When someone you love has anxiety or panic, one of the best things that you can do is just to be supportive. There are many things that you can do to help make their life better. In this chapter, we will examine various ways that you can help make life easier and symptoms more tolerable until therapy is able to provide your loved one with the relief that they need.
It is important to note, however, that you do want to be wary of enabling your friend’s anxious behavior. While you don’t want to condemn, it is important that you don’t feed in to obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, or social withdrawal. Offering to go out every time something is needed because a loved one is developing anxiety about leaving the house can actually make anxiety worse.
Educate Both Of You
The importance of educating yourself and your loved ones has been stressed repeatedly throughout this book, and the simple fact is that it can truly be one of the best things for both of you and for others in your lives as well. Anxiety can be frightening to experience, and it can be frightening to see a loved one go through. When you take the time to educate yourselves on the situation, you can learn not only how common it is, but how treatable it is.
Educating yourself and your loved one on anxiety can also help them to understand that, while unsettling, their symptoms are not dangerous or life threatening. In many cases, simply understanding anxiety and the symptoms that accompany it can help provide some relief from the symptoms. Treatment is still necessary, but knowing that the disorder is not dangerous can certainly be helpful.
Provide Support
The notion of being supportive for someone who is dealing with an anxiety disorder can seem simple at first glance, but the truth of the matter is that it can get downright difficult. Many people can experience severe symptoms before they are willing to seek help, and people with certain disorders may display strange behaviors, thought patterns, and mood changes. It can also be very hard to watch someone you love suffer, but offering support is often an essential part of helping them to recover.
Studies show that people who have a strong support network are much more likely to see a resolution of their anxiety symptoms. Sometimes being supportive just means offering a sympathetic ear whenever they need to explain what anxiety feels like or what it makes them think and do. Other times it may mean struggling to get them to continue therapy or encouraging them to keep going out with friends when they feel as though they want to stay inside. Being supportive isn’t always easy, but it is certainly the right thing to do.
Get Help
In the last chapter we talked about how important it is to help someone you love seek treatment for their anxiety, but the truth of the matter is that you may need to seek counseling of your own. Dealing with someone’s anxiety, especially someone that you live with or share a strong bond with, can take a major toll on your emotional health. Seeking the guidance and advice of a counselor can offer you a place where you can safely vent your feelings about the frustration and where you can talk about how their anxiety is affecting you.
Seeking therapy can also help you to avoid getting burned out. Dealing with someone’s anxiety can be an emotional drain. Talk to someone who can provide you with guidance and who can offer advice not only on how you can keep yourself protected but on what you can do to provide the right support for your loved one.
Try to Encourage Fun
While anxiety can be disabling and can create an array of negative emotions, there is plenty of evidence to show that having fun and laughing helps to greatly reduce anxiety. Try to encourage your loved one to have games, to go out, and to just have fun. Make certain that all of your conversations aren’t focused on their anxiety and that you are able to have lighthearted conversations as often as possible.
Consider Becoming Workout Partners
There is a great deal of evidence that supports the benefits of exercise on anxiety symptoms, so why not start working out together. Encourage your friend to join a gym with you, start going for runs, or take a class. Even if you just take a walk every couple of days or start learning how to dance, exercise is a great deal of fun and a great way to help improve your friend’s mood and boost endorphin production while helping improve both of your health.
Exercise helps to regulate hormones in the body, including those produced by the adrenal system. It is the adrenal system that triggers symptoms of anxiety and panic, so exercise can certainly be quite beneficial. Activities such as running and dancing also help to produce hormones that provide a general sense of well being while also helping to alleviate excess stress and muscle tension. All in all, exercise is great for the mind, body, and soul, making it a perfect way to help your friend while also helping yourself.
Join a Support Group or Counseling Session
Part of helping your loved one is encouraging them to get help for their anxiety, so why not do the same? Join a support group with your loved one or enroll in counseling with them. This will show that you care about what they are going through and that you are willing to learn what you can do to help them on the road to recovery. Whether you attend a single session or start making regular appointments, it will show that you, too, are dedicated to helping them relieve the symptoms of anxiety and panic that are disrupting their quality of life.
Avoid Judgment or Belittling
There is no doubt that for those who have never experienced anxiety firsthand, it can look strange. Obsessive compulsive behaviors, phobias, and social anxiety can produce symptoms that are certainly outside of the realm of the types of behaviors we encounter on a daily basis. It can be easy to make snap judgments about these behaviors, but one of the worst things you can do to someone with anxiety is to judge or belittle them.
If you have questions about their behaviors, try researching them on your own. Avoid asking them why they do strange things or accuse them of acting out for attention. Anxiety symptoms are often very embarrassing for people who experience them, and fear of judgment is often one of the biggest barriers to getting treatment. Ensuring that you are not judging your loved one is absolutely essential.
It is also important not to downplay or make a huge emphasis about someone’s anxiety symptoms. This can be a hard balance to maintain, but it is a very important one. Downplaying symptoms by pretending that they don’t exist or ignoring them can leave them feeling as though their feelings or symptoms are not worthy of mention, leaving them afraid to talk about them or seek help for them.
On the other hand, however, you don’t want to put the focus of every conversation on their symptoms or to make a big deal out of how they are acting. This can be downright embarrassing and it can trigger more anxiety and panic symptoms. The best thing that you can do is really just to acknowledge what is happening and to let your loved one share as much or as little about their symptoms as they want to.
Don’t Encourage Self Medication
If you saw your loved one buy illicit drugs, you would likely do whatever it takes to keep them from ingesting them, right? For people with anxiety, even substances that many people ingest every day can be as detrimental to their symptoms as illicit drugs. While you can’t force someone to give up things such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, you can certainly work to not encourage the behavior.
Self-medicating is extremely common among people with anxiety disorder. Nicotine is a stimulant that provides a short-term sensation of relief from anxiety but that can worsen the symptoms whenever withdrawals start to kick in. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant that serves to provide a fast acting sense of relaxation that can last as long as they are drinking. Withdrawal symptoms often trigger significantly worse anxiety, and the amount of resources that the body needs in order to remove alcohol from the system can often exacerbate anxiety symptoms.
Keeping loved ones from ingesting these substances is not your job, but refraining from encouraging it can be very helpful. If nobody is offering to take or accompany your loved one to a place where alcohol is served, you can greatly decrease the chances that they will end up drinking. Refusing to buy cigarettes or offering to quit along with your friend can be a great way to be supportive and to avoid enabling self-medicating behaviors.
Summary
There are many ways that you can help a loved one who is suffering from anxiety. Sometimes simply being there and showing that you care and are interested in what is happening can make a significant difference. Keep in mind, even when things get tough, that a supportive social network can be an essential element to recovery from anxiety disorders. When you are able to provide your loved one with the support they need to get better, the road to recovery can be a much shorter and smoother one.