I apologize for this being a week late. My sister was doing her first half-Iron distance triathalon last week, and for those of you who aren't familiar, spectating that kind of event is an endurance test in and of itself.
In any case, as promised, the flip-side of my last blog post: or, what TO do as the friend/family member of someone suffering from severe clinical depression. Sticking to the five number format, since it worked well last time and I like symmetry.
5. Take care of yourself. I'm willing to bet this seems self-evident, but only from the outside looking in. It is incredibly easy to lose sight of self-care when being a support system for someone who is spiraling. Self-care is a lot of things. It is eating right, it is sleeping enough, it is physical activity, but most significantly, in this situation, it is the ability to say no, to look to others for help.
I had two friends once, and one was a depressive. She was a self-harmer, and I'm pretty sure she had borderline personality disorder. The other friend was someone who had never really dealt with self-harm and the threatened potential of something worse. Both women were young at the time, and the support-friend got to the point where she was the ONLY support for the self-harming friend.
Support-friend wasn't sleeping enough, was very worn down and at one point, I asked, "When Other Friend asks you to come over or if she can stay with you, do you feel like you can say no?"
And after a long moment, she shook her head, "No."
Trying to get help while depressed is hard. It sucks. It often doesn't work quickly, so it seems like all the effort was pointless. If you allow yourself to become the sole support system for someone who is depressed, that person may very well take advantage (knowingly or unknowingly) and use your support until YOU are the one whose health is suffering.
Learn to say, "No, I cannot help you right now," and to put yourself first. Realistically, unless you are taking care of yourself, making sure that you are steady and grounded, you're not able to help us anyway, you're just creating an enabling loop.
4. Encourage us to get help and to KEEP AT the things that are helpful. This, obviously, ties in with the last one. Here's the thing about depression: when we're in a depression cycle, we have neither the energy nor the mental strength to seek out aid on our own. We don't believe it will help. Many of us have been and been and been to professionals to no real advancement or change.
We still need it. Not only because professionals are the best suited to know when we need to be put in a hospital and make that choice dispassionately, but because they are paid to take care of us, and therefore are an essential part of the support system.
When we're doing well, we often tell ourselves (and others), "Oh, I don't need that right now."
When we're doing well is EXACTLY when we need to be working on it. It's when we have the best ability to do so. Chances are, though, that we won't unless encouraged.
What's more is, we probably won't stick with it unless we see support from our friends and family. Asking a person who is depressed what she's getting out of her therapy sessions? An absolute no. Saying, "Hey, I really think you're doing better at __________ since you've been in therapy,"? Go for it.
This is the same (maybe even more so) for meds. A lot of people seem to think psych meds are the same as say, cold meds, where once you start feeling better, you can get off of them and your body will take care of the rest. That's not how it works. These meds are more like something you would take for an auto-immune condition, or something else chronic.
A lot of people DO get off their meds when they start feeling better and then spiral back because the improvement stemmed from the meds fixing the problem. Psych meds are often a lifelong deal for people with depression. Being meds positive is a HUGE help, since there's already a stigma on mental illness and using meds for them. Not to mention, every one of these meds comes with a barrel of possible side effects and the probability of long-term liver or kidney damage.
I avoided meds for SEVEN YEARS for lots of reasons, but definitely among them was the idea that taking them made me weak, that "now we just prescribe a pill for everything" and I didn't really need them. I needed them. I still need them. And I still hate that I need them. The last thing I need is people making me feel like I'm weak/stupid/bad for taking them.
Finally, we also need to be encouraged to build up community. Whether this is through support groups, or hobbies where we meet other people, the more community we have, the more help YOU have when things get bad. Community is essential. If there's a way to help us create some, even if it's just having a few dinner parties and trying to introduce us to people you think might make good friends? In the long run, that's going to be better for everyone involved. You will have people to turn to for support and support for us can be diffused among a larger group of persons.
3. Aid in good habits. This is a little like four, but slightly different in that this is talking day-to-day behaviors. So, for example, depression tends to breed a lot of "side effect" conditions, such as eating disorders, insomnia, agoraphobia, etc.
For example, let's say your friend's problem is agoraphobia, in the sense that she refuses to leave her hosue. Create a standing "date night." This is important: be the one to drive, to pick the place and be ready to have to do the work of basically dragging her with you over protests. But do it. Make sure she gets out of the house, even if it's only for an hour.
If the problem is compulsive overeating? Do activities that don't involve food or at least involve healthy foods.
Help us to live in clean and safe environments. Maybe this means coming over on a Saturday and making us sort out our closets with you, if you're good at that kind of thing. Maybe this means helping us to find a cleaning company, if financially viable.
Get us to exercise. Physical movement helps with the depression, even if we don't want to do it. If the weather's nice, get us to take a walk around our neighborhood. Or maybe find a yoga workout online that can be done inside, together. Just something to get our blood flowing.
Like I said last week, do not do these things FOR us, do them WITH us. And if you cannot get us to leave our house/help with tiny things/etc.? Call our doctor. Let a professional handle the situation.
2. Listen. Listening is hard. It's hard to just take in a flood of "I hate my life," and not try to help, not try to make us see where there's a flaw in our "logic," but here's the thing: you can't help, not in the big picture of actually clearing up the depression, and our logic is flawed because our brain is misfiring. No amount of arguing is going to change that. Chances are we KNOW our logic is flawed and it doesn't matter, because we cannot emotionally feel that.
There's a comic of one person having a panic attack, and another person says, "Calm down," and then the person panicking says, "It worked!" When put into stark relief that way, we can all see how ridiculous a comment like that is, when someone's brain is telling her to panic. It's the same with depression. You can tell us to "cheer up," or "think positively," or that the "past does not define the future," or that "hope exists," and you're basically just talking to yourself. And probably making us feel like you weren't listening or you are dismissing the way we feel.
But listening to us, listening and just saying, "man, that sucks," or, "can I hug you?" or "I'm here," any of those things, it may not make it BETTER for us, but it doesn't make it worse and it does remind us that there is someone out there who cares enough to just let us be who we are, mental illness and all.
It's not fun for the person listening, believe me, I get it, I've been that person more than once. And it feels helpless and sometimes really eye-rolly. But to the person to whom you're listening? It feels like, for once, someone is actually HEARING us, and we don't get a lot of that.
1. Be persistent/annoying. My best friend texts me every day. Every single one. Without fail. And most of the time I'm kind of like "yeah, I'm here, yeah." But on those days where I'm holding onto things with broken fingernails and the skin of my teeth? That grounding moment is huge. It says, "Hey, there's someone out there who would be really upset if you did what you want to do right now."
Bug us. Sometimes, we're probably going to be dicks about it, wanting to be left alone to ruminate, let the depression marinate. It is very seductive in that manner. Be that third wheel. Disrupt our date, bring pizza we didn't ask for, and a board game.
Try to do it in a way the person in question handles well. I'm best at text and email, so that's what most of my friends do. They'll call in a pinch, but I don't like being on the phone, so they try and avoid that. Other people like that voice connection, or, if you're near, maybe they'd sometimes prefer actual face to face. You have to determine what works best for you and your loved one.
I recently saw an article about how people disappear in times of grieving to "give the mourner space." Except that, in most cases, what the mourner needs most is a community of support, rather than "space." Depressives are the same way. We put off vibes that we want to be left alone, and maybe some of us even really do, but we shouldn't be. We need to have people showing they care, making sure we're responsive, and generally just pecking at us until our brain lets up and we settle into a remission phase.
No comments:
Post a Comment