You’re here because you or someone you know is feeling pain in an area of their life and you want to help. Depression and anxiety can be debilitating. I remember feeling them so strongly that I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t be social, I couldn’t even be alone without feeling hopelessly anxious. The feelings can be so intense that you can’t even understand what it’s like to live with anxiety or depression until you have experienced it firsthand.
Sometimes these heavy feelings last for days, sometimes months, sometimes years before a resolution is found. After going through that exceptionally difficult period in my life and working through it, I learned a few things. Below are 6 tips to help people who are suffering from anxiety or depression.
Appreciate The Ebbs & Flows
Life was never meant to be pure bliss 100% of the time. Life has its ups and its downs. Its ebbs and flows. This is the natural order of things.
We create suffering when we fight this natural order by trying to feel bliss constantly. When we do this, we get disappointed, anxious, or depressed because life doesn’t always meet these unrealistic expectations.
Be real and accept life as it is. Appreciate it for its high AND low moments. See the love that’s underneath it all.
Pain Brought You Here. Be Grateful.
If you weren’t feeling discomfort in some area of your life you wouldn’t be reading this right now and wanting to make a change for the better.
Think about that.
If you weren’t so uncomfortable with your current circumstances, you’d just continue living an unfulfilling life. Who knows how much longer you would have continued had you not been in pain or discomfort? Maybe another year. Maybe the rest of your life.
But thankfully, your body, mind, and emotions are saving the day by showing you something that needs to change. Your pain is giving you the opportunity to make change now.
You’re Not Alone
EVERYONE feels pain. EVERYONE feels uncomfortable at times. You’re not unique. You’re human. Even though you may think other people wouldn’t understand how you’re feeling, someone out there does and that’s a comforting thought.
Be REAL
Give yourself permission to be you, with all of your bumps, scrapes, and scars that you’ve gained along the way. You’re allowed to feel anger. You’re allowed to feel afraid. It’s actually pretty shocking how quickly you can transform a panic attack into peace when you allow yourself to feel that fear. Sometimes we have anxiety attacks because we’re not giving ourselves permission to do or feel something.
You Won’t Create Lasting Happiness By ‘Fixing’ Yourself
This is the second step to the previous point of being real. In the ‘personal development’ and ‘spiritual’ spheres, there are countless individuals who try to attain happiness through ‘fixing’ themselves. At one point, I thought that if I had taken enough courses or seen enough healers, I’d feel stop feeling unhappy.
I learned through trial and error that you cannot go around your issues, only through them. So embrace the pain that you have and work with it until you find the clarity at the root of it all.
Find Clarity
Tools like meditation or journal writing can help you find the root cause of your unhappiness, depression, anxiety, etc. I find that meditation especially helps clear my mind enough to see past the current issue and tap into my inner peace and understanding. I’ve included a mood boosting guided mediation below which is intended to help with mental clarity and to uplift your emotional state.
