Addressing the Social Roots of Your Anxiety

Most Anxiety is Social Anxiety

Everyone feel anxious.

Not everyone feels anxious in the exact same settings and circumstances, but absolutely everyone can identify with those awful feelings of dread, unrest, worry, and panic in some way, shape, or form.

With the seemingly infinite number of specific anxieties that human beings could have in today’s world, social anxiety is one that a huge number of people describe themselves as experiencing. You probably know social anxiety as the quick heart rate and sweaty palms that go along with feeling out of place in social situations. People also describe it as fearful thoughts around judgment, rejection, exclusion, and being socially incompetent in interactions with others.

As a counsellor in Victoria BC, I have more conversations about anxiety than any other concern people bring in to therapy. Through these interesting and diverse conversations, I’ve come to notice a common theme: the anxiety that people consider to be more “generalized”, or even anxieties about specific worries like health or death, almost always relate back to relationships with other people too.

In this post I explain how and why most anxiety is, at the end of the day, social in nature, and how identifying that for yourself can help you feel more at ease in anxious moments.

The Purpose Behind Anxiety

Like most aspects of human experiences, anxiety is one of those things that everyone can identify with on some level, and which everyone experiences somewhat differently from person to person. So, while taking these differences into account, anxiety is typically described as the emotional response to anticipated adverse events, experiences, or outcomes.

As a responsive emotion, anxiety draws our attention to what could happen, in the interest of avoiding or mitigating negative experiences. In this way, even if we don’t often experience it as helpful, anxiety is primarily concerned with our safety.

Anxiety as a Social Phenomenon

If anxiety is mostly about anticipating negative experiences or outcomes in the interest of safety, why do so many people experience social anxiety? I mean, it’s not like rejection, exclusion, or judgment ever really hurt anyone, right?

The reality is, belonging does matter. Despite the age-old rhetoric that celebrates the “lone wolf” and staunch individualism, we are far more interdependent than independent.

Even if you think about it on a purely evolutionary/biological level, human beings have needed each other for survival since always. Of course, humans in the 21st century are different in some very distinct ways than our predecessors from ages past, but the importance of belonging is very much alive and well in our hearts and minds today.

Belonging and Social Anxiety

The importance of belonging is key to understanding why people experience social anxiety. While we (urban adults in particular) may not need the acceptance of the group in order to survive predatory animals or weather brutal storms, cultural constructs like dignity, esteem, value, and worth, carry significant weight in the social world. If you’re skeptical, just ask anyone who has thought about ending their life after struggling against bullying, abuse, or social exclusion/rejection. Belonging is life-affirming and alienation and oppression can kill.

Anxiety’s Social Link

We know that social anxiety is defined by fears and worries around belonging and acceptance. But how does this common social denominator relate to other forms of anxiety?

I’ll illustrate this with an example:

When I first met with Paul, a 30-year-old man who grew up in a small community in BC, he described himself as struggling with anxiety, with a particular focus on his health. He explained that he recently learned through a medical exam that there was a mass in his lung, and that he was understandably afraid it might be cancer. I asked questions to draw out more of a sense of the meaning behind his fear – what it would mean to him if he was struck with a potentially fatal illness. Through his responses to my questions, he explained that because of the hard life he’s lived, he’s kept close relations at arm’s length. As many people can relate to, he felt fearful about the prospect of being vulnerable and opening up about himself and his own struggles to people who really matter to him. While more superficially, his anxiety was about getting sick and dying, at the heart of the matter was a fear of losing the opportunity to cultivate closer, more intimate relationships with his family. This realization opened the door for him to take care of those relationships in more direct and tangible ways.

Through Paul’s example you can see how what sounded at first like a very personal and private worry was actually relational in nature at its core. It’s easy to see anxieties like Paul’s through the more common individualistic lens, but when we really start getting curious and putting anxiety in context, we can see that there is a crucial social aspect more often than not.

Why It’s Helpful Identifying the Social Side of Anxieties

As is clear in Paul’s example above, recognizing the social aspects of our anxieties gives us something concrete to work with. So often the assumption is that we need skills or tools to manage anxiety, when in fact action can be taken to address the anxiety-provoking situation at its core.

In Paul’s case, by recognizing that his anxiety was really based on the fear of losing the opportunity to get closer with the important people in his life, he was able to take the action necessary to address that concern.

