Fourteen (14) with depression and anxiety?

[Alida]

Hello all. I am very soon about to turn 14, and I think I have depression or anxiety. Sometimes I struggle so much to even move because I think whats even the point, but there are days I feel happy and grateful I'm alive. i told my friend about it and she said that depressed and feel sad all the time so I must be fine. I believed her for about a year, until one day we were eating at lunch break and I had cake. mind you she was one of the pretty skinny girls in my grade, and she was suddenly friends with the "cool" girls. I was eating the cake and she said, that's what you eating, she looked down and back up and said "no wonder" and all her popular friends laughed. I just laughed as well and pretended to not care, but as soon as I got home I cried and couldn't stop. i didn't eat for three days, and I'm still taking breaks from eating, where I only eat five days a week. i know its so unhealthy but I can't help it. someone pls help me!

[sbella02]

Alida,

Thank you so much for your openness and I warmly welcome you to the forums. I'm so sorry to hear about what you're going through. This seems to be such a common experience for young girls, because negative comments about your appearance or at your expense can be so harmful. I'm in my twenties and I can still remember some of the more hurtful comments I received from peers in high school, even though they have minimal effect on me these days.

I have a few quotes to share with you that I heard many years ago that have changed my perspective on negative comments like this.

Firstly, "your appearance is the least interesting thing about you". At the end of the day, your heart, soul, personality, and the way that you treat others will have a much more long-lasting impact in the world than the way you look, as much as we may place so much importance on our appearance in high school. I remember being so conscious of my weight in high school, mainly because everybody around me was also super conscious of theirs (I went to an all-girls school, too). 

Secondly, I believe it was a motivational speaker I saw on YouTube who picked somebody out of the crowd and said something like "your hair is blue" to one of the brunette audience members, who reacted with confusion. The speaker emphasised how this person was aware that their hair wasn't blue, because they'd accepted that having brown hair was their reality. The same is true for any attribute. Regardless of what those girls were implying by making comments about what you're eating, what really matters is that YOU are confident and comfortable with how you look. So if you're confident in your appearance, it doesn't matter what anybody else has to say about your body.

It breaks my heart that one horrible comment from one of your peers has had this much of an effect on you, because that kind of negativity can be so damaging to a person, particularly to young girls who are conditioned to be hypervigilant about their appearance. If it helps, I also eat cake every so often, and I would consider myself relatively healthy regardless. If you're concerned about the risks that not eating may have for you, you could always have a chat with a school counsellor or even doctor (if your family has a regular GP) about how you're feeling and your current eating behaviours.

If you're feeling courageous, if somebody else makes a degrading comment about your appearance, ask them to repeat it, then ask them to explain the "punchline". For people who make degrading comments with the intention of masking them as a "joke", asking them to explain the "humour" in their remarks will detract from the power that they may feel from making these comments in the first place, which does two things - it can embarrass them in a subtle way, whilst also causing them to reflect on what they're saying.

I'm wishing you all the best in your situation. As much as it hurts, please try not to let what your peers have said destroy how you view yourself. There is beauty in nature, and we, as humans, are part of nature. It's so important to appreciate and embrace your natural beauty, particularly at your age when it can be so difficult to lose sight of what makes you beautiful. 

Take care, SB

[therising]

Hi Alida

First, I just want to start with the truth. You're beautiful, sensitive and amazing and that's the truth. I have no doubt it's the truth. Beautiful people, filled with so much beauty, are typically sensitive people who sense or feel deeply. What makes you amazing is your ability to feel and your ability to come on the forums here, something I imagine wasn't altogether easy for you. Such things amaze me about you.

I'm wondering whether you're able to speak to one or both of your parents or maybe another adult in your life who you can rely on for good supportive guidance. I've found it doesn't matter what age we are (I'm a 53yo gal), there are times in our life where the need for support and guidance becomes something we really feel. Another truth is most of us don't know how to do life all the time, based on new challenges popping up, ones we've never experienced before. There are times where I still go to my mum for guidance in some matters and times where I find other guides that I really need for support, guidance or advice.

Now, when it comes to really triggering kinds of people, oh my goodness. The ability to feel depressing, degrading over opinionated people definitely comes with challenges. The ability to feel the kinds of people who raise your spirits, raise you to the kinds of challenges that grow you in positive ways and raise you to really feel inspiration is a whole other story. Then there's the 3rd kind, who don't bring you down but they don't raise you either. If you can feel or get a sense of who is who in your life out of these 3 categories, you definitely have an ability. You're sensitive enough to be able to feel who's who. I discovered for myself, only a few years back, my sensitivity (ability to sense) is not my fault, it's not my weakness or anything like that. It's my ability and it's one that can be really hard to manage sometimes. I also found there's the need to learn a lot of skills in order to manage it well. Your 'friends' have a fault, they can't feel what they say but you can feel it. I bet if I was there at the time and all the other sensitive people on the forums were also there with you, we all would have felt what you felt because that's our nature.

[Earth Girl]

I'm sorry your friend said that, that was really mean of her. There's nothing wrong with eating cake sometimes. I bet even she eats it sometimes even though she's skinny. I hope she has grown up a lot since then. She doesn't sound like the best person to talk to about things like this because she doesn't take it seriously and will probably just make you feel worse. She doesn't know what you are truly going through. Even if she was feeling worse than you, that doesn't make what you are going through mild.

If your depression is making it hard for you to even move sometimes, then it must be pretty bad. It also sounds like you have disordered eating as you are starving yourself some days.

I understand that it must have been hard for you to open up here, but I think you might have to talk to a doctor about this as well considering how things are going.

It's normal to have days where you don't feel so good, but you definitely have severe depression which you have every right to get help for. Even if you had mild depression, you still have the right to get support for it.

It's common for people to experience depression at some stage in their life, I've had depression for a long time though I feel a lot better now, but it's still important to get help for it, especially if you starve yourself this much.