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Loving Someone with Depression

mentalhealth.org.uk

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Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#211

Post by joshgrib »

noduerme wrote: post #177
nnoitra wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an utterly retarded opinion.

Depends how many women you know whose boyfriend has been depressed and playing video games for the last ten years, I guess.

If this is your experience then I think it's important to recognize that those are just anecdotes, and if you have a lot of those anecdotes it's only going to make it harder to base your view on facts. There's tons of evidence that the typical views on masculinity have a lot of negative mental health impacts.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/11/sexism-harmf... > While overall, conforming to masculine norms was associated with negative mental health outcomes in subjects, the researchers found the association to be most consistent for these three norms — self-reliance, pursuit of playboy behavior and power over women

https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40... > models predicting depression generally showed that higher conformity to masculine norms was associated with an increased risk of current depressive symptoms, especially in the oldest age group

I did a search for "studies on masculinity and depression", there's plenty more if you want to read up on it.

That view also makes no sense for gay couples - if there's two women and one is depressed then does the other stay because their partner is a woman, or leave because they're a woman? Same issue for two men - do they leave because the partner is a man or stay because they are?

If you have any studies showing that for some reason men should be handling mental health differently then women I'd be interested to read them, because as far as I can tell the view that there should be a difference is itself a big contributing factor to negative mental health.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#212

Post by ra-mos »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #20

Depression can also manifest in different ways. One way is anger, frustration, and anxiety. My wife’s depression was like this. She would come home from work, find one thing wrong with our apartment - there were dirty dishes in the sink, the clothes hadn’t been folded - and get angry with me for not having taken care of it. The fact that I had cooked dinner and mopped the floors didn’t count. She was angry with me pr…

This and all the comments with similar experiences really just put a negative light on marriage.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#213

Post by goodpoint »

codeafin wrote: post #49
orasis wrote: post #37

Yeah sorry. I’m not going to just listen. A lot of the time you need to push them to take the next step because they are STUCK. Go exercise, eat some healthy food, take your damn meds, try new meds, try ketamine if suicidal, try psilocybin if treatment resistant. But coddling depression just drags it out longer and digs the spiral deeper. Yes, it is a disease which means it needs to be treated.

Glad to see this, as someone who has almost only been with people with depression, this article was a very aggressive "You're not doing enough, you're doing it wrong, you're not trying hard enough, you should be doing better" which is hypocritical. The post did not come from a place of compassion or support, but entitlement. This article doesn't understand how hard it is to listen to hours, days, months, years of a p…

Blaming people suffering from mental illness for not finding the energy to exercise, sleep and eat healthy and socialize.

Your whole post is an example of failing them.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#214

Post by ciphol »

ra-mos wrote: post #212
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #20

Depression can also manifest in different ways. One way is anger, frustration, and anxiety. My wife’s depression was like this. She would come home from work, find one thing wrong with our apartment - there were dirty dishes in the sink, the clothes hadn’t been folded - and get angry with me for not having taken care of it. The fact that I had cooked dinner and mopped the floors didn’t count. She was angry with me pr…

This and all the comments with similar experiences really just put a negative light on marriage.

...to a mentally ill person.

Marriage means you share your spouse's life and well-being. Often for better, sometimes for worse.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#215

Post by joshgrib »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #75
fastball wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you've got everything taken care of, but I think part of the problem is that not everyone does. Some people don't need any more help, but some people do. Hard to tell from the outside.

It is hard to tell and most people don’t know what to look for. And I don’t expect them to. The problem is people do whatever they think will help instead of listening.

Something that's helped me in this situation is to explicitly tell people "I'm only looking for someone to listen please don't suggest anything to help". Otherwise as you said people want to help, and generally if someone is telling you an issue they are looking for a solution.

It can feel weird sometimes, but I think you get way better outcomes when the person knows how you want them to respond. Then you don't have to worry about not letting them fix things or absolving guilt if they can't. If you don't expect them to know then that's a perfect reason to tell them, and you can be super nice about it and say something like "Hey I really appreciate you trying to help but the thing that will help me most right now is just listening and not suggesting anything".

Edit: sorry in advance for the suggestion if it isn't what you're looking for haha, just sharing what's worked well for me

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#216

Post by ciphol »

azalemeth wrote: post #27
khazhoux wrote: post #24

A bit surprised no one's broached this question: At what point is it OK to leave your depressed partner? I know someone who left his depressed spouse of over 25 years. He loved her and tried to make it work, but eventually chose happiness for himself, for the second half of his life. He left her alone and essentially friendless. No easy answers there.

