Stress, anxiety and depression, A Disaster or A Gift

I am in my 20s and my period quarter-life crisis is a huge “trending” to be faced. It looks like a cliché but it is real.

The youth is depicted beautiful life by the movies or novels but we know that it may be not always felt so in this life. As I see in the social media and people around me, we as young adults are struggling with this life. We have so many dreams at our young, wanted the life that must be achieved by general, and being chased by the time. But we know that life goes unexpected and sometimes doesn’t meet with our hope. Life sometimes is in tune with our desires and often going out from the expected line.

I am a young adult who is currently stepping out from my secured life, face the realities, and stand on uncertainty, it is not easy for me to embrace this condition. The true life, that I only see in adults said before, now is becoming real. The dream which has not been achieved, disappointment, people’s judgment, and jealousy of others life, are coming and those are causing depression and anxiety in my life.

Many people claim that the quarter-life crisis is the common part of life experienced by almost all of human life in around 20–30s. They can feel stress, anxiety, or uneasy when can not meet what they want and lose happiness. They can suffer from it but not a few people can pass it well. But everyone can feel uneasy while struggling with this. And for the people that can’t handle it, they can fall into depression for a long period or many mental health problems can occur. And the worst cases, several people end up with suicide.

To handle it, some people go to a psychologist or psychiatrist and they are given therapy or medical treatment like some drug doses. They claim that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, so the drug can fix it. They, who are given the drug-like depressant maybe can be healed for a while but after that, depression can come back and become worst. If it happens, they need to increase the doses until the highest doses are allowed.

But if we dive into the real problems are, we can find that the true problem is not only about the chemical unbalances in our head. After many experiences of me and others whom I have been taught to, I learn that we do not focus on “what the cause is”, but try to realize “why its cause makes us uneasy, depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems”. And the answer is because those are signs. There are some signs as the reason why we feel uneasy moreover stress.

The first sign is that we are wrong in understanding happiness or we misunderstood about this life. We don’t know exactly what our true dreams are. For example, when we think that unreached dreams are the end of the world and we feel depressed after it. But have we ever realized that those feeling is the sign that looking for it isn’t the source of happiness?

Diving deeper again for those dreams, we can understand that our dreams come for any reason. Maybe we want to make our closest person being proud or want to become useful people for others or make them proud of us. So, why not grab it in a different way from what we have set. Maybe those different way is more reachable or maybe we have done for so long. If we can make them proud or be useful people even we can’t reach those goals yet, we still can be happy and relieved, right? Or maybe not because we don’t realize it?.

The true reason for a dream is its essence and that is the essence of life. When we realize that depression or stress is a sign that we need to find the essence we can pass through this uneasy well. We can see that happiness isn’t about reaching goals, it’s about the things behind it. And we can get it even the way looks different.

The next signs when feel stress, anxiety, or uneasy is you need others and feel belonged. You need to be recognized and being a part of the people around you. You need to socialize or make a relation. It is proven by several people’s experiences and maybe felt by you also. When you’re sad, you just need someone to hear, or at least there’s someone who understands. Have you ever forget your problem when together with others or feel relief when finally get the solution from them? That is true that stress is a sign that you need others.

Surprisingly it also has been proven by scientific research. The research shows that when someone is depressed or stressed, they produce more hormones called oxytocin. Oxytocin is a social hormone. When people produce it, the body responds to want to feel belonged, need to be accompanied, and be understood. That hormone makes someone want to socialize or make a relation. When you realize that stressed means you need to socialize you can go to find it and the stress can be handled.

Having wrong something to hold on to maybe is another sign when you feel uneasy moreover stress. People are being the reason for the most of us doing something like we want to be seen by others that we are a success, or want to prove to other that we are capable, want to be accepted by other by our position and many more action that we have done because of others.

Never. Never put something because of people even the reason is you want to help them. People are the unstable, unsteady, uncertain things in this universe. You can’t hang all of your life to it because that is too precious to become falter. You will never enough to follow the standard that people set, or you can’t be satisfied to be seen the best in front of others, or you will always seek acknowledgment from others. Meanwhile, their desire always changed, their perception different, their claims and characteristics are unstable. So why do we hang our life into something unroot like this? Even we want to help someone, we sometimes can’t be consistent with our sincerity when the reason is because of people.

Eits, it doesn’t mean that we are disallowed to help others, but the highlight is to whom we lean all of our life, to what we put the standard, and to whom we hold. The stress can be a sign that we are wrong choosing them or a thing as the foundation of our life. Rethink and trying to realize that we need to put all of our own to the most stable-rooted-eternal thing in the universe. And the answer is our Lord, and as a Muslim, I believe that I need to do everything because of Allah. I realize that when stress comes, it means that I need to come to Him and try to be closer.

When I know that stresses are the signs and it is easy to find what I should do next, I can be better. I hope that it can be your solution too when facing stress. Good luck!