Unfortunately “ anxiety” is the new normal. It’s fast becoming a chronic mental health disorder. Spend a bit of time on TicTok and it seems that every young person is claiming PIP for anxiety.
My DS is currently in his 2nd year at uni and has spiralled down. For some reason his friends and him are all self diagnosed ND. To me they are all just young adults learning to adult but they are so influenced by social media there n longer seems to be a normal.
DS’s mental health is the direct result of a series of events that none of his friends have experienced and the fact he is still functioning at the same almost normal level as them is a bit of a miracle. He doesn’t like to share, he doesn’t want sympathy or “fuss” but does find it frustrating when they play the anxiety card.
Anxiety is not an abnormal feeling. It is a state of mind that protects us from making stupid decisions. Learning to control and regulate it is part of becoming an adult. Every time I jump in my car I experience mild to moderate anxiety but it focuses my attention on my driving. I work in an industry that without anxiety I would be liable to causing serious damage to my patients. Mild anxiety is healthy and normal. Basically it’s OK to worry, if we don’t worry we make mistakes. Most of us have learned to focus that adrenaline rush into effective risk assessment.
Maybe we have failed the current generation of young adults by doing the risk assessment for them. By providing scaffolding we’ve removed the need for them to build their own scaffold.
My DS has had input from the uni wellbeing department. I was very impressed with the speed with which they contacted him. After speaking to him on the phone and him saying he didn’t want to be here ( he wasn’t referring to being at uni) I fill in an online contact form and they phoned him within a couple of hours. He’d already processed what was going on and has made a plan. He didn’t want me to rush in but appreciated that I put him in contact with Wellbeing. He’s fiercely independent but was going round in circles. Initially he didn’t want to retake the year but now has exited the spiral and is focusing on a solution rather than the problem. They become deaf to your input because they are starting to adult but sometimes they can’t exit the circle of anxiety.
Throughout DS’s spirally I too was suffering from major anxiety. That of a parent who is worried that the “ not being here” comment was more than just a feeling. I too was spiralling down but rather than posting on social media I spent sleepless nights researching the options so that when DS finally accepted he was having problems I could present solutions. The temptation to just go and collect him and bring him home was very strong but I’m not always going to be around to fix things. Instead I helped him find the solution himself.
DS has learned that I’m not going to fix everything and whether ND or not you have to find ways of coping.
I’m ND and although I do struggle at times I’ve managed to navigate life successfully. ND just means you have to learn how to live in a world that doesn’t always make sense to you. You also learn that it’s OK to be ND and how to deal with life in your own way and that is normal for you.
I work very closely with the public in my job in a stressful environment. My ND allows me to switch off the bit of me that would make doing some of the things I have to do emotionally difficult. In some respects it’s my superpower. Because I can detach it reduces anxiety, but put me in a room of NN people and my anxiety rockets. When I get home from work the last thing I want to do is be around people.
Being ND means you have to concentrate really hard on body language and nuance of speech to interact appropriately with people. Even the smallest slip up means people react differently. Most of your behaviour in society is a performance and can be exhausting particularly when you’re young and still figuring it out. I’m now ancient and no longer give a toss what people think of me. I don’t need to feel accepted or normal. I’ve learned to live with my ND. But as a young adult it was hard.
OP if your DD is ND you can’t fix it for her but you can help her to develop coping strategies. You can normalise anxiety and help her find ways to exit the circle of doom. Whether this is via therapy or just gentle support, eventually she’ll find herself. Not everyone needs or is comfortable with a large network of friends. I find maintaining friends exhausting but I do have a couple of close friends, who like me are ND. We don’t live in each others pocket and pick up our friendship from time to time so it’s not overwhelming. We have similar odd interests that might raise the eyebrows of other friends ( spending time exploring graveyards, becoming obsessed with researching a subject, the list is endless) but they don’t roll their eyes or become dismissive when you suggest an activity that may seem odd.
My closest friend’s husband has tasked me with encouraging her to be more spontaneous. She is a planner and her anxiety goes off the scale if she hasn’t made a list or spreadsheet for an activity. He has spoken to me in the past about her ND, we are of a generation that were just seen as a little odd or goofy. Today we’d be given a label. I’m quite relieved to be considered a little odd or intense, I don’t think a label or diagnosis would have changed how my life has been lived.