Love thy (anxious) neighbor

Last week I had an anxiety attack.

My legs grew weak so I ran into my room, locked the door and collapsed on the ground. My heart was beating very fast, and it felt like it was being squeezed by a juice press. I felt my face turning red and warm, cooled only slightly by the tears that began to run down it. I gasped, suddenly resuming my breathing, though it was harsh and irregular. It would be a few minutes before I could get off the floor and move to my bed, where I woke up a few hours later, dehydrated and cold with sweat. Miserable.

I had experienced this before. My senior year of high school, I was stressed out by the college application process and by what I felt was social exclusion at school. Because of these grievances, my grades slipped a bit so I started staying up later studying. Missing sleep impaired my ability to handle stress, completing the cycle. My family is Israeli, and when Hamas began shelling my cousins in Tel Aviv, my already fragile psyche shattered. My appetite nearly vanished, my normally talkative personality withdrew itself and my parents couldn’t even get me out of bed for school. Like many sufferers of anxiety, I was also experiencing symptoms of other mental illnesses like depression.

I was fortunate to have access to a lot of resources in the forms of therapy and medication, and by the time I had arrived at Duke, I hadn’t suffered from an unhealthy amount of fear for several months. In many ways I am still fortunate: I have a great network of friends, a campus community that is increasingly working to address mental health issues and a lot to look forward to while I’m here. But I’m not invincible. A moderate level of worry and stress is to be expected, perhaps even healthy, but my mental health relies on constant monitoring.

I’m in good company, though. 40 million U.S. adults suffer from some form of anxiety disorder, and 75 percent of them have their first episode by age 22. In May of this year, the New York Times reported “nearly one in six college students has been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety within the last twelve months.” Numerous explanations for this spike have been proposed, many of which point to escalating pressure to “succeed” (beginning earlier and earlier in high school, of course), our generation’s obsession with social media and widespread financial woes. But whatever the reasons behind them, these kinds of numbers indicate it’s nearly certain that someone you know, someone you perhaps care about a great deal, has found themselves anguished and overwhelmed at an unhealthy level.

It’s hard to control all of the causes of anxiety, but when your friend is suffering from it, there’s a few important steps that can make a huge difference:

Be there. Make sure your friend knows that you will listen to them, without judgment, even if they are saying the same thing over and over again. If your friend is comfortable with it, spend time with them. Often just being in the same room as a close friend improves my mood, even if we’re busy with totally separate tasks. Keep the quality time simple and meaningful—take a walk, see a movie or grab dinner.

Hopefully, you’re genuinely interested in what your friend is going through and how you can help, and you’ll want to talk about their anxiety with them. However, your friend almost certainly doesn’t need to be asked, “hey, how are your panic attacks?” or similar questions that might actually trigger an attack. Let them tell you about things when they are ready. As weird as this sounds, don’t try to use logic. Most people who suffer from anxiety understand that their fears can be irrational and the way they react to fear is often disproportionate. Telling them this will probably not help, and I can attest from personal experience that using pure logic to resolve emotional issues is usually frustrating.