Kylie Rancor
A video allegedly showing a mother laying down in the rain to help her daughter get through a panic attack is opening the doors for an important discussion about mental health.
It wasn’t immediately clear where the video originated, but @kingsrush wrote that the daughter called her mother while she was in the middle of a bad anxiety attack.
“When her mom arrived she found her laying on the driveway in the rain,” he wrote. “Instead of getting mad she gets down held her daughter’s hand and laid with her… in the rain… until her anxiety passed. This is true love.”
Some of the responses to the video were immediately negative, with people suggesting this is a parent “coddling” their child, or that the daughter should have simply sucked it up and gone inside. Others questioned the idea that anxiety is even a real thing, despite the fact that it is an observable and diagnosable phenomenon.
We don’t know anything about the daughter or her situation, or the relationship she has with her mother beyond this short 35 second clip, but it doesn’t take a medical professional to understand that different people have different ways of coping with whatever mental health struggles they might face.
There is no one size fits all answer, and both lying on the ground and being in the rain are things that some people find soothing. As long as people aren’t doing something destructive to themselves or others, it’s hard to understand why anyone would get so upset about an individual coping mechanism — or a loved one offering unconditional support by simply being there.
And many pointed variations on this out in the responses to the video, while also noting how special it is to have someone who understands you and can help you through these hard times, no matter how odd they may seem to judgmental strangers on the internet.
It’s not always easy to know what to do when someone you care about is going through a tough time, but may this video — and the responses to it — be a sweet reminder that a little empathy and understanding can truly go a long way.