I did this. It was, by far, the hardest decision of my life. Years later I still silently feel guilty beyond anything and wonder deeply if it was the right choice. The reaction of my friends, parents and colleagues was something along the lines of "at last!" as they only saw me as a martyr who always "compromised" and put up with large costs, financially, emotionally, and with no reward other than being yelled at a l…

You did the right thing, as the apparently unanimous consent of every you know indicates.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#217

Post by noduerme »

gjulianm wrote: post #202
noduerme wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it's been the default view of all of humanity for the past few hundred thousand years. I opened and closed by saying it was stone-aged, but it isn't without merit just because it's suddenly out of fashion. And as far as being "dangerous", it's not physically dangerous. Or, no more so than a woman staying with a man who takes his depression out on her. Which is a very dangerous thing, indeed. It's all good to say…

> Or, no more so than a woman staying with a man who takes his depression out on her. Which is a very dangerous thing, indeed. So by your own words, you agree that telling men to stay with women who take their depression out on them is a dangerous thing. > One of which is that men who can't hold their shit together are by definition more dangerous and harmful than women who can't. By which definition? You're complete…

No post body was provided.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#218

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

e_i_pi wrote: post #204
goodpoint wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not "trying to bring you down to their state" just as much as a person on a wheelchair is not trying to make you go around slowly.

I think this is a "misery loves company" sort of thing. When you're depressed you don't want people to try to help you be happier, and you don't really want to be happier in a deep sense - you want them to be depressed with you so you feel less alone. I think the fair analogy here would be someone in a wheelchair trying to get other people to use wheelchairs so they have someone to share the difficulty with.

That's a pretty bad take, in my opinion. Having spent the majority of my life in one level of depression or another, I don't say negative things and have a generally negative outlook because I want to drag other people down, it's just how everything looks to me[0]. You trying to cheer me up sounds to me like a salesman bullshitting me[1]. I know people don't like this, which is one reason I generally avoid other people when I'm at my worst. Seriously, if I'm avoiding you and you don't want to deal with negativity just leave me alone already. Don't ask about my day and get pissy because I tell you the (very negative) truth, unless you're just exchanging pleasantries and are ok with me straight up lying to you.

[0] There's an argument to be made for depressive realism that would say I'm pointing out how things really are, but I'm not going to make it because there's also thousands of years of philosophy that makes a compelling argument for reality not being so easy to pin down anyway.

[1] It occurs to me that the seemingly increasing rate of depression in a lot of developed nations may be due, like almost all of society's ills, to advertising. Advertising confronts us constantly trying to get us to do things we don't want to do, namely spending money on shit we don't need, and so we develop a defense mechanism. That mechanism takes the form of a contrarian inner voice that argues against the bullshit advertisement telling you you'll be happy if only you buy whatever it is it is selling, but the contrarian voice doesn't have an off switch and recognizes all the little sales pitches of every day life as a threat too.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#219

Post by brandyalexxx »

codeafin wrote: post #49
orasis wrote: post #37

Yeah sorry. I’m not going to just listen. A lot of the time you need to push them to take the next step because they are STUCK. Go exercise, eat some healthy food, take your damn meds, try new meds, try ketamine if suicidal, try psilocybin if treatment resistant. But coddling depression just drags it out longer and digs the spiral deeper. Yes, it is a disease which means it needs to be treated.

Glad to see this, as someone who has almost only been with people with depression, this article was a very aggressive "You're not doing enough, you're doing it wrong, you're not trying hard enough, you should be doing better" which is hypocritical. The post did not come from a place of compassion or support, but entitlement. This article doesn't understand how hard it is to listen to hours, days, months, years of a p…

Going through a pretty rough time mentally and I just came here to say that I concur. My sleep's out of whack, have been eating too much junk since mid-December, too much consumption and no creation, avoidance of work, the stress of piled up work and still not doing anything about it, haven't regularly exercised since 2-3 months now, daily caffeine intake.

Everything feeds into everything. It has become a vicious cycle. I'm trying to break out of it but somehow I fail everyday. Commenting in hopes of moving the needle by re-iterating it to myself.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#220

Post by joshgrib »

throwaway7591 wrote: post #201

Something I’m curious about is how folks handle depression and its impacts with their employers/bosses. For context I am generally a high performer who is now on my second bout of below standard performance since the pandemic. A few thoughts I have: * I am getting help (again), it didn’t feel like the last therapist I had understood or empathized how this was affecting my work performance so trying elsewhere * I beli…

Can't give any great advice here, but my intuition is that it's going to depend a lot on the company.

I have friends that have worked retail jobs where they aren't going to care at all and will probably use it as an excuse to fire you.

I work at a company where a coworker was fired and afterwards told some of us that they were dealing with mental health stuff causing it, and I think my company would have been more helpful if they brought it up earlier by perhaps helping to find a therapist through the insurance or changing their roles for a while. For example if the frustrating part of coding is tough to get into, maybe switch to building out documentation so you have something you can see tangible progress on daily/hourly, and would still let them add the same amount of value if not more.

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