Picture this: Your friend finally opens up about their mental health struggles, and suddenly, before you know it, you’re dropping one of those cringe-worthy questions that make therapists everywhere collectively face-palm. We get that you want to help, but some questions do more damage. Whether you’re a well-meaning friend, a confused family member, or just someone who doesn’t want to be the reason someone mutes their phone for a week, here’s your guide to what not to say to someone fighting mental health battles.
1. “Why Can’t You Just Be Happy?”
Oh sure, because they haven’t thought of that. This is like asking someone with a broken leg why they can’t just walk it off. If happiness was a switch we could flip, therapists would be out of business, and ice cream companies would go bankrupt. Trust me, if they could “just be happy,” they would have done it somewhere between their third cup of coffee and their binge-fest
2. “Have You Tried Not Thinking About It?”
Brilliant suggestion. Next up, let’s tell someone with asthma to just try breathing better. Mental health struggles aren’t like those embarrassing photos from your college years that you can just stuff in a drawer and forget about. The brain doesn’t come with a delete button. If it did, we’d all be using it to forget about that time we called our teacher “mom” in third grade.
3.”What Do You Have to Be Depressed About?”
Because depression checks your bank account and life circumstances before it shows up, right? Depression doesn’t care if you live in a cardboard box or a mansion. Mental health challenges don’t need a reason, just like you don’t need a reason to ask these insensitive questions (but please stop anyway).
4. “Others Have It Worse.”
By this logic, only one person in the world gets to be happy because everyone else has it better than someone. Mental health isn’t a competition, and suffering isn’t a limited resource that needs to be rationed out based on who has the “best” reason.
5. “You Don’t Look Depressed/Anxious.”
And you don’t look like a mental health expert, yet here we are. Mental health challenges don’t come with a uniform or a name tag. People struggling with mental health aren’t required to walk around in a black cloud like a sad cartoon character. Sometimes the person with the biggest smile is fighting the hardest battle—shocking, I know.
6. “Have You Tried Essential Oils/Yoga/Green Juice?”
Because apparently, centuries of mental health research can be trumped by your aunt’s Pinterest board. While wellness practices can be helpful supplements to professional treatment, suggesting them as a cure-all isn’t going to work.
7. “Just Get Out More!”
Right, because agoraphobia is just being a bit of a homebody, and social anxiety is just being shy. This is like telling someone with a fear of heights to just go skydiving. Sometimes “getting out more” is exactly what someone’s trying to work up to—with professional help, not your weekend plans.
8. “It’s All in Your Head.”
Well…technically, yes. That’s kind of the point. Mental illness is literally in your head—it’s affecting your brain, an actual organ. You wouldn’t tell someone with a heart condition it’s all in their chest, would you? The brain being the location of the problem doesn’t make it any less real.
9. “You’re Just Being Dramatic.”
Because people love pretending to struggle with their mental health for funsies, right? Nobody chooses to have mental health challenges any more than they choose to have the flu. Dismissing someone’s struggles as drama is just insensitive.
10. “But You Seemed Fine Yesterday.”
I forgot that mental health is famously stable and predictable. Mental health can fluctuate more than your favorite streaming service’s movie selection. Having good days doesn’t invalidate the bad ones, just like having a good meal doesn’t mean you’ll never be hungry again.
11. “You’re Just Being Lazy.”
You know what people love? Lying in bed battling their demons instead of living their lives. Sometimes getting out of bed and facing the day takes more strength than running a marathon. Mental health struggles can be physically exhausting—it’s not laziness, it’s surviving.
12. “Everyone Gets Sad/Anxious Sometimes.”
And everyone gets headaches sometimes, but we still take migraines seriously. There’s a grand canyon of differences between normal emotional responses and clinical mental health conditions. It’s like comparing a paper cut to major surgery—both involve bleeding, but one’s a tad more serious.
13. “Just Think Positive!”
If positive thinking was all it took, we could replace therapy with motivational posters. Mental health challenges aren’t a bad attitude that needs adjusting, they’re real conditions that need understanding and proper treatment.
