything but harmless, I'd think...
That's been my mom's mantra through everything I've been going through lately - or, hell, everything I've ever been through, really! "I don't know what you problem is, I feel anxious sometimes too, but you don't see me being some panicky faggot baby over it!" It's just not the same! She was in a fairly nasty car crash when she was a teenager, that screwed her spine up permanently. You don't see me claiming I know what that's like just because sometimes my back is a little sore when I wake up after sleeping in an awkward position! No, because you see, that would be an insensitive thing to do! Really insensitive! Sitcom husband insensitive! So, why is it apparently not insensitive when she does the same thing?
Or, well, how about an ostensible friend from some time ago? It's hard to adequately express just how incredibly stupid I feel for going through the trouble of dropping everything for them, abandoning my lifestyle, moving a considerable distance, and making more general sacrifices than I'm sure they realised, on the absurd assumption that this person actually knew what they were talking about when they said they totally understood my anxiety disorder, totally, because they totally had the same thing. (Spoiler alert: They didn't. Seething bitterness over one's asexuality....isn't the same thing.) Ultimately, I suppose that's when I first started to learn the lesson that people just like to make assumptions about anxiety, assumptions that they OBVIOUSLY know what it's like, not really thinking about who could possibly wind up emotionally bulldozed in the process because, hey, it can't POSSIBLY be worse than they shallowly assume it is, can it? When someone offers to help you overcome the same obstacles they have, you'd better make damn sure that they ARE the same obstacles; otherwise, you're just going to end up resenting each other. They'll think you're weak and pathetic; you'll think they're insensitive and callously cruel. (You'll be the more correct of the two in this scenario, by the way.)
It seems to me that good friends actually don't assume they know what the things their friends are going through feel like. That always seems to be what people assume they should do, isn't it? Sure, we can, and should, try to understand the objective facts of their situation, and acknowledge it, offering help if we can. It's really easy, from that point, to take that tiny extra step of assuming that you know EXACTLY what they're going through; but, tiny as that step may be, it seems to be a pretty devastating shortcut to having even LESS of an understanding of their emotions, with catastrophic results, illogical as that might seem at first to everyone, including Jesse From One Year Ago. (What a moron he was!)
It might seem like a step back at first, but simply accepting that your friends will feel the way that they feel, period, is a lot more helpful. You might think they're not handling their situation as well as they could, but you should always assume they're operating under more variables than you, yourself, can probably imagine; such is how emotions work! It's not because they're weak, and it's not because they're pathetic, and it's certainly not because you're better than them. It's just because everyone's different, and so everyone handles things differently. Diversity in outlooks is one of the most wonderful things about life....even when it comes to handling situations that are the exact opposite of wonderful in ways that are also seemingly the exact opposite of wonderful.
So, if you have a friend, family member, significant other, or otherwise-loved-onery listening to what they think they need....because you're probably gonna get it really, really wrong if you think you somehow know. Don't keep doing that to them. PLEASE don't keep doing that to them.
(The preceding was written during a pretty nasty case of sleep deprivation, so if it doesn't make sense....that's why. I assume my sleep schedule will level out after the stressful events of this Tuesday are over. Thank you for your, erm, patience.)
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