As somebody with both anxiety and depression, I often find it interesting to examine the intricacies of how each makes me feel. I often flip back and forth between which of the two is more painful or more of a burden. I recently posted a “Question of the Day” on my Snapchat where I asked: “Which is ‘worse’ – anxiety or depression?” Only one of my friends actually responded to my inquiry, but she brought up a lot of the same points that I have regarding how each is viewed, handled, and lived through. When I have anxiety attacks, it feels like the worst feeling in the world. My heart rate speeds up, I begin to sweat, and I get chest pains. About a month ago, I had an attack where I began hyperventilating, my mouth, lips, and hands began tingling with an intense pins and needles sensation, and eventually my hands seized up into this weird claw-like position. This lasted about 10-15 minutes, after which my hands and arms felt extremely sore. However, both my friend and I agreed that the feelings of anxiety seem more temporary than feelings of depression, despite the fact that anxiety attacks can be very intense and painful. In my opinion, anxiety hurts more physically and depression hurts more mentally – although both can highly affect physical and mental states. For me, it just seems like depression is harder to climb out of. Your thoughts consume you to where you feel lost, empty – like a shell of a person. You feel stuck in those feelings for a much longer period of time. The numbness of depression eats away at you; it’s a weight that drags you down… It’s almost as if the harder you try to pull yourself out of your low, the further you sink. Looking at how both anxiety and depression are viewed is also curious. It bothers me how casually the words anxiety and depression seem to be thrown around. People who are not depressed or do not have anxiety should not be nonchalantly announcing how “depressed” they are because their favorite show was canceled or how they have anxiety when they are really just slightly uneasy or worried about something. And yet, if someone is actually depressed or anxious, there is this stigma attached to it – that person is broken, crazy, etc. It deters people who are attempting to deal with mental illness on their own from getting professional help. If I were to answer the question I had previously posed, I would say that neither anxiety nor depression could be labeled “worse” than the other. Both negatively affect how you feel, think, and act, and both are difficult to get through without a solid support network. I’m interested to see how you all feel… Even if you’ve never experienced them, which do you feel is worse? Anxiety or depression?
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I'm Megan.
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