Seven Things You Should NEVER Say To Someone Who Is Struggling

From the mouths of the well-meaning and clueless.

Photo by Francis Painchaud on Unsplash

I’m a girl with problems. Like, a lot of emotional crap nobody wants to deal with. I have a hat full of diagnoses that all sum up to a common denominator: misery.

Unfortunately, this means that the people who care about me sometimes get an earful of misery, and they often want to be supportive…but don’t always think about what they’re saying before they say it.

Which means that instead of calming the frenzy, their comments feed it. Miserable people need validation of their feelings, rather than for you to try and fix them. Not validation that their feelings make sense (they sometimes severely lack sense at all), but validation that it is okay to feel what we feel, even if it seems source-less. Even if it seems bat-shit crazy, and you have no idea where it came from.

If you care about a person who seems stuck in their misery and want to be helpful, please consider avoiding the phrases below… unless you want to get punched, then consider this your all-access pass to a black eye.

“Attitude makes a difference.”

Sure, sure it does. For a person who is in relative control of their thoughts, emotions, and mindset. For “stable” people with healthy coping mechanisms who don’t have a train of conditions dragging behind them, weighing them down. For someone with depression stemming from C-PTSD and a monthly dose of “go fuck yourself” instead of a normal PMS cycle, “attitude” is what it is.

Want to be helpful? Try, “I’m sorry it’s so hard, that’s really rough”.

Don’t like saying “sorry” if you did nothing wrong? Try “Oh that sucks, how shitty.”

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

My personal favorite and most invalidating thing ever said to me in a moment of vulnerability. I sat across from my mom at breakfast, having prepped her for my vent session with a warning of the Darkness and a need to get the fuck out of the house, and told her about my C-PTSD flashbacks, conveniently topped with the brand new possibility I might be autistic.

I told her I needed support, and she showed up to give it. Then, when the misery monologue became too much for her, she laughed awkwardly and said, “Well, you’re just a fucking ray of sunshine this morning, aren’t you?”

We drove home in awkward, hurt silence. Rather, I sat there being awkward and hurt, and she prattled about whatever she could that didn’t involve my suffering and pretended all was well. Needless to say, she’s off my “safe person” list and no longer privy to my vulnerability.

Want to do better, but feel kind of uncomfortable enduring the trauma tirade? Try, “Wow, that sounds like it’s a lot to handle. I’m not sure what to say, but I care, and it sucks you’re going through that.”

“Calm down.”

Oh? Calm down? Do you think I haven’t thought of calming down, or that perhaps I’m happy here in my anxiety/OCD spiral? Maybe you’re really into bullfighting, cuz that red flag you’re waving in front of me makes me want to charge you. I would calm down IF I FUCKING COULD. But something is preventing me.

Maybe, instead of telling me what to do, you might try validating the difficulty of living with such obsessive, intrusive, bullshit thoughts in the first place. “Calm down” is the stupidest thing you can say to a person who has completely lost hold of their own peace of mind.

It says to me that you think I’m not trying. That I’m choosing not to be calm because I’d rather be this frazzled, shaken mess. It shows me you have no idea what I’m going through and no patience to hear me out.

If you’d prefer not to be gored by my horns, but are feeling a little overwhelmed by my mile-a-minute OCD babble, maybe try, “I hear you, that’s awful. It’s time to take a breath now, and we can figure this out”.

You could say, “This seems really distressing for you. Where can we sit quietly and breathe for a little while,” or “Let’s take a moment and get a drink of cold water, then we’ll come back to this.”

Almost anything is better than “calm down”. This goes for ALL situations. OCD spirals or not.

“Stop dwelling.”

Sure, I’ll just rewire my brain so it doesn’t play every anxiety, mistake, and personal failure I’ve ever made on repeat. I’ll just have a nice little chat with the broken record in my head and ask it very politely to keep the noise down, because it’s inconvenient and upsetting for people.

Obsessive thoughts aren’t specific to OCD. You don’t have to have it to obsess. Anxiety, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, depression…or just a really awful, horrible, rotten day can make a person obsess. If they’ve reached a place of obsession, reason is out the window. Dwelling is now the default setting.

Better to interrupt the pattern than demand it stop playing itself out. Talk it out with me. Ask me questions about what I’m dwelling on. Remember that YOU asked ME what was wrong, and I didn’t tell you so that you could invalidate it with an order to just quiet the thought gremlins.

“Dwelling” is a symptom of distress, not a thing to be commanded. Also, it’s called “ruminating”, and it is a valid part of my condition I need help with- again, not something I choose to do. It isn’t pleasant, I don’t want to do it, and once again: I WOULD STOP IF I COULD.

