Having Anxiety When Your Family Won’t Believe You
If you decided to read this article, you might be going through a similar situation to me. I have been struggling with anxiety since elementary school, but it wasn’t until I graduated college that I was properly diagnosed by a professional. I remember telling my mother about my anxiety. She quickly dismissed my feelings. “Everyone feels anxious,” she would rationalize. Sure, everyone feels anxious at some point or another, but my anxiety took over my life. It consumed my every thought. I felt as if everyone hated me, and I couldn’t do anything right. It hurt me that she wouldn’t believe me.
I lived most of my life feeling lonely, even in a room filled with people. Finally, at twenty-two years old, I sought out a therapist. This was against my mothers’ wishes. Her rationale was that I should confide in her and take her advice. I knew that that would never happen because she needed therapy just as much as I did, but to my correct assumption, she would refuse to go. She was a factor in my anxiety, but I could never admit that to her face. That’s just another argument waiting to happen.
I went and saw a therapist for the first time with my friends' support and experienced a type of self-healing I didn’t think was possible. After months of feeling the most depressed I have ever been, my therapist talked to me about going to a psychiatrist. I knew that wasn’t going to fly well with my mother either. If she was against me talking to someone other than her about my problems, she certainly wasn’t going to want me taking medication to help either. However, I did what was best for me and saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me a low dosage of Zoloft that helped me manage my days without breaking down in tears as I had been. I have continued to do this in secret because my mother had a negative experience with SSRIs herself. On top of that, she acted as if everything I did was a reflection of her as my mother. If anything was wrong with me, she felt like it was a reflection on her parenting.
To make my mother feel the slightest bit more at ease with my anxiety, I sat her down with my therapist, a licensed professional, to better explain my anxiety and depression. She was still in denial. Later on, I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and told her about my different compulsions. She explained that she had similar habits; thus, she didn’t see it as a problem. The constant comparisons of her childhood to mine created a large fissure between us. Since she wasn’t in my shoes, she couldn’t understand what I was going through and how it made me feel, no matter how well I articulated it.
I know for a fact that I am not the only person who has or is going through a similar situation where your family doesn’t believe in your mental health struggles. They may blame it on being a young adult or that you’re just sweating the small stuff, and looking back, you’ll probably laugh at what you thought was stressful at the time. Sure, I’ll probably laugh at it years from now, but it’s because I’ve gotten the help that I will be able to. After spending the past year and a half working through years of trauma, I know that one day I’ll be able to laugh at myself and all the little things I thought were life-ending and tragic.
I know what it is like to have people belittle and dismiss your mental health. Just because it isn’t visible like a physical illness doesn’t make it any less real. It’s like a silent battle that you’re fighting alone, and it’s you against yourself. I’ve taken quite a few hits, and I have some bumps and bruises, but I’ve won more rounds in the ring than I’ve lost. So, to all the people out there who may feel like their family isn’t supporting their mental health journey, I want to tell you that I am your family, and I believe you.