"Get help for your anxiety"

[burgersraven]

Does this type of response bother anyone else? I have anxiety myself and don't often post here with my anxieties, but when people do, so many people see fit to respond by saying "get help for your anxiety" in the same way you might say "get some Dulcolax" for someone with constipation. It's not a quick fix! Moreover I think the majority of people with anxiety disorder and posting here with anxieties are well aware they are anxious, may have had a significant amount of therapy already, but relapse and spiral sometimes and come on here reassurance-seeking. Anxiety doesn't just get cured forever after seeking help.

Responders are also frequently (not always) harsh and rude in their tone as if the anxiety is the person's fault or makes them ridiculous or a bad person. I sometimes think a lot of people who think of themselves as supportive of mental health, in fact feel very uncomfortable when faced with the type of thoughts people with mental health conditions actually have, and their reaction is to tell them to go away and get cured and be normal, please.

If someone is on an anxiety spiral and has come on here reassurance-seeking, then that isn't helpful behaviour for them. However if you don't have much understanding of anxiety and you have nothing helpful to say with regards to coping mechanisms then why not just stay out of it? The OP does not need 10 pages of people telling them to seek help for their anxiety.

And another thing the OP does not need is to be told they are passing their anxiety on to their child. Do you think they don't fucking know that? For me personally one of my top 3 anxieties is that I might be turning my kids into anxious people. It's terrifying and I try my best not to let my anxiety affect them and yes I have sought help and had a lot of therapy but it is not a simple thing. The OP does not also need 10 pages of "your child is going to grow up just like you" "your child resents you" "don't make your child anxious like you" "don't infect your child with your anxiety" like that's something you can just ensure, with a wave of a wand.

I think "anxiety" needs its own topic as it's a difficult subject for non-sufferers to truly understand and yes, the responses probably are unhelpful.

I'm not a sufferer, thankfully, but a close friend is, and with the best will in the world it's sometimes hard to cope with as infinite support seems to make no difference. It makes me feel bad/guilty and I don't like feeling like that.

I dont think mumsnet is a good source of support for people with anxiety. Im sorry you have it and imagine it must be awful.

On the flip side, all of my immediate family live with anxiety and do very little to manage it. I find that annoying as it spills over onto my life a lot.

If you're in the middle of an anxiety spiral, seeking reassurance is actually rarely helpful. Tbh it sounds like you just don't like being told what is in most cases true.

And yes, I have anxiety. Generalised Anxiety Disorder and OCD, managed with sertraline. I wasted about 20 years unmedicated. A bit of tough love can be helpful.

I agree mumsnet, and AIBU in particular is not very supportive.

BUT I do think it's also advice to consider. Not in a nonchalant way, but anxiety can be so limiting and so many people live with it and don't do anything to address it. That can really impact their own lives, but also the lives of people around them - most often negatively. It's not a quick fix (I know, as DD has been through lots of therapy to address hers), but I would say it's definitely worth doing. Especially if that anxiety is negatively impacting those around you. We do have to take responsibility for our own health, including mental health.

I think suggesting help for anxiety if the OP has not mentioned getting support is helpful. We don’t know if the OP is experiencing anxiety for the first time or it’s been years. They may not be aware of what is available.

However, I do agree with the harsh/rude comments. They are not helpful at all and I have no idea why others would choose to post unkind comments to someone who is suffering.

Seeking reassurance isn’t helpful.

i had fucking awful anxiety during perimenopause and what did help was my dc saying to me “X is a normal response Y is not. Do not do Y”

@owlpassport I'm also diagnosed with GAD and like you, I wasted years trying to manage it (had some counselling, which didn't help much) until I can close to a breakdown and finally addressed it properly with medication and more counselling.

So I tend to agree with you and would advise people suffering from anxiety to please seek help and be open to trying different options (such as different medications as not everything works for every person) for their own sakes. Life is so much better when you're less anxious.

Both of my children do suffer from anxiety, and I sought help for them as soon as it became evident. DD (21) now manages it herself with medication and counselling, and is a much happier person than I was at her age.

I agree that Mumsnet and the internet in general is a bad place for support and that reassurance seeking isn't a helpful behaviour. I don't agree though that tough love is helpful. A thread running to many pages with everybody saying the same thing just feels like a pile-on. Each individual person might not be being aggressive but pages and pages feels aggressive. I don't understand why people feel the need to say the same thing 200 people have said before them. That goes the same for other topics I suppose! But when I have posted in here about an anxiety before, this kind of response makes me feel worse and like I'm bad and wrong. What has actually been more helpful to me is threads with no responses. It gives you nothing to work with. And as a result I've learned not to reassurance-seek on Mumsnet. You don't need to feed the monster!!

I agree OP.
It's a terrible thing to live with and to tackle.
Just getting a GP appt is massively stressful round here!
U don't know until uve lived with it. X

It's helpful for someone to tell u when uve crossed a line- what is ir isn't in proportion i think but MN not the best place 4 advice xxx

I agree that posters on MN (especially AIBU) can be quite blunt and not very sympathetic. But a lot of posters ask things like "should I let my child go on this class trip?" and if the replies help them to realise that yes, they should, even if it's difficult for them, then isn't that a good thing?