A helpful friend familiar with OCD told me that the spiral often needs a physical interruption, and this is why logic doesn’t work. I’ve found splashing cold water on my face to be helpful, though it doesn’t stop an episode in its tracks. It gives me a few seconds of cold shock to interrupt the pattern so some other thoughts can squeeze themselves in.

In the middle of a spiral, I might not remember this. It helps to be reminded.

“We’re all anxious/depressed sometimes.”

True, so true…but we aren’t all carrying around the baggage of umpteen mental health conditions, all wrapped up in autism, are we? Yes, we all get anxious. Yes, we all have sad feelings from time to time, but comparing an anxious moment to the continuous anxiety of a person with GAD/autism, or a hard day/week to the seemingly Endless Dark of actual depression is laughable.

We are not the same. Our emotions are not the same, and even if they were similar, mine are no less valid because you have experienced them too. That statement tells me you have no clue what you’re talking about, and you want to get out of this conversation as quickly as possible and back into a depth where your feet touch the ground. Fine. No problem. Don’t ask me what’s wrong anymore if you aren’t ready to swim to the deep end with me.

If you would rather be supportive and helpful, try, “It has to be hard to feel that way,” or “I’ve never experienced that before, but it sounds awful.”

It’s okay that you don’t understand; don’t pretend you do.

“Are you sure you aren’t overreacting?”

Are you sure you understand what emotions are? It’s entirely possible that I’m overreacting, but asking me this in the middle of a spiral raises the red flag, and my horns get all charge tingly.

Let’s think for a moment about what “over-reacting” actually is, anyway. It seems contextual, and possibly like you might need to have all the details, live inside my body, and understand how I feel things to gauge whether it’s a true over-reaction. Which means you can’t possibly know, because you feel your feelings, not mine. If it seems like I’m overreacting, try hearing me out first.

Rather than using this invalidating, inflammatory word, try talking through it with me. Find out why I feel so strongly. What is the context? And if it ends up being one of any of my umpteen mental health struggles, blowing itself way out of proportion, help me find that rare Logic Place in my brain.

Let me get my steam out. Let me feel my feels. They tend to calm on their own, once expressed, in which case I’ll be a lot more open to your fucking logic.

Just because it’s an “overreaction” doesn’t mean the feelings underneath it aren’t valid. Just sorely inflamed. Also, my over-reaction and your over-reaction are likely not the same. We’re different people, after all, with different emotional triggers and different histories. I could be experiencing an emotional flashback and be totally unaware it’s happening.

If you’d like to be supportive, try NOT assuming you understand my inner workings, and ask probing questions that DON’T accuse me of being a drama queen, rather than a legitimately suffering person.

“You’re much too young for that.”

This is one I’ve heard from nurses, doctor’s aides, and older women I work with. Please, do tell my body that the hot flashes are for menopause only, I’m sure it will work hard to please your sense of where my symptoms fit and then I’ll be magically cured. While you’re at it, tell my joints to stop aching and popping like I’m eighty when I haven’t even reached my fortieth birthday.

When I was in my twenties, I was told I had joints like an old woman. Also, that my pain was from “general overuse”. Now my kid is being referred to an EDS specialist, and the doctors all agree I have a hypermobility issue, but can’t decide exactly what it is. They’ll need to charge me for many more visits before they come to a conclusion, and they’ve already warned me I may just need to come to terms with being “dependent on narcotics” for the rest of my life.

Fuck that. Many autistics have hypermobility issues, and my nervous system is too sensitive for the drugs they want to give me. One Vicodin knocks me on my ass. I’ll live with the pain, thanks, but no thanks for your condescending disinterest and refusal to believe in my symptoms until I’m “old enough” to feel them.

For those struggling through the misery monologue: I fucking hear you. It’s hard. It sucks. Your experience is valid, no matter what anyone else says, or how they downplay your suffering.

For those of you trying your hardest to listen to that monologue, to help the miserable people you care about through their suffering, but feeling entirely helpless in the face of it, there is one sure-fire way to help them feel seen, cared for, and validated, even if you can’t help ease the pain:

“I’m here. I see you. You aren’t alone in this.”

You can’t fix anyone’s problems. All you can do is sit next to them in the Dark, and let them know you give a damn.

Thank you for reading my ramble! If it resonated with you, please feel free to clap, comment, or repost so others can see it too.

If you’ve been feeling unseen, invalidated, alone in your suffering, or you just have an experience to share, please feel welcome to share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.