How to help your strong friends, from a strong friend
Long before I became a mental health advocate, I have always been the strong friend. As long as I can remember, I have always wanted to support people through the darkest, hardest and most complicated parts of their life. And I wanted to do that by listening, validating and of course making them laugh. This meant that I was often thought of as invincible. I didn’t react or cringe at the difficult things my friends told me, so people thought I was doing fine.
When I started speaking openly about my mental health, my small group of friends who I supported grew. All of sudden people who I hardly knew, and even strangers wanted my help. I didn’t blame them either – our mental health system is so completely screwed up that you try everything and everyone to find the thing resource for you. I tried my best to hold all the stories, requests and things being given to me but it inevitably got to me.
I kept thinking how so many people deal with so many more requests for support and resources. I kept thinking that struggling with all these things might that I was a failure, and that I didn’t deserve to take up the limited space that existed at mental health organizations. I kept telling myself that I had to deal with it alone and not burden other folks with it. Strangely enough, I fell victim to all the stigmatized beliefs that I was advising people against but in a slightly different way. Eventually, It got bad enough that I decide to use the network of mental health support I built for everyone else for myself and got help. But my experience with this has shown me how easy it is to fall into the trap of not asking for support or help as a strong friend.
A few months ago, after the unfortunate deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain and more recently Mac Miller, social media encouraged people “check in on their strong” friends. It made me wonder, what would be helpful for me to reach out as a strong friend. Here is some things my friends and community do for me that helps me be vulnerable and reach out as a strong friend:
“Ask how someone is doing” : it might seem obvious but I have a lot conversations where I support and validate someone through a rant for a long time before they have space to ask me how I am doing. It makes it really hard to be honest with how I am doing if I am reflecting on how hard life is right now for the person I am talking too. Remembering to ask this at the beginning of a conversation might help your strong friend give an honest answer.
“Remind them that you are there for them” – even if they are fine, Happy and silly, frequently reminding folks that you are happy to talk to them about hard stuff they are going through creates the space and permission to do so if they ever need it.
“Remind them it’s okay to have boundaries” – so often I would sit through conversations with friends that were triggering or harmful for me to listen too. Nothing wrong with that person needing to talk about that thing, but I just wasn’t the right person to be there for them. If a friend tells you they can’t be a support for you because the thing you are going through is triggering or hard for them, it’s totally valid to be upset by that at first. But it’s important to respect that boundary and let them know you are proud of them for taking care of themselves.
“Work to find mental health resources for yourself” – if you are really struggling and relying a lot on one or two friends for support, that okay. It happens and it’s hard to find mental health support. Your friends might never tell you this – because they love you and genuinely want to support you- but it’s important that your care team grow to include professionals(whether its volunteers at text crisis line, peer supporters, distress line workers, therapists and/or doctors). It’s important to tell your friends how your feeling but equally important to make sure you have a team of amazing humans supporting you.
“Encourage them to take time for themselves” – I would often explain to people how many folks were talking to me about their stuff and people were always shocked. They knew I was taking on too much before I did. Remind your friends who help others that it’s okay to take breaks, take space, and do something that refreshes them. Sometimes that also means they talk to a mental health professional – that’s what it meant for me – and that’s okay. Even if we are high functioning, we are worthy and deserving of space on a mental health professionals case load.
I would love to hear from other strong friends about how people can check in on you in the comments below!
The Mental Health Superhero Origin Story
This post originally appeared here and tells my story
People love to ask, ” What do you have to be so depressed about?”
Growing up, there wasn’t a defining moment that happened, where boom I became depressed. My parents are rock stars, having battled their own journeys escaping poverty, abusive homes and war to live in Canada. They found their way to Canada in the 1970s and made an awesome life for their family here. Starting with limited English and almost no education — they built a life that allowed them to give everything they ever wanted to their two daughters. We went to great schools, got to participate in sports, and always felt safe.
The thing is, I have always been sad and worried. It’s stuck on me like gray toned glitter — it clouds everything I do and no matter what I do it’s never fully gone. When I realized I was different from other kids, I didn’t know what to do. I was always sad and worried. Worried that people would notice me for being different and make fun of me. Sad because even when I tried to fit it — I always felt like I couldn’t do it right.
As the years went by, I grew more and more scared that the way I was feeling wouldn’t just go away. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t be happy. How do you tell two people who survived war, worked 70 hour weeks and still supported others that despite having everything they ever wanted, you can’t get out of bed in the morning?
