How Do I Know If I Need Help With Depression and Anxiety?

Everybody needs help.  Depression and anxiety get a lot of buzz right now, but what concerns me is that we have attached the need for mental health help to severity of the problem.  It is almost like the world is so noisy a place that we think that if we don’t scream at the top of our lungs then no one will hear us.  

Don’t get me wrong…depression is real, and many of us struggle with it. And if you’re one of the thousands who do, and you’ve not yet gotten professional help, please reach out today.  
 
However, many of us aren’t depressed; we are sad.  Many of us aren’t struggling with anxiety, but we are worried about our future, our families, and the world around us. In 1 Peter 5:7 we are told to “cast all our cares on Him” (emphasis mine), not just the ones that seem significant. 

If we measured our troubles on a scale between 1 and 10, there isn’t a magic number that says we need to reach out for help. That’s not how it works. There’s a big difference between a gunshot wound and a paper cut, but a paper cut left untreated becomes infected and can land us in the same place a gunshot wound would.

That’s why no matter how bad you think your depression and anxiety are, your problem is never too small to get help.  
  
I think we need to start considering our brothers and sisters in the mental health world as part of our community.  When we engage in community, your local Christian counselor is part of it. 

Am I depressed enough to go talk to a counselor? Yes.  Am I anxious enough to talk to a counselor? Yes.  How do I know that I need help?  We always need help. 

We were created to live in  community.  When we allow others to help us and when we help others, we are actually living well.  It is when we try for independence (that often ends up looking more like isolation) that we are living in dysfunction.
 
We need to give up on the false and dangerous notion that we need to hit a significant level of brokenness before we reach out to our community for help.  We need to normalize sharing our burdens with one another, and normalize sharing our burdens with our Christian counselors who have been called out and equipped to help us walk through difficulties in life at every level.  
 
So if you’re wondering if you need help with depression and anxiety, you do! No matter how bad it’s gotten or how manageable it might seem, now it the time to reach out.