How to Build Healthy Relationships When You're Depressed

My grandmother had a saying she repeated often: birds of a feather flock together. She meant it as a caution against keeping company with the wrong crowd. The phrase sounds worn out, but what sits underneath it holds up, particularly for anyone living with depression. The people around you shape your recovery. We tend to think, feel, and act like the people we spend our hours with, and psychologists have a name for that pull: Group Think.

Depression leaves a person emotionally shaky. When the brain chemistry tied to mood and anger stops functioning the way it should, a person becomes much easier to sway. In a fair world everyone would treat a vulnerable person decently. That isn't the world we have. Some people deliberately seek out those who are struggling and pull them toward gangs, political movements, drug and alcohol scenes, extreme religious sects, whatever the recruiter happens to be selling. Loneliness and a hunger for purpose make the pitch tempting. Grabbing onto the first group that offers belonging, without looking at what that group actually is, can leave you worse off than before.

The better move is slower and quieter: put real effort into relationships that are good for you. Plenty of self-help material covers this ground. HelpGuide.org has a section on coping with depression that works as a decent place to begin, and it also walks through how to interrupt the loop of constant negative thinking, which is itself one of the markers of depression. The advice there keeps circling back to two ideas. Take small steps. Build relationships that hold you up rather than drag you down.

Start by figuring out why your relationships have gone bad. Write it out, or say it out loud to a therapist. The one person present in every one of those relationships is you, so this is the moment to ask why you keep ending up beside people who give you nothing. Sit with that question long enough and older wounds tend to surface, the kind you never connected to your pattern of forming relationships that wreck you.

Then pull yourself out of the environments that feed the problem. This part is hard, and it's normal to feel some fear about stepping into unfamiliar ground. Often it's as basic as not returning to the spots where you meet the people who bring you down. Someone recovering from a gambling problem stays out of casinos. Someone getting sober skips the bars and the social drinking. Fill that space with something that puts you next to people who are building things instead of tearing them apart.

Keep honest people close, friends and family who will tell you the truth. It's tempting to collect the ones who always take your side, who nod along even when you're plainly in the wrong. Those people stall your recovery. A sincere person says the uncomfortable thing and calls you out when you've messed up. Be ready for the hard part of this: some of the relationships you may need to end are long ones, and a few of them are with family.

Forgive. Certain people and certain chapters belong in the past, and leaving them there is sometimes the only option. That doesn't excuse you from making amends to anyone you've hurt. I've lashed out at people I was sure had wronged me, when all they'd done was try to help. Owning your own mistakes takes more strength than holding the grudge. Apologize. It clears away the resentment that let the relationship rot in the first place. Don't expect things to snap back to how they were, though. People grow apart, and that's fine. You can keep things civil with people from before while you build something new.

Find a depression support group. If professional help costs more than you can manage, a group is the next best thing, usually far cheaper, and free in a lot of cases when members run it themselves. Look around your own area. Many hospitals host free monthly meetings, and some workplaces keep a list of groups connected to the company. Sitting in a room with others who are working through the same thing gives you a safe place to speak and a reminder that stays with you: you are not the only one carrying this.

Heather Browning, MBA, BA. Sources: All Psych, Chapter 8, Section 4, The Role of Groups, retrieved January 9, 2015; Smith, M., Segal, R., Segal, J., November 2014, retrieved January 9, 2015.