Useless and bad anxiety

[echo]

my friends talking to me about how he doesn’t want to live anymore and i can’t do anything to help. my anxiety is so bad and i’ve been doing my best just to not throw up from it. why cant i just be able to help him? why cant i know the right words to say? instead i’m crying over knowing how much pain he is in. who does that help? it doesn’t help anybody. fuck. i just need to know what to say. i just need to know how to support him better.

[Micro]

Hey @echo,

I’ve read your other post as well, and I’d like to emphasize the fact that you, on your end, are already going through a lot. Given the circumstances, it’s more than okay to have strong emotions. Please keep in mind that you are human. Give yourself some grace there. It’s incredibly beautiful to love and care about your friend the way you do. However, your own well-being matters too, and right now it sounds that you really have a lot to deal with.

As for your friend, it breaks my heart that he’s lost the desire to live. It sounds that there’s a huge trust between you two, one that allowed him to reach out to you. However, dealing with this situation is a huge responsibility. It is, for everyone. I promise you that it’s not just a “you” thing. This is about something stressful, scary, something that shakes the feelings you have for your friend and, somehow, make you feel helpless. How you feel is valid, logical, and is experienced by many people who try to support someone who feels like giving up on life.

I would like to share a friendly reminder though, that what this person is going through is not your responsibility, not your burden to carry. I know it’s tough to say and hear that, especially when it’s about someone we love dearly. However, there are limits we cannot cross, limits that are about what happens in the mind of someone, between them and themselves. You can pour love into them, you can listen, you can provide a safe space to talk, you can share resources, but you are not their savior.

If you didn’t yet, I’d like to encourage you to take a few steps from now on regarding this situation, which would be to:

• Share crisis resources with them. Depending on where you live, there might be different options for them. There are services and people who are trained and equipped to that kind of situation, who’d be able to listen to them if things get really hard:

List of suicide crisis lines

• Eventually, consider involving someone in this situation. Someone they trust, are close to them or could help. Their parents, older siblings, older family members, a teacher, a school counselor… When this kind of situation feels out of your control and when the person doesn’t seem to be open to get any help, then it’s okay to reach out to someone else so you wouldn’t be alone in helping them. It’s a healthy thing to do, even if your friend might be a bit upset at first. Sometimes, letting things as they are would be more destructive and unhealthy in the long run, for both people.

This is not your fault. I’m sure you’ve been doing a lot already and have shown so much love to them. If you think you are facing a wall right now, then it’s absolutely okay to not stay alone with them, and with this.

You are not alone.