I hear you OP, I think a lot of people assume you just pop down the road and get your free anxiety fixing pack. It’s actually bloody hard finding the right kind of help. And actually seeking reassurance or a handhold on here is ok, but it needs to be on the right board with posters who understand.

I don’t agree with you. Even if you haven’t experienced it yourself, there is enough information about it in society today. You learn about it from when people tell you or internet / social media, plus we can get insights of anxiety sufferers’ world through film and media.

Your post tells me you have some dismissive tendencies. There’s no infinite support available to anxiety sufferers.

Issue is not the lack of will, it’s the lack of thought with people like you. You made the post about how difficult it is for you.

I'm clearly making this thread in response to that one without derailing it, but I was disgusted by the responses on there. Especially in that particular case the OP might not even suffer from clinical anxiety, they might just have a particular thing about motorway driving and are having a bit of a wobble before inevitably saying yes to this trip. I thought a lot of people were jumping to conclusions and using phrases like 'extreme anxiety' which was absolutely not a given. But either way I think the very length of the thread is hostile and would have made the OP feel terrible. Like maybe a few responses like "yes this trip sounds safe you should let him go" and then leave it at that probably would have been better for that OP.

The responses to the mum worrying about the son going on cub camp (?) We're appalling.

Why are you choosing to read people saying "Get help for your anxiety" as "This is a quick fix"?

And also, why do you choose to read "Get help for your anxiety" as the poster saying "You'll get cured forever after seeking help"?

This is NOT what they're saying.

Very often they're saying that the OP being completely unreasonable and causing problems for their children, colleagues, partners and friends cannot continue just because they have anxiety.

It's unfair to just keep claiming this is why they're unreasonable, if they're not going to try to do something about it.

Simply suffering from it is not a licence to make others suffer.

I’m glad you’ve recognised that MN is not an appropriate place to come for reassurance seeking. My sister has GAD and she’s not on MN - and that’s a good thing.

Question for you though: what is an appropriate response? I personally find it hard to reassure with bland ‘I’m sure it will be okay’ statements, I don’t do that IRL or online.

One reason we end up with 200 posters saying the same thing is that a lot of posters will only read the OP, and respond to that, then bugger off. I think it’s a minority of posters who actually read the posts before their own and take them into account.

And some people don't realise that what they are suffering is anxiety. They think they are perfectly 'normal' (for want of a better word) and they just want reassurance that their level of concern is average. It may never have occurred to them that this can be what anxiety looks like.

I can see how it feels unhelpful, but I think it's generally meant well - as in:
You don't need to look up cancer symptoms - you need to get help for your anxiety
Your don't need to keep looking up toddler development stages - you need to get help for anxiety
You don't need to keep your child off this trip for their safety - you need help for anxiety

Though admittedly, a lot of the time, the posters do know they are anxious. As you say @burgersraven - it is worth remembering that they're not necessarily suffering from clinucal anxiety and just need some reassurance in the moment so they can say 'yes' to the trip, get some sleep, stop googling etc. And you can't always tell from a post of someone's in the grip of utterly irrational anxiety or if they're just having a wobble.

Yes, often they've become so used to it they think it's normal and that their family and friends are the unreasonable ones.

Either way, they need help that Mumsnet or any other internet forum cannot provide.

It's difficult.

Anxiety is a complex matter and it often isn't easy for people to get the help that they need. Even if they really try.

At the same time, it is sometimes necessary to point out that people need to somehow get a grip, especially when their unmanaged anxiety is unreasonably impacting on the lives of the people that they love. Surely we shouldn't be pretending that this is ok simply in order to make people feel better?

Of course, people can't always help it, and of course, people should try to be kind and patient. However, not everyone with anxiety necessarily realises the effect it has on those around them, and not everyone is necessarily as proactive as they should be about seeking help. And perhaps it is inevitable that some will probably respond harshly or impatiently because they may have been on the other end of a parent or spouse's excessive anxiety for many years, and they find it triggering.

Realistically, if you are struggling with pathological anxiety, it might be better to talk to a trusted friend or family member, a counsellor or your GP. The internet is really not the place to come for reassurance.

@Mixymaxymoxy I agree that saying "I'm sure it will be okay" isn't much help unless it's about one particular set of circumstances, for example, "I'm an anxious flier and we're about to go on holiday." In that situation, saying that it'll be okay, think of how many people fly safely every day, etc. makes sense.

But if someone's having regular panic attacks, unable to sleep, worrying excessively about everything, that's different. Platitudes won't help.

Realistically, if you are struggling with pathological anxiety, it might be better to talk to a trusted friend or family member, a counsellor or your GP. The internet is really not the place to come for reassurance.

I comepletly agree @MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack

MN has a sizeable proportion of posters who are unsupportive towards any mental illhealth.

@burgersraven unfortunately this person is on here multiple times a week. She was having therapy but no idea how that's going.
Lots and lots of people have offered her good advice.
But all she does is repeat the same lines over and over.
"Why did he leave me" is the most common one.
Yes I have anxiety myself. I've offered her help and support.
But she ignores most of the good advice and only answers a few people.v
So maybe you can understand why people get annoyed with her?

That poster has deeper issues than anxiety though 🤔