Most people think of depressed kids as the shy ones or the popular ones hiding a dark secret — I was the angry kid. I was angry so that people would stay away from me. It seemed better to be seen as an asshole than someone who wasn’t in control of what was happening in her own head. I wanted to build walls so high that no one could see me. But I still held out hope that one day — this would all go away on its own.
After a particularly hard week — it finally dawned on me that I wouldn’t be able to get over this on my own. I realized that I hadn’t spoken to any of my classmates (I was in eighth grade at the time) in over a week. That despite my best efforts, I was only getting more depressed and worried. I finally decided to talk to someone.
I chose to talk to my parents. People who I always looked up to and respected. I remember approaching my dad in the basement — we call it his lair — to try and talk to him. I stood near the entrance as he watched a soccer game in the dark. I was feeling particularly nervous as I asked him if I could talk to him. He turned towards me and took out his wallet. “No,” I said. “I want to talk to you about how I am feeling.” With those words his face went pale — he was silent for a moment and then said, “Stop. Go upstairs and talk to your mother.”
Feeling defeated, I dragged myself upstairs and found my mom reading in bed. “Mom — I am feeling really sad and worried,” I said. She looked at me and started to blurt out a bunch of statements like: “But you have everything you need — others have it worse.” “Maybe if you exercised more and put more effort into how you look you would feel better.” And, “Just try hard to be happy and pray — everything will work out.”
She talked at me for about 30 minutes. The only thing I got from the conversation was that this was not something I was allowed to talk about.
I went back to my room defeated. I was scared, alone and ashamed. I had tried exercising and forcing smiles. But I felt like it was hopeless, there wasn’t any help available for me. That’s when I first thought about taking my own life. It was a terrifying thought, there I was giving up on my myself. Still, I decided to talk to one last person before attempting anything.
I had arranged earlier in the day to speak to my teacher after school. When 3 p.m. finally came, I started feeling a little better. A teacher would know how to help. I convinced myself that what I had to say couldn’t scare her. I was walking to meet her when I saw her in the hallway talking to another teacher. I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying — but at the end the conversation I heard her say, “I am sorry, I have to go help this crazy girl now.”
Everything I had done up to that point in my life was to hide the fact that I was different. In that one sentence, she told me that I had failed. The realization crushed me. I didn’t know much about mental illness — but I saw the crazy cat ladies on TV and the mentions of “mental health” on news stories about serial killers. I made up my mind and went home to try and take my own life.
It wasn’t until a few days into my stay at a local hospital that I was helped by the best superhero I could ask for. She was a patient in the ward, an older lady, who had been creepily looking at me for a few hours. She came over to me and said, “From one crazy person to another, you will need this.” She put a necklace in my hand and wandered off. It was a simple silver chain with one charm on it that said “Hope.” With this simple action, she showed me that people with mental illness are human. That even though she was sick, she connected with me and helped me by giving back exactly what I lost. Hope that I could be good person, that I could be an important part of society.
That sort of thinking opened the of my mind. I realized that asking people with mental health issues to hide their struggles was like asking superheroes to fight off the worst bad guys with no weapons or super powers. That support, love and treatment are our weapons and superpowers. She showed me that everyone living with mental illness are incredibly strong. Strength is never something we should hide. It’s something we should celebrate. I was angered by the fact that stigma was making people hide their strength, knowing if it was cancer, that the world would be celebrating our will to survive.
Even though we might not always make the right decisions or have the easiest journeys, our stories are so incredibly valid. After all, you are still a badass superhero if the only person you save is yourself.
This new lease on life gave me the strength to tell my parents what was going on. To help them get the education they needed to support me. And eventually, it helped them come to terms with their own mental health issues. See, parents can learn things from their kids (Technology doesn’t count).
Now I speak openly about my journey, organizers of speaking events often ask me to talk about mental health in past tense. To highlight the positive parts of being mental health advocate like having a TEDxTalk and occasionally get featured on MTV. My truth is that mental illness still affects my life, which means I have amazing days and terrible days. Yes, some days are TV appearances, kicking butt at work and laughing with my friends. Other days, I binge eat all my feelings. I share these experiences to show people that you can be both: an advocate and struggling, successful and depressed, imperfect and inspiring and a role model while still trying.
Reading this, I hope you know that you don’t need to be completely recovered to have a voice for change and a valid story. Most importantly, wherever you are now, know that you are awesome.