I think it’s also worth noting that anxiety has a way of making it difficult to facilitate the process of coming to these realizations on our own. We can get so wrapped up in worry that we think in very circular ways, making it hard to move forward. This is where talking to a therapist can really help. Counselling for anxiety can not only help you identify and practice the skills and tools to ease anxiety in anxious moments, but also to see the tangible factors that could make all the difference if they were to be addressed.

Identifying the Social Side of Your Anxiety

Whether or not you work with a counsellor to understand the context around your own anxiety, having questions to explore and make sense of the social side of your anxiety can make a big difference.

You can use questions like these to do that work yourself:

• If your anxiety could speak for itself, what fears or worries would it express?

  • What relationships in your life relate most closely to those fears or worries?

• What would it mean to you if those fears or worries were to come true? What regrets would you have?

• What fears or worries have made it hard to take action to resolve the anxiety?

  • Are there particular social responses you fear you might receive?

• Who else does this issue matter to? What is their relationship to the situation?

  • How does your anxiety relate to your relationship with them?

• If you knew you could do something that would make everything better, even if you’re afraid to do that thing right now, what would that be?

  • What has made it hard to take that action up until now?

Addressing Anxiety Through the Broader Social Context

The problems we call “social anxiety” are quite obviously social in nature, but that doesn’t mean that other kinds of anxiety are not. The process of exploring and understanding the social context around your anxiety can open new doors to addressing issues on a more real and tangible level. In this way, addressing your anxiety through the broader social context is empowering and leads to more sustainable resolution across time.

Are there certain social relationships that you notice you feel more anxious about than others?

How do you take hard but important steps toward resolving social worries?

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3 Crucial Factors For Creating (and Sustaining) Change In Your Life

What I Learned the Hard Way (so you don't have to)

Going through puberty was utter hell for me. 😳

As the first girl in my grade to catch her menses, I was the princess of PMS purgatory. I was alone on an island for those first few months, attempting to survive the uninvited change my body was putting me through. “Becoming a young woman”, as some say, quickly inspired me to loathe everything about myself, especially my body.

From those adolescent days until well into young adulthood, the struggle with hating my body waxed and waned. There were periods where I felt totally disgusted with my body – standing in front of the mirror in short shorts I only dreamed I could wear in public, hurling horrible obscenities at my innocent thighs that had the audacity to rub together when I walked.

The hatred became the driving force for countless failed attempts to starve myself. I believed I could punish my body into skinny, hot submission. I promised my thunder thighs I would love them once they finally got in line and became half their size.

You would think that after 20 years of trying in vain to change my body, that I might give up – or at least get some serious help for my secret obsession. So, how did I manage to change things so drastically after so many years of struggle? The full story is far too long to share in one blog post, but I can outline some important factors that seriously helped me continue with my desire to change, in a kinder, more compassionate way.

The Role of Motivation, Trust, and Patience on the Road Toward Change

A few pieces of this big, complicated puzzle, consisted of some pretty basic goal attainment fundamentals: motivation, trust, and patience. While straightforward in theory, it was far messier and challenging than the basic instructions you can read in any self-help book.

Finding Motivation Through Our Struggles

For me, being motivated first required me to clearly identify exactly what I was striving to do. What was I motivated by? Was it the same hate, disgust, and shame I had experienced throughout my dramatic and exhausting adolescence? How did I want it to be different this time?

I knew what I didn’t want: to hate or mistreat my body. To stuff myself with food when life was hard. To be overweight and unhealthy while longing to feel different.

I also knew what I did want: to love and accept my body. To be a healthy weight that had my body feeling energized and full of life. To nourish my body with foods that it loved and appreciated, and tasted good! To be able to wear those short shorts, even if my thighs rubbed together.

Imagining the outcome I wanted was a big help in feeling motivated to do things differently. But the motivation was inconsistent, especially when I slipped up, stuffing myself to the point of button-popping bloat. There was fear there, a belief that if I hadn’t worn those short shorts with pride yet, it was a mere pipe dream.

It was in realizing the inconsistent nature of my motivation that I began to treat it differently. I decided that I wasn’t going to rely on myself to feel naturally inspired, but that I was going to have to do some real work to create a foundation for my motivation to stand on.

So, what did I do? I considered all that I wanted with regards to my body and food, and logically assessed all that I would need to do (within my control) to fulfill these goals. I then measured the level of motivation that I currently felt to make these changes in practice. And let’s be honest, who naturally feels motivated to put the sugary delight of ice cream down in the heat of an emotional breakdown?

