Anxiety is a confounding thing and COVID combined with gloomy monsoon skies really doesn't help. Life as we knew it has disintegrated and who knows what I'm doing anymore. Contact with the outside world is still limited to phone calls - or worse, video calls - and recently, I've begun to notice how similar some conversations with friends are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad when a friend reaches out to me and we talk about the goings-on and anxieties we've been facing in our respective quarantine bubbles. But sometimes, perhaps unintentionally, the tone of conversation becomes constrained. Already mostly trite in nature, thanks to the relatively unchanged lockdown environment, a conversation with someone with well-intentioned empathy can sometimes also turn on its head and become suffocating concern for the others' wellbeing.

I find that this happens because people really want to offer assistance of some kind but aren't quite sure how. This results in an almost overbearing "I want to help in some way so you have to let me help you" regardless of whether I asked for the assistance or not. But this strategy doesn't work very well for someone like me who's dealing with anxiety. To my mind, it sounds forceful, almost as if I am responsible for being a hindrance to the care-taking attempts offered to me. I'm not overthinking this. Assistance or concern when offered is of value only when both the giver and receiver are cognizant of the ability and right of the receiver to deny assistance. If the giver cannot take "no" for an answer, then the offered help becomes a burden to the receiver's already overwhelmed mind. In my case, this goes a step further and turns into guilt.

From my experience, check-ins that are not laden with expectation of a certain outcome work well. What I mean by this is, avoid saying "Call me when you feel up to it" or "You'll be fine". Here's why: the first sentence places the responsibility of reaching out on a mind that is already saturated and the other is just plain dismissive of a person's plight. Instead try, "I'd like to help so would you like me to call you in x number of hours?" and "This must be so hard for you. / I'm sorry you feel this way."

It's really amazing what conversations that are laced with kindness and a lot of room for understanding can do for people. I'll admit, conversations with people who have mental health issues are a constant learning process. Especially since there's no guide or script to read out from. What I (and in turn you) can hope to do is to listen intently and pick up on verbal cues of the person on the other end and be okay with admitting that I may not know better but am willing to learn to make conversation a safe space for both sides.

Note to reader: I in no way am speaking for everyone with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression. These observations and interpretations are mine and mine alone. I listed them in an attempt to bring clarity to my mind and to others'.