Understanding is one of the best keys in helping someone cope, whether it be from failing a test, being diagnosed with a disease, or losing a loved one, but understanding is a factor that when tied in with mental disease is seldom understood. What I have noticed throughout my life, but especially after I started putting my anxiety into perspective with how it affects my daily life, physical disease, rather than mental diseases, are better understood and accepted more of then mental diseases are. Not to say that people should stop being sympathetic and understanding when someone is diagnosed with a physical disease, not at all, but what I want to convey is a sense that many people who suffer from mental diseases are treated with a little less understanding than those who suffer from physical diseases.

One of the biggest ways that I have seen this occur is through just regular understanding and tolerating. Once I had learned that I suffer from an anxiety disorder, there were many times that I went to my mother, someone who greatly worked to help me overcome my anxiety, about situations that made me anxious. Most of the time I had received support from her, but other times, when it seemed that my anxiousness stemmed from a more obscure reason, my mother was a little less understanding. For instance, during my senior year of high school, after I had been diagnosed with anxiety, I began to have a sort of falling out with some of my friends during the time period. Although I do remain good friends with many of the people that I acquainted myself with in high school, as people grow older and begin to change, I began to feel like a stranger around my own friends. One day after returning home from spending time with some of my friends at one of their house, I told my mother about how anxious I was feeling when interacting with them. I tried as best as I could to articulate what I was feeling inside (a task that can be extremely difficult at times) but my mother did not understand the stress of where I was coming from, rather then I was just getting upset over nothing. Although as I look back on that time in my life I understand that I was most likely making something out of nothing, the lack of understanding still hurt me. It made me not want to open up about the problems that I was feeling inside, and, more of, it made me feel that a lot of the feelings that I was having at the time was my fault.

Nevertheless, as I grew older and went to school here at Millikin University, I began to realize that many other people, even people that I have known for a greater portion of my small town life where practically everyone knew each other, that many other people who face anxiety or depression have a hard time getting people to understand that what they are feeling is not their fault.

Having anxiety is like constantly having a panic button going off inside of your head; however, the button reacts to reasons high and low with little knowingness about what actually causes it. Simultaneously, having depression is like constantly feeling numb and not really caring about what goes on around you. On the other hand, having both of these disorders is absolute hell. The whole notion of having to motivate yourself with internally you are extremely unmotivated is extreme, and when someone suffers from both of these diseases, it is beneficial to have a support group. Nevertheless, it hurts though when people do not understand that you cannot control what you are feeling.

Anxiety and depression are real disease, and treating them like they are not so can be damaging to those who suffer from it. Therefore, people must take time to understand that compassion and understanding is better than telling someone that they are wrong in their ways of thinking or feeling.