When I recognized what areas I lacked motivation in, I gathered outside sources to inspire my motivation to grow. I found inspirational stories told by people who had struggled in similar ways, only to overcome and live differently.

I also made a commitment to look at my own life for my stories of success. Even if it was in a seemingly meaningless decision to close the fridge door when I wasn’t actually hungry.

Motivation can be there for you when you need inspiration to pursue your goals. When your energy is drained and you want to give up, it can help you keep going. It can act as your own private cheerleader, encouraging you, believing in your ability to persevere and succeed.

Connecting more deeply with your own motivation

Because it's always helpful to have reflective questions to guide your self-development work, here are some questions you can use to connect more deeply with your own motivation:

• What are you motivated to do day in and day out? And why?

• Why do you want to achieve this desire of yours? What’s in it for you? How will life be different? How will you feel?

• What is it like for you to feel motivated? What makes it a preferred state of being?

• Who serves as inspiration for you and your desires? Who has achieved what you’re setting out to do? How do you relate to them? How are you similar?

• If you’re struggling to feel motivated, what might be getting in the way? Do your beliefs align with a feeling of motivation? Do you have any evidence that what you want to do is possible?

Simply put, the answers to these questions can lay a strong foundation for your internal motivation. The more detailed you can be, the better.

Developing Trust

To be perfectly honest, harnessing motivation after giving it a little bit of attention, wasn’t that challenging for me. Trust, on the other hand, was a whole other ball game.

Given that I had dedicated a good 20 years to this desire, without any real long-term change, I didn’t have any reason to trust that my present efforts would be fruitful.

I had developed the belief that if I didn’t drop five pounds of excess fat over night after one day of eating well and a bit of exercise, I was doomed. It was proof that my body was somehow incapable of being healthy and fit. The food I would stuff down my gullet in response to this realization was further evidence that I could not be trusted.

I truly did not trust that things could be any different. That is, until I actually recognized my lack of trust. Again, it was helpful (and necessary) spending deliberate time first recognizing where I was at with trust, and then what was getting in the way of me experiencing more of it.

I had to work through a whole hell of a lot of past experiences that I had previously judged as "proof" of my everlasting failure with this mission. I worked to make sense out of my present lack of trust, and what was required to experience any semblance of something more positive and conducive to change.

I asked myself what I needed to believe about this goal and my capacity to achieve it. I explored other achievements I had conquered in the past, and how these could lay a foundation of trust in my abilities.

I then considered the logical reasons for trusting in this goal as being achievable. I focused on how other people had achieved it, and acknowledged that it is physically possible for my body to be healthy. Google Images became my best friend, as I could easily pull up example after example of people becoming fit and achieving their health and body goals.

I kept this information close at hand, and reflected on it regularly to build more trust.

I also started taking action and looking for how this experience could further the foundation of trust. I assessed how my body felt to make the lifestyle changes, even if my body didn’t look any different after the first day.

I took it a step further and worked on cultivating bigger beliefs about my capacity to achieve my desires based on all I had already done in my life. Even the seemingly menial tasks were pieces of evidence that I could trust in myself.

This is the practice of trust. It is something you do, something that you can engage in.

What evidence do you have that you can trust in the possibility of achieving your desires?

What I’m trying to say is that trust is another crucial factor on the road to achieving desires.

Trust ties in to your beliefs about yourself and your place in the world. Trust can be there when the results aren’t showing up as quickly as you would like. It can ease your worry and frustration, and help you in continuing in the face of obstacles. It can support you in taking calculated risks, and addressing fears. It is the antithesis of doubt.

Questions to help you feel more connected to trust

• What have you been able to achieve in the past that required your trust?

• How do you presently rely on trust (and likely take it for granted)?

• Why are you able to trust in the things you do?

• How is A likely to lead to B? How do you know?

• Did you experience trust the first time you tried? What helped in building trust?

The Real Kicker: Patience

UGH. I hate being patient.

Just writing about patience brings up memories of my dad pleading with me to be patient and temper my relentless quest to get what I want NOW.

Upon reflection, I realize that patience has been an even bigger struggle for me than the issues with my body.

The world we live in, with the unprecedented accessibility to instant gratification, has not helped matters. With the ease of Google search, I have become the queen of reading spoilers and binge watching Netflix into the wee hours of the morning. I want it all, and I want it NOW!

