6 Ways To Love A Person With Depression

There's a gap between saying "I'm feeling depressed" and saying "I have depression," and the word doing the heavy lifting is "feeling." Most of us have passed through rough stretches, times that felt dark while we were in them. But if you can describe the state as a feeling that came and went, count yourself fortunate. Not everyone gets that. Depression can settle in for no apparent reason at all. People assume it needs a trigger, a broken home, some catastrophe, the loss of someone you loved, and that assumption is wrong. It arrives without permission.

Getting close to someone who is depressed can throw you into territory you never saw coming. The experience is often painful, and there is nothing funny about any of it. Loving that person is harder still. Yet they need you precisely then, and once the worst of it loosens its grip, the fact that you stayed and helped will matter to them more than you could guess.

Keep perspective. Depression is an illness, and the person you love is not merely sad. You aren't living inside their mind, so their choices may make no sense to you. They resist reason, and frequently they can't explain why, because the words aren't available to them. Depression strips away friendships and flattens a social life. It turns ordinary tasks into exhausting ones, feeds constant self-doubt, and tightens its hold until feeling nothing at all starts to seem preferable.

Don't take it personally. The depression isn't about you, and you didn't cause it. If you catch yourself scanning the past for the thing you must have done, stop. You can put that question down.

Resist the urge to fix them. What they're going through is a hollowing-out of emotion, and it isn't yours to repair. Your job is to be there. Stay present, and gently remind them that the state is temporary and some light exists beyond it. Listen. Let their feelings stand without dissecting, interpreting, or trying to talk them into cheering up. Skip the opinions and the advice. Act like yourself, and keep showing up.

Make room for whatever they feel. As people begin the slow climb out, emotion tends to return in odd, uneven ways. For some, a bit of quiet crying can tip into heavy, full-body sobbing; if that happens, comfort them. Others swing into a giddy happiness that looks almost staged, which you can welcome, though carefully, since it can flip without warning. Anger shows up a lot, because after months of numbness it's the simplest valve to open. They may snap at you, at the pet, at a pair of shoes. Tiny, bizarre things set them off. Let the anger come anyway. It finally gives the backlog of frustration somewhere to go.

Don't let yourself disappear. Loving a person through depression drains you, so keep tending to your own life. You can't offer yourself up as a sacrifice. Hold onto your goals. Allow yourself to mention the promotion, to go out with friends and breathe different air, without feeling like a monster for it. You might think your good news lands like a slap, so you hide it or shrink it down. Don't. They can still be glad for you even when your happiness reminds them of what's missing. And find somewhere to release your own stress, because there will be crying on your end too. The pain will come, and some days you won't manage it well. The instinct will be to conceal that from them. Instead, tell them the truth: this is hard, and you're in it together.

Guard your energy, and be patient, because depression is relentless. Think of a vacuum running across a carpet, pulling up everything in its path. Depression does that to a life, draining it of color, and if you aren't careful it will start draining yours. Read about it, learn what you can. Discovering how little most of us actually understand about depression can be its own strange, humbling education.

Jeff Stein. Source: Literally, D. (n.d.). Loving Someone With Depression. Retrieved January 14, 2015, from the Huffington Post.