
A lot of my posts are directed toward people experiencing mental illness or troubles with their mental health, but today I want to talk to a slightly different group of people: our loved ones.
It can be really hard to watch someone you love experience mental illness. You would do anything to make them feel better, but most of the time, it just doesnât work that way. It can also be very confusing, loving someone with mental illness, especially if you donât have a mental illness yourself. My husband has told me that one of his biggest frustrations is when he can tell something is wrong, but no matter how many times he asks, no matter how many different ways, I wonât talk about it. Other people in my life, like friends and family, have expressed surprise when they read this blog and get a glimpse at how painful my experiences with mental illness can really be. Sometimes they seem hurt that I havenât reached out to them.
Today I thought I would try to explain some of the reasons people donât reach out when theyâre depressed. This is based entirely on my own experience with depression, but if you have other reasons you tend to isolate when youâre depressed, Iâd love to hear about it in the comments.
10 Reasons People Donât Reach Out When Theyâre Depressed
1. It wonât solve anything.
This is one of the biggest reasons I donât reach out when Iâm depressed. It just doesnât help anything. Nothing my husband or friends or family says will magically make my brain create more seratonin. I just feel like thereâs no point in reaching out if it wonât change anything.
2. Nothing is âwrong,â so we donât know what to say.
On days where I do decide I want to reach out, I almost always end up changing my mind because I just have no idea what to say. The thing about depression is it isnât caused by anything (a lot of the time). What do I say? âHey, Iâm feeling sad and empty for absolutely no reasonâ? That doesnât feel like itâll lead to much of a conversation.
3. We donât want to drag you down with us.
I hate it when my crappy mental health ruins a perfectly good day for my husband. If heâs feeling happy and productive, the last thing I want to do is bring him down with my depression. It feels much kinder to just pretend nothing is wrong, since talking about it wonât help me, itâll just make him sad (see reason #1).
4. Itâs hard to find the words to explain what weâre feeling (or not feeling).
Sometimes my depression is the presence of horrible feelings that I have no idea how to describe. Itâs like sadness on steroids. Like anger if it were drowning. Like deep, profound loss except you canât remember what youâre mourning. How do you talk about that in a normal conversation? Then other times, my depression is the absence of feeling. I just feelâ¦empty. So utterly devoid of anything, and how in the world are you supposed to articulate that?
5. Weâre afraid youâll misunderstand and think weâre just lazy or sad.
In my experience, our loved ones donât want us to be depressed because itâs a horribly painful experience. So they try to find other explanations. But this only adds to the pain of depression because it tells us that you donât believe us. One of the only things that actually makes depression feel slightly less terrible is when someone truly sees and appreciates how terrible youâre feeling and just acknowledges that pain as very real and very scary. And when loved ones suggest we might not really be depressed, then we donât feel seen at all. If you really saw how much this hurts, youâd believe us without question.
6. Part of us believes weâre just lazy or sad.
If your depression has been invalidated over and over, eventually a part of you will start to believe that invalidation. It has taken me years to learn to identify my depression as depression rather than shaming myself into thinking Iâm just lazy and terrible, or just sad and exaggerating.
7. Sometimes we are in denial about our own depression.Â
Because Iâm such an overthinker, this one is rare for me, but it has happened. Sometimes people can be depressed without totally realizing it because theyâre in denial. Being depressed sucks, and sometimes you just want to be okay for once, so you fake it until you actually kind of believe it.
8. We already think about our depression all the time, we donât want to talk about it too.
Depression is a self-absorbed little bitch, and it wants you to think about it all. the. time. If youâre like me and your particular flavor of mental illness comes with a rather unhealthy dose of obsession, this means that depression is on your mind 99.9% of the time. Sometimes, I just donât want to add to all the thinking about depression by talking about it too.
9. Depression can cause something called motor retardation, which affects our movement, including the movement of our mouths required for talking.
If someone you love has depression, have you ever noticed them moving significantly slower than normal? That could be because of motor retardation, which is when you try to move and it feels like youâre moving through molasses. Honestly, you know you should be able to move faster, but you just⦠canât. And that applies to even the smallest movements, like moving your mouth to speak. Sometimes, it feels like the molasses is filling your mouth and to talk would be exhausting.
10. Weâre afraid youâre going to be annoyed or upset that weâre depressed again.
Often depression can be treated, but not cured, and in most cases, it comes back again and again. As someone who has been working to treat her depression for years now, I can honestly say that with treatment, it can get better. Like, so much better. But I still get depressed sometimes, and it can be scary to reach out and admit that youâre depressed again, because even though you know thereâs no real âcure,â you kinda hoped your last depressive episode was going to be your last one ever, somehow. And itâs hard to break that news to someone who loves you. Like âHey, yeah, I know Iâve been OK for a long time now, but now Iâm depressed again, sorry.â It feels like youâve failed them, like you must have missed your meds or skipped therapy or stopped trying so hard, when in reality, depression just keeps coming back.
What Can Loved Ones Do?
My husband asks me all the time âWhat can I do?â so I thought there might be other people out there with loved ones who have depression wondering what they can do. The truth is, I believe it isnât your responsibility to get us to reach out about our depression. Our emotions are not your job (even if we want to make them your job sometimes â sorry about that). But even so, that doesnât mean you have to sit by and watch us struggle all alone. There are several things you can do to help us reach out to you when weâre depressed.
- Do your own research on depression. If you are informed about what weâre going through, youâre much less likely to suggest that weâre just sad or say something else that might be very invalidating and damage our trust in you.
- Let us know that youâre here whenever weâre ready to talk. This is the one of the kindest things my husband does for me when Iâm depressed or when Iâm panicking and canât speak. Instead of forcing the issue, he sits nearby doing a quiet activity like reading or playing a video game, and repeatedly lets me know he is happy to talk whenever I feel ready.
- When we do talk about our depression, donât focus on fixing it. Focus on acknowledging it. Depression isnât really something you âfix.â Itâs something you treat with therapy and sometimes medication, neither of which you can provide. What you can provide is the gentle acknowledgement of how much depression sucks.
So thatâs all the information I have on why people donât always reach out when theyâre feeling depressed and what you can do about it if you have a loved one with depression. Would anyone be interested in another version of this post, but about anxiety or trauma? Iâd love to hear your thoughts, just let me know in the comments!
A version of this article was previously published on the authorâs blog, Megan Writes Everything.
source https://www.programage.com/news/10_Reasons_People_Don_t_Reach_Out_When_They_re_Depressed_1597093216674074.html
0 commentaires:
Publier un commentaire