When I mixed impatience with my desire for my relationship to my body and food to be different, things just got harder. You see, no matter what evidence there was that I was making progress toward attaining my goals, it was never good enough. It didn’t happen fast enough, or the evidence wasn’t big enough to make space for more than a sliver of patience. And so I was left frustrated with myself and the world, figuring that something must be seriously wrong with my metabolism if I didn’t drop 5 lbs of excess fat over night.

Again, the change boiled down to a whole lot of awareness. There was no chance I could change this pattern until I actually realized that I had a serious issue with patience.

I reflected on what got in the way for me in being able to withstand a bit of time and effort before seeing results. I considered what helped me feel more patient in different scenarios. I realized that patience wasn’t born in me, but it could be practiced and developed.

Perhaps you can relate? If you're human, you can probably identify with the feeling or fear that if something isn't happening right now, that it won't happen ever. It's in these moments that patience can be your ally.

Some Patience-Building Questions

• How do you feel emotionally and in your body when you're waiting for efforts to pay off?

  • If you feel uneasy, anxious, or afraid, why do you suppose that is? Where do you think your discomfort comes from?

  • How have you eased that discomfort successfully in the past?

• When has calling on patience been helpful to you in the past? What achievements has it supported you in bringing to life? How did you access it then?

• How would you support a younger person in being more patient? What tips and guidance would you give them?

Tying Motivation, Trust, and Patience Together

Throughout my journey of cultivating the virtue of patience, I learned that motivation and trust are enormously helpful. As pillars of support, motivation was there to inspire me to take action in the first place, and trust helped me believe that the action would eventually pay off. With a clear focus on how I wanted these three factors to support me on my quest to creating and sustaining change, it has been a much different experience for me than it was before I clued in to their importance.

Using the questions above, you can feel more connected to your very own motivation, your trust in your abilities, and your patience to wait for the seeds you sew to sprout.

When have you found motivation, trust, and patience to be assets along your journey?

Is there one that has served you especially well, or that has been particularly difficult to connect with?

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What I Wish I Knew About Handling Fears, Doubts, and Worries

“It’s too hard!”

“I’m scared I can’t do it!”

“I don’t have what it takes, so why bother trying?”

These are familiar thoughts that I have had throughout my life, whenever I have dreamed of taking on a big change or aspiration.

Sometimes they show up as quiet, pesky thoughts that I can easily swat away with my sparkly magic wand of positivity. Other times they’re really REALLY loud, ominous, and devastatingly convincing. When that’s been the case, I’ve had to summon all my courage to keep from getting stuck in a rut.

Perhaps you can relate. These kinds of thoughts stem from our bigger, deeper feelings of fear, doubt, and worry. They are skilled at creating a state of confusion and distracting us from how we want to be feeling: confident, bold, and focused on bringing our desires to life.

In this post I offer my hard earned knowledge on how to keep fears, doubts, and worries from stopping you along the path toward bringing your desires to life.

Sitting With the Discomfort of your Fears

Let’s be real: we want things in life to come easy to us, and we don’t want to experience the discomfort that our fears, doubts, and worries bring. This is both perfectly natural, and often times counter-productive.

Fear is naturally something to be avoided.  That’s how it works!  It tells you, “that thing might not be safe”, and you, as the smart person you are, do what you can to keep bad things from happening.

You’ve also probably experienced how it can be counter-productive to listen to your fears all the time. While they largely have your best interests in mind, they can also show up when you have an opportunity to challenge yourself and grow. They deter you from taking risks that could actually bring you closer to bringing your desires to life. If your fears, doubts, and worries were to have things their way all the time, your life would be stagnant, in a constant state of maintaining the status quo.

When it comes to actually sitting with the discomfort of your fears, doubts, and worries, a common and understandable response is to find distraction and avoid actions that align with taking risks. There have been a number of years where this was a primary focus of mine. I’ve always been a big dreamer, but it’s taken me a lot of personal work to actually put one foot in front of the other and take concrete steps toward my aspirations.

My ways of avoiding action were sneaky. I mean, sure, I would do things that you too might notice yourself doing, like binging on TV shows and scrolling endlessly on my phone, but I would also do what looked like meaningful work, minus the follow through.

I would devote hours and hours of time to planning, looking meticulously at the how and what that would lead to the results I was seeking. But when those results didn’t appear after a week of work, I would hear those discouraging and destabilizing whispers of my fears, doubts, and worries, and ultimately get off track. I repeated this process again, and again, and again.

