I am tired of being told to relax. Not only is that the most unhelpful suggestion, but it assumes that I am at all capable of relaxing and that I wouldn’t be relaxing even if I was able to. As someone with anxiety and depression, the campaigns of mindfulness can be helpful for some, but the popular notion that deep breathing, exercise, and meditation can cure anxiety and depression is frustrating, to say the least.
Anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults in the United States, approximately 18.1 percent of Americans, every year. Assuming that something as simple as breathing deeply and trying to clear your mind can help every 40 million of those people to the same extent is ridiculously incorrect and an unhealthy narrative to be spreading. Promotion of “natural” remedies, as opposed to potentially life-saving medications, has created a stigma around those who do rely on medications, such as SSRIs, antipsychotics and beta-blockers to go about their lives normally.
Recently, there have been campaigns to normalize mental illnesses within the general public, which has been beneficial in making people more aware of what they may be going through. Despite this awareness, there still lies a stigma surrounding getting help for mental illnesses beyond persevering on your own. Some believe that just because mental illness is ‘all in your head’ you can solve it by working on yourself, and that those who cannot do that simply aren’t trying hard enough. But mental illnesses stem from so much more than just minor stressors or sadness, they are genetic, generational and can be formed by trauma or a simple lack of the proper neurotransmitters.
You wouldn’t tell someone who is diabetic to just try harder to have their pancreas make insulin, so why do you tell people with depression to try harder when they are fundamentally lacking the chemicals needed to do so? Even my family members with mental illnesses — as my plight is the genetic kind not the trauma-based kind — fall to the assumption that I just need to learn breathing techniques and go on a walk. But fifteen years of persistent anxiety later, they have finally realized that I can’t just try to be happy or calm or content. I want to be calm, and I will go on walks and breathe deeply and try to distract myself, but my body and mind deep down never really relaxes and I never really can work through my anxiety without the help of medication.
Even as someone who has come to terms with the fact that I am going to rely on medicine for probably my entire life it is scary to write these things out for people to read. I don’t want to seem like I’ve given up getting better or that I am weak for using medicine as a crutch, but I am neither of those things. I am not weak because I take medicine for my mental health, I am strong because I am able to focus on things other than my mental health when I take medicine. I am not giving up because I am not letting my mental illness win, I am working against it and using all the tools I have in my arsenal to do so.
Medicine is not a cop-out or a cure-all for mental illness, it is an approach that takes time to work and to find the best fitting medication for you, but it also can seriously help people cope with things that otherwise would be debilitating. Calling people weak for taking care of themselves in a way you wouldn’t do but is perfectly healthy is only contributing to the greater problem of severe untreated mental illness in the world. Just because your version of anxiety is having your heartbeat a little faster during an exam doesn’t mean another person’s version isn’t debilitating. Just because you can clear your head by doing yoga doesn’t mean a bipolar person can solve their manic and depressive episodes by doing so.
I’ve also noticed that people become hopeless because the medication they are on isn’t working well for them. Our brains are complex and so are our mental illnesses. This means that unlike taking medication for high blood pressure, there often isn’t one expected outcome. Medications can do different things for different people, and the time spent trying out new things until you find something that works for you is worth it.
In 2019, 15.8 percent of American adults took prescription medications for mental health concerns. 9.5 percent of American adults participated in mental health counseling. These things are common, healthy, and the best resource for many people. Shaming anyone for how they choose to treat their illness is disgusting and unnecessary. Shut up and stop telling me to just relax.
