There has been a lot of media attention on suicides lately and this has been compounded by limited mental health professional availability. As parents, we are also particularly concerned about kids who might be struggling. Kids don’t have as many tools to use to cope with extra stress, pressure, anxiety and depression and it is important to know that thinking of self harm actually reduces stress and can seem like a viable solution in the short term (link below). 

Thinking About Suicide and Self-Harming Alleviates Stress

This is a normal solution-seeking process of the mind but kids do not know the mind can always trick you. Always. I am concerned kids are able to get a bad idea reinforced now more than ever with social media algorithms/bubbles and our mainstream media news is also covering so many high profile suicides right now. A thought is just thought and we need to be vigilant to teach kids how to let inaccurate and/or potentially destructive thoughts go. This is the best encapsulation of figuring out when an inaccurate thought has put you are under too much stress (evident by how your body might react—such as trouble sleeping, feelings of panic, rumination, acne, weight gain/loss, etc. which are all physical indicators/responses that your mind is stressing your body by lying to you). The learned response needs to be how to let that thought go and then how to put out the fire that errant/destructive thought has caused over and over and over again. 

https://www.happinesslab.fm/2022-new-year-mini-season/stepping-off-the-path-of-anxiety

Finally, we can all store a lot of stress in our bodies and not even know it is there. Find a good massage therapist help reduce stress that way!

How do you help someone who is struggling but you can’t get in to see someone? Ok. Obviously, stay on the wait list and let someone in the office know if it is urgent. Also, you can work on some basic stress and anxiety reducing techniques which I will try to outline in a simple way below:

1. Identify symptoms. (Such as: can’t sleep/sleep too much, ruminating/repeating/intrusive thoughts, feeling overwhelmed, difficulty making decisions/concentrating,  feeling of guilt/inadequacy). 

2. Ask, what was going on in your life before the symptoms (aka “X”) showed up? You might expect to hear everything was going great until “X” happened to me and then I was (any or all above symptoms listed appeared) and person conveys they were/are basically overwhelmed.

3. “X” is the tidal wave thought or the intrusive thought.  “X” is not a truth—“X” is the problem. We know “X” is the problem because there is a mind/body revolt also known as stress/anxiety/depression. For instance, the factual statement the sky is usually blue and the grass is green on a sunny day does not keep someone up all night. If anything, that truth thought is relaxing and calming—not upsetting and causing a haywire limbic system like “X.” An anxiety thought typically starts with “What…?” “What if X?” “What if X is true?” “What will I do if X?” That is the fastest way to you know you are not in reality but in the land of anxiety. 

4. This is where a competent and qualified therapist is worth it, especially with young adults, because most of them need to be taught how to move through the tidal wave thought. Beachgoers, you also know this, you always go through the big wave. If you try to out run a big wave (aka “X”), it only crashes on top of you and makes the situation worse. A lot of younger people find this out the hard way and don’t let the upsetting thought or feelings pass through them—they stand there and let the thoughts crash on top of them over and over. This is where knowing “a thought is just a thought” and that you can let it go and GO BACK to the point in your life where everything was going great (prior to “X” thought/feeling/event) is difficult to learn but an important key for survival. The benefit of being older, is that most of us have already learned this with a variety of failures in our lives and the tough reality of growing up in the 1980s. 

5.  After you identify the underlying issue of what caused/is causing the symptoms, it can be helpful to figure out how to help get out from under the wave pounding the person. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, a person wanting to get out from under the tidal wave usually will NOT make the right choice on their own. Why? Because someone under too much stress takes too much risk, someone under too much anxiety is risk adverse and someone who is depressed makes desperate choices. ALL are poor choice pathways and none of these have good long-term outcomes. They are short-term answers that give temporary relief from feeling bad—the young adult conclusion is to simply make the current really bad feeling to stop, which is understandable but not correct. You have to GO BACK to the point in time prior to the negative stress/anxiety “X” issue/symptom and work from there to let “X” go.  This is what is important to know as a parent and important for a good therapist to uncover. 

6. I have seen that the young adults in the Gen Y/Z generation are really struggling with good decision making. When their psychological tidal waves appear, they are literally freaking out. While it makes for entertaining t.v. (Below Deck!) and belly flop personal choice news articles (Naomi Osaka! Ouch!), it is a real life problem. I think part of the reason is that there is so much emphasis on taking care of others (externally motivated issues/social justice/political stances) and/or the drive to contribute/volunteer/march/virtue signal through social media they have not internalized how to really take of themselves FIRST and can sometimes be too unprepared or too exhausted to do so when it is truly required. As a result, they REALLY escalate their own physical and emotional response when they are are faced with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and feel like they are immediately drowning because they have used/are using up so much of their limited energy in other places. There just is not enough time in their day to do it all and they are emotionally exhausted fighting everyone else’s battles. I see a lot of Gen Y/Z using “flight or fight” ideas as a life strategy result with stagnating consequences and ineffective, circular results. Taking action through a flight or fight choice feels like a plan. It feels better than doing nothing but it still has to be a plan that goes in the right direction. They are not getting that.

7. This is when you can help crystalize what “X” is and to begin to ask if that thought or feeling must be true. Since thoughts/feelings come from the mind and the mind is perfectly capable of lying to us (and our body revolts in a variety of ways when it does which reveals to us “X”), we know the answer to that question is “No, it is not absolutely true.”  We now know “X” is the tidal wave thought and needs to be moved through and let go. For “X” to even exist, someone has given “X” too much mental energy and power which has made it bigger, when, in fact, it just needs to be pulled the plug on and go down the drain. And, there is usually some factual, historical evidence or proof that contradicts “X” which can be reflected back to the person which reinforces why there is stress or anxiety present in the first place—again, your subconscious knows this is not true but your mind is distorting the facts/evidence/historical record of proof. Your own mind is not always correct and it can lie to you and make you believe or feel things that are not real. Ashley Judd reiterates this in the link about her mom below. Our young adults do not seem aware of this.  It is important to recognize the stress or anxiety as real but not “X.” So, no, you are not dumb, a failure, a loser, or whatever lie “X” is telling you and no, this “X” wave is does not need to be crashing on you forever—instead, it is time for a different choice which involves going back to the point prior to “X” when “everything was going great” and starting again. Remember, as I previously mentioned, a choice under stress/depression/anxiety is usually the wrong choice because that choice is not evaluating risks and consequences appropriately. With the positive intent of having a mentally liberated and psychologically healthy life, we can always help someone find the choice that aligns with “life was going great” before “X” ever entered the picture and negative consequences through body revolt and/or risk taking and/or risk avoiding resulted in the life path.

8. Helping someone to understand there are no perfect decisions, but there are pretty good decisions and they start from a point before “X” entered their life can be challenging. Young adults like to believe our perspective is invalid and that we don’t understand what it is like today. (Particularly true for our kids on campus.) However, that is precisely why we DO know and are more likely to be correct—you can’t and don’t have any perspective while actually still in the situation—and that is why we stay present and either run along side to help or find help so that the future shines brighter, is attainable and sustainable. Living with or trying to adapt to “X” or the errant/tidal wave thought is not a realistic option as your mind/body connection will always be in a state of disharmony and it will always keep reappearing—sometimes even in the form of disease or mental illness if left to fester and left untreated correctly. So, in short, without figuring out and dismantling “X,” things cannot work properly in your body and mind—it is like the concept of reverse engineering…go back to the place things were working smoothly and start over from there but you have to discard “X” in order to run a clean operating system to function (or to move through the tidal wave and allow yourself the chance to recover). The issue is “X” and identifying and removing it before it does real harm or damage.