In retrospect, I believe a big part of the problem for me was that I didn’t pay attention and engage much with these feelings. I had deemed them enemy #1 to be fought off or to surrender to (depending on my energy level that day). I hadn’t taken the time to ask what those fears and doubts really had to say about what I was doing. What were they based on, and why were they showing up when they were?

Although I’m not a big proponent of psychological diagnosis, reflecting on this tedious process reminds me of Einstein’s saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.

Through the personal work I’ve done on these issues, I’ve learned that acknowledging your fears calls them out and allows you to assess their validity. It can also help you in determining whether or not these fears and doubts are useful to listen to, or if they're worth disrupting.

Disrupting Your Fears, Doubts, and Worries

Challenging your fears, doubts, and worries might feel like the last thing you want to do, preferring instead to distract yourself and pretend they’re not there. But they’re showing up for a reason, and facing them can be empowering.

Here are some questions that can help you along that path:

• Where do you think those fears and worries came from? What experiences do they remind you of

• Who else that you know of has similar fears, doubts, or worries? What experiences do you share with them?

• If your fears were to help you avoid experiencing something negative, what might that be? Why does it feel important to avoid having that kind of experience?

• When those fears are present, how do you respond? What do you feel most inclined to do/avoid doing in those moments?

• Are there actions you’ve considered taking but felt too afraid? If so, what were they and how did you decide against taking them?

By reflecting on questions like these, you can get a clearer sense of where your fears, doubts, and worries are coming from. This can help you take a more compassionate stance with yourself, while also considering how you want to engage with those concerns. Who knows, perhaps there’s something worthwhile in their message, but you can’t know until you really understand where that message is coming from, and how it makes sense as a response to your lived experience.

Calling Out the “Buts”

Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint a worry or fear. This is when it can be useful to pay attention to the language you use. What words come to mind when you think about taking action and you feel constrained by fears?

One word that aligns very closely with the language of worry or fear is “but”. Many of us use that word often and take it for granted, but how and when we use it is a very good indicator of aversions we have. These might sound like,

• “I would like to be healthier BUT…”

• “I would like to be in a loving partnership BUT…"

• “I want more friends BUT…”

The statements that follow the “buts” can take on many different forms, such as,

• “…I don’t have the ability or capacity to make it happen”

• “…there are forces outside of my control that will get in the way.”

• “…there is something wrong with me that makes this impossible.”

What follows the “buts…” for you? What fears, worries, or concerns are they based on?

Is your desire for change greater than the level of fear you experience? Are there ways to gently challenge the fear in safe and manageable ways?

Putting “Buts” in Context

Up until recently I believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that would prevent me from having a body that looked the way I wanted it to. I longed to be fit and healthy, to let go of extra body fat, and to feel fantastic in my body. But I doubted that this could be possible. Maybe my metabolism was broken, or perhaps I didn’t have the ability to be consistent enough. Those were a couple of “buts” that got in my way.

When I got down to doing this work myself, I recognized that my “buts” were supported by faulty evidence based on the prior attempts I had made to create change in my body (all of which had fallen short). When I finally addressed the ideas, I took a close, honest look at my past efforts by asking questions like, “What had I done”, “How long did I try, and what were the results?”, and “What got in the way of me continuing to try?”

It soon became clear to me that the approach I was taking did not support me in being able to maintain a consistent effort. I tried too much at once, and restricted my eating so greatly that my body rebelled with cravings that no amount of will power could battle. I learned that I needed a realistic, achievable approach that allowed me to be consistent day in and day out until I reached my goals. I saw that the problem wasn’t some inherent shortcoming within myself or my body, but in the strategies I tried.

I also gathered logical evidence to counter the fear that there is something outside of my control preventing me from having the body I want. I googled the hell out of what could truly prevent this desire from coming to life and learned that it would be highly unlikely. There are factors that can slow down the process, such as my hypothyroidism, but it is still possible for my body to change.

This is when logic can come in handy. When you think about your desire, what do you think needs to happen for it to come into fruition? Break it down in detail:

• What knowledge do you need?

• What action do you need to take? What are all the small steps you can think of?

• Who could help?

• What skills might you need?

• What might you need to learn or practice?

