Hello and welcome to World Mental Health Day, a day in which well meaning hashtag activists and brands will spend the day on social media giving lip service to myriad mental health disorders.

“Talk it out!” “Do yoga!” “Live, love laugh,” they’ll shout from their comfortable armchairs, swaddled in the luxury of being, for lack of a better word, normal. They’ll tell you to check in on people, ask if they’re okay. Which is all well and good, but the thing is you have to really mean it when you ask someone if they’re okay. You have to be ready to listen to an answer that’s not “Sure, I’m fine.” You have to learn how to not be condescending or dismissive of someone’s mental anguish.

People are quick to jump on a hashtag and insert inspirational quotes and pithy statements meant to garner retweets and likes. For every person who really has a mental health issue, who suffers from anxiety or depression or a hundred other disorders who tweets about what you can do to help or learn, there’s forty people who take no time to truly understand what mental health means and just spit out platitudes, the kind you see on plaques in suburban living rooms of happy, disorder-free people.

Learn what an anxiety disorder is like. It’s not the same as being anxious about a test or a job interview. If that’s as anxious as you’ve ever been, then, no, you don’t know how I feel. It’s pervasive and debilitating.

Learn what depression is. It’s not being sad. It’s not something that taking a walk around the block or watching a funny movie can cure. It’s pervasive and debilitating.