4-Step Guide to Finding Mentors & Friendships

Hey y’all! Thanks for coming back for post #6 of this series! I’m super excited to see what y’all think about this post. It definitely was a harder post for me to write. So, enjoy. I hope this encourages you. 😉❤️

my story

So, to summarize, this post is all about how having friends and mentors supporting you through your anxiety and depression journey can help so much. If that’s all that you take from this, that’s okay. This is one point/tip that I struggle with MUCH more than I would like to admit. When I am in a time of high depression and/or anxiety, I don’t want to reach out to others. I just want to hide and pretend all is just fine. And sometimes I don’t think people care about me enough or want to actually help. So I just stay quiet.

But that is NOT right, and I shouldn’t feel or think that way. God gave us other people so that we don’t have to be alone and go through the tough things in life without any help. We need someone who we can trust, to encourage us when we feel like we can’t go on anymore.

And, before y’all start think what I know you are thinking, Jesus should (and is!) be our Best Friend. We need to run to Him when anything hard happens, whenever we a feeling overwhelmed with life. But lots of times He works through other people around us and who are in our lives to encourage us. He gives us people to show and remind us of His perfect love.

So, keeping that in mind, who should you confide in? As you realize your struggle with anxiety and/or depression, who should you tell?

tips to finding good relationships

Now that y’all know when I am coming from, from a place of still figuring out the best way to do this in my life. Not that I don’t want friends and mentors, but finding close people to lean on can be so hard sometimes.

I am still learning this, but I can help you with four tips that I have found true!

1. Find your close friends and mentors in good places – You can’t find truthful, kind, but yet honest friends and mentors in an untrustworthy setting. As you find close friends and mentors, look for them at church, youth group, or Bible studies. It’s not something ‘hard and fast’, but you want a mentor and friend that has the same beliefs as you, and the same kind of passion for the Lord as you.
2. Your mentor should be older and wiser than you – This one should be kind of obvious. But, you can’t gain wisdom from someone who is still in the same stage of life as you. Depending on your age and time of life, your mentor should be 2-10 years older than you. Or older than that too. But you need someone who has walked through all the emotions of that stage of life to help you through it.
3. Your friends and mentors should have good senses of humor – Weird tip. I know. There are so many crazy things that happen in life, and sometimes you just need someone to laugh with you. I know sometimes I make a little joke about all my allergies, and when someone laughs with me in it, that’s when I know I have made a good friend. 😅 But you need to make sure it isn’t a humor that kinda puts you down for what is different. That is a type of joke you need to STAY away from.
4. Your friends should look out for you and check on you – We all want to have someone reaching out to ourselves, so we don’t have to put as much effort into the friendship. But friendship is a two-way relationship. Really, any relationship is two ways, not just one person reaching out. So, maybe reach out to one person for a while. Someone you know well but is maybe struggling a little. And you also should have someone reaching out to you, whether it be a friend or a mentor. If you don’t have that right now, I get that. I’m finally starting to grow out off that season. It hurts. But watch out for those relationships where you can see that it could turn into a very close two-way friendship. Nurture it, and watch it grow.

Life is HARD sometimes. I get that probably more than you know (not bragging in any way), but sometimes reaching out to others is not only going to help them, it will also make you feel happier and more satisfied, whether you share what’s going on in your life right now or not. We need community. We desperately need community outside of our screens.

Whatever your life looks like, anxiety and depression is real. It’s so hard to admit that it is a problem, especially to our friends who usually only see that smiling, laughing versions of ourselves. But we need someone to confide in, to take care of us when we don’t now how we can go on anymore. Keep reaching out. It’s humbling, but so needed.

I hope this post encouraged you. It’s hard to navigate relationships sometimes, so I hope this was a good guide to help you keep on keepin’ on. And there is only TWO more posts in this series! So be sure to follow me on this blog (in the sidebar on laptops/larger screens or down below this post on mobile) and on Instagram to keep up with all the fun!!! Love y’all so much!

Mackenzie 💕