Working Through Your Worries, Fears, and Doubts

Once you’re able to identify what your worries, fears, and doubts are, and you feel fluent in noticing the “buts” that get in the way, you can start creating a case against them.

Questions like these can help you through that process:

• Who do you think believes in you the most? What have they observed about you that supports their perspective of you? What evidence would they give you to support you in believing in your abilities to achieve what’s important to you?

• When assessing beliefs, ask yourself how you know that belief to be true? What evidence is there to back up this belief? What choice do you have in holding that belief? When was it more or less true for you? Who else is it true for? Who is it not true for? How do you know?

• What are some beliefs that have changed throughout your life? What did you once believe was impossible, that you now believe is possible? How did that change occur?

• If you believe that it is impossible to change in the ways you long to, what would have to be different for the change to occur? What could others do to make it easier or harder for you?

• What evidence do you have of your personal success in other areas? What challenges have you overcome throughout your life? What universal challenges have you faced, and learned through trial and error to overcome?

• Critically assess your beliefs – why do you believe in this? What evidence do you have in its truth? Why do you want to believe this?

• Who can you invite to be a cheerleader when doubt and worry come into the picture?

Moving Forward From Fear, Doubt, and Worry

Nearly everyone struggles to take action toward meaningful goals at some point in their lives. Fears, doubts, and worries are generally the common denominators across these difficult times. While they are understandable responses to our lived experiences, sometimes they do their jobs too well, and we end up sacrificing movement for safety. If you take the time and really get to understand where your fears, doubts, and worries come from, you can then respond with more intention, and ultimately take the wind out of their sails.

How do you deal with fears, doubts, and worries in your life?

What helps you take risks to challenge fears, doubts, and worries?

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Depression or Dilemma? How Context Makes the Difference Between Feeling Stuck and Empowered

A Problem With Depression

As therapists, we have a lot of conversations with people who describe their suffering as “depression”. Though “depression” can mean something fairly different from one person to another, there is often a common element of feeling stuck with a sense of profound despair.

If you think about it (or if you’ve actually lived it), feeling stuck can be terribly depressing in and of itself! To feel stuck is to feel constrained from pursuing your hopes and dreams, and there’s nothing cheerful or positive about that.

In the world of mainstream therapy and mental health, it is the experience of despair, along with the associated thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, that get the most attention. When those parts are the focus, we naturally tailor our efforts toward “fixing” them. The body of mainstream psychological literature tells us that that is where the problem of depression both begins and ends. We therefore strive to think, behave, and feel differently, often in spite of relevant conditions of our lives.

As you can imagine, it’s difficult to get very far when that is the case. Folks in situations like these often feel unsure of what they can do, relying on professionals to help “fix” what’s wrong.

Using Context as an Ally

What gets left out of those conversations and efforts is an exploration of the broader context – the aspects of our lives and experiences that the depression is in response to. For many, it’s not just about feeling stuck in a state of profound despair, but about the real world factors that constrain our capacities to make our lived experiences better.

To put it simply, the “stuck” feeling that corresponds with depression is often a response to a dilemma – to negative circumstances that feel hard or scary to disrupt.

But don’t despair, there’s hope in that too! When that is the case, although we may feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, there is an ever-present possibility to take action to change things – even though we may be afraid of the outcome.

A Depressing Dilemma

Here’s an example to illustrate how a person’s depression can be more aptly seen as a response to a dilemma when enough context is given:

When Aryn came into my office for the first time, they described themselves as “struggling with depression”. They described having pervasive feelings of despair, frustration, and great difficulty focusing on their work. I became very curious and asked a lot of response-based questions to help clarify the broader context. They described how they had spent 10 years studying engineering, which they got into because they were told they could get a good job when they finished. That turned out to be true, but after just one day of working for an engineering firm, they had a panic attack in response to imagining spending the next 30 years doing that work. For Aryn, the work left a lot to be desired.

Aryn promptly quit that job and returned to school to pursue a graduate degree in the same field. Unsurprisingly, they struggled to find joy in their studies, and found themselves feeling an increasing sense of despair and anxiety. I asked about their worries around the possibility of changing direction in their career, and they acknowledged their fear of how their family members and in-laws would respond. They feared being coloured as “flaky” (a term that had been used against them in the past), having the legitimacy of their feelings disregarded, and told they were making the wrong decision – even though continuing on along that path felt anything but right. Aryn felt trapped.

