Anxiety. I don't talk about it often. I don't take a special pill for it, though I used to and I'm not faulting anyone who does; it just didn't work for me. It often doesn't work for those of us with situational anxiety or depression. I've been diagnosed with ADHD formally which adds to my diagnosed anxiety, but my diagnosis took years to accomplish and I only take one medication, which is not approved for either condition. It's ironically for depression, but it supposedly minimizes the other two conditions.
So I'm not degrading the prevalence of or denying the existence of these conditions; I'm rebelling against the quick fix diagnosis for an alarming number of people, primarily our youth, and our desire to eliminate necessary pain, growth, and healing with a pill and a label.
A lot of young people shout it out as an excuse.
"I'm so anxious." "I'm so depressed." "Let's not talk about it because...you know...my anxiety."
Parents decide because their child isn't developing at the level of some of their peers that their child must be medicated and/or diagnosed. I have a child with special needs, so I know the process. And it was a process. And his delay was 5 years long. And I still don't believe he is Autistic, but that's easier for doctors and educators, the informal diagnosis, so that's how he was labeled and hence his educational progress often went to the wayside.
I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty confident that's not how any of this is suppose to work.
Someone correcting your poor behavior and hurting your feelings doesn't make you anxious. It hurts your feelings.
Getting in trouble for doing something wrong doesn't invoke an anxiety attack or depression; it scares you because of fear and often, guilt.
A reaction to an immediate event isn't usually anxiety-provoked. A reaction without explanation or a build up from suppressed events, that's anxiety.
Do you know why people avoid being diagnosed and getting appropriate help when it's really necessary? Because we've labeled it and then mainstreamed it like everything else.
Slow learner? Developmentally delayed? Must be Autistic.
Sad? Must be depressed.
Overwhelmed or frightened? Must have anxiety.
Label. Mainstream. Medicate. Opposite reaction.
See, if you medicate for something you do not actually have, the medication can engage the opposite reaction. Just give someone without ADHD an approved medicine and watch the crazy unfold. Yet we still get the diagnosis from a series of checkmarks and inappropriately and often, dangerously, medicate our children and ourselves.
We live in an immediate gratification 🌎 World, where whatever we think and whatever we want must be validated NOW. Immediately.
"I don't feel good so let's find something to soothe me now, then I don't have to do the work or be held accountable for my contribution to the problem."
I'm overweight. Give me a pill or something permanent and then I won't have to follow a healthier path or incorporate exercise.
Again, not degrading essential interventions or supplements in coordination with changed habits and exercise, but you get the picture.
I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted with all of the PC mumbo-jumbo.
Not every emotion needs a diagnosis.
Not every poor moment in our lives needs exploration or to be dissected.
Not every moment of sadness deserves a pity party.
We need to stop encouraging others to find their "safe place," and begin to re-teach how to overcome and rise again.
How to stand up with confidence that something better is coming and with the understanding that we must be active in the action of something better.
Some of us do need extra help and those individuals should seek it, but not everything in this day and age is permanent or catastrophic.
Not every action deserves a reaction.
We do not need a label for sadness or acts of wrongdoing. Wrongdoing needs to be acknowledged and corrected, not ignored and excused. What we need is guidance at the parent-level and to help our children, and in some cases, help ourselves, to grow a backbone.
XOXO🌻,
Heather