Aryn illustrated how the lack of a clear and easy path forward created the very real constraints they were struggling against, which they responded to with a “depressed” mood. If I were in Aryn’s shoes, I think I would too. Acknowledging that all available options posed at least some degree of risk or adversity, we explored what might be the best solution to their despair. While it would be hard telling their family that they wanted to change their career and risk receiving negative, judgmental responses in return, they decided that was better than continuing down the familiar and unsatisfying path they were on. After making that difficult decision and taking the corresponding actions, Aryn felt a huge sense of relief from what they first understood as “depression” – even though they knew they weren’t out of the woods quite yet.

Social Contexts and Depressing Dilemmas

Despite popular cultural narratives that celebrate independence and total self-sufficiency, humans are inherently social beings. It’s therefore not surprising that depression (and most other problems people bring in to a Victoria BC therapy session) has key social aspects that often get overlooked. This has a lot to do with why most folks who consult with us about depression acknowledge feeling isolated, alienated, mistreated, constrained, or oppressed in their significant social relations (or society more broadly).

This was absolutely true for Aryn, who was in a career that left them wanting more, and who felt constrained by the social responses they anticipated receiving if they were to do what was needed to disrupt their dissatisfaction. When we really got into it, it became clear that their dilemma was profound: continue down a path that is fundamentally unsatisfying and a source of resentment, or make some important changes to their career path and risk alienation, isolation, and disapproval from the people who matter most in their life. That sure sounds like a recipe for depression and despair to me!

Understanding Context is Empowering

If you were to imagine yourself as a helpful friend (which I’m sure you are!) who had two friends in need – one who asked you to help them solve their depression, and one who asked you to help them navigate a dilemma – which one do you think you think you’d feel more confident in assisting?

While I don’t doubt that some folks would say the first one (there are some really clever people out there!), I’m inclined to think that more people would feel better equipped to help the friend with the dilemma. There may be lots of individual reasons for this, but a common one is that problems that are clearly situated in context are more tangible, and therefore easier to wrap our heads around.

This is a big reason why we find a response-based approach to therapy to be so helpful: it helps us take problems that may feel more overwhelming because they’re steeped in abstraction, and really understand them from the most important angles. If you think about it, a statement like “I have depression” doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what’s really going on for a person, whereas “I’m super unhappy and anxious because I feel unsatisfied with my career path and I’m afraid my family will reject me if I do what I need to do about it” does.

Using Awareness of Context to Navigate Social Dilemmas

There can be a lot of unlikely hope in the social dilemmas we face. While it is sensible to fear negative responses from the stakeholders in our lives because they often pose real material consequences (such as the loss of a relationship, a job, housing, income, opportunities, etc.), there are many nuanced ways we can navigate those situations to try to maximize a positive outcome. I make a point of never underestimating a person’s intimate knowledge of their relations and their ability to use fancy footwork to safely strive for what matters most to them.

While every situation and social dynamic is at least somewhat unique, the crux of how risky taking a chance and doing a hard thing is lies more in how you do it than if you do it. What I mean here is that we can often get discouraged and hung up on what might happen if we do a hard thing. While there may be some good insight informing those fears, it’s also important to remember that we’re capable of a wide array of communication styles, and the delivery of a message can make a significant difference in terms of how it’s received.

For example, Aryn probably knew that their parents would be more understanding if they arranged a time to meet with them and illustrated just how thoughtfully they’ve navigated the decision-making process around their career and education path. They almost definitely knew that would go over better than just sending them a text message saying “Hey I decided to quit engineering and drop out of school forever lol”.

My point here is to encourage you to remember that even though you may not always feel it, you are a social genius, capable of using thoughtfully chosen actions to address dilemmas, which can bode well for things turning out much better than you might fear.

Facing Depressing Dilemmas

If you read between the lines, the fact that we feel depressed when we feel stuck in a dilemma can say a lot about our values and what matters to us in our lives. When our freedom to make choices and take action in what we know to be our best interest is compromised, we protest on a deep emotional level. Although expressions of those emotions are often framed as mental health problems, we see them as signs of good mental wellness, and an implicit concern for our quality of life.

When you find yourself feeling depressed or in despair amidst constraining circumstances, we invite you to consider how those feelings make sense in relation to those constraints. What do they say about what matters to you? If they could be expressed as an “I wish…” statement, what would that statement be?

By being able to identify the dilemma behind the depression, you can then work more easily with the tangible factors that have made that a reality.