Loving Someone with Depression • Hacker News Board

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#231

Post by noduerme » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

gjulianm wrote: post #226

noduerme wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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What do you mean by dangerous? Violent? Or what? > than the prevalent young male attitudes that expose them to the same violence than males approach other males with. Honestly, I don’t know which reality you live in but if anything violence in regular relationships is being shunned and denormalized more and more. Also, you can’t keep the “good parts” of sexism and hope the bad ones (such as domestic violence) disappe…

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Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#232

Post by noduerme » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #195

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…

Equal rights, Equal responsibilities. It's not just block-headed its much worse its plainly abusive to half the human race

More like respectful. Men have more power whether we want to or not. Being a depressed bum is the same as replacing the abusive asshole father your girlfriend grew up with, so, try not to be that.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#233

Post by kayodelycaon » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

labster wrote: post #131

donatj wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every piece of this rings so true to my own experience. My wife suffers clinical depression. It has been no joke the biggest challenge of my entire life. When it is under control, life is great. When it's not, it's not. We've been through many meds and doctors and therapists. We're in a decently stable place right now, but there's always a fear in the back of my mind "but for how long". Her previous meds worked for y…

I have a relative, who, every three or four years, decided that this time her bipolar disorder really was cured! And so she’d stop taking her medication and feel really, really good for a few months. And then the inevitable crash happened and she spent a few months in hospital. The last time was different though. In her seventies, her body couldn’t take the strain again. And now she’s in a long term care facility for…

Mania affects judgement, sometimes severely. Bipolar people go off their meds because they think things will be better without them. Doctors put them on meds in the first place. I don’t think the advice of “just follow the plan” is going to work.

It took me years to get to real stability and meds still suck. The only reason I haven’t gone off my meds is I’m both high-functioning and very used to managing chronic medical problems. I know how to work with my Psychiatrist to manage my own medical care and decide what is and isn’t acceptable to me.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#234

Post by kolinko » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #140

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

This view is not old fashioned. This view is sexist.

Old fashioned view was that people stay with each other no matter what.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#235

Post by chris_st » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

tduberne wrote: post #225

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…

(Before anything: sorry if that nessage comes accross as insensitive, this is not the purpose. More on this at the end) Your situation sounds like the textbook description of depression as caused by "mental distortions" from proponents of CBT. Did your wife consult a CBT practitioner, and did this help? I am in no way trying to say I know the solution to your (past) problems, but CBT is sometimes described in a bit t…

I have recently read through the book, "Feeling Good" by David Burns, which is regarded as one of the better books on CBT.

It helped me a lot, in particular in dealing with thoughts something like what the OP's partner apparently had. It has great strategies for first recognizing, and then dealing with such thoughts. They're not "just feel better" ideas, they're specific things to do which help.

Highly recommended.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#236

Post by noduerme » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

mnsc wrote: post #187

noduerme wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I'm also a 41 yr old man and I think you sending a mixed message here. Background: I spent 20 years "being a man" in a relationship with a depressed wife. You know what I didn't do during those years, took care of my own mental health. Do you know what happened when I approached 40, boom mid life crisis with an avalanche of shit pouring over me that I hadn't dealt with due to "I'm man, I'm strong" mindset. I haven't…

Well - I was gonna say, we should get a drink - but here is where I think those old worn-out social roles and gender roles actually serve a purpose. What I'm trying to get at is that we had role models in our lives - I think about my dad or my uncles, who were tough men - who had no fucking clue what they were doing but they just did it. They were rocks for the people in their lives. And I look at these sort of excuses for boys now, i.e. men in their 20s who want to claim female sensitivity and let it override their relationships with women (who they treat as mothers, to wash and cook, like boys in Italy treat their girlfriends) and at the same time make a claim to woke/expanded mindfulness. Jesus fucking Christ. It's a joke because it's total male insecurity masquerading as sensitivity protected by a claim to righteous identity.

Sorry. That wasn't to your point, that was just a rant about what I see so much of in relationships these days, since 2015 or so. Since you were allowed to redefine your identity as a victim even or especially if you were oppressive toward your partner.

To your point, I don't know how to say this except that you are a man. You don't have to tell yourself that or always be it, or be right (ever) or be strong (usually). You just are. And fuck yeah, in this particular situation, it's hard on your mental health. I stored it up for ten years and finally said, without thinking, "you never give anything back, you just take", to my girlfriend, when she was ... let me abbreviate. I always knew when she was about to go into a depressive state. I wouldn't usually tell her, but I could set my watch to it. Sometimes I'd make the mistake of saying - while we were out having a good time at a party - "in an hour you're going to crash and attack me, and not get out of bed for days." And she never believed me. And it always happened like that.

Sorry man, I'm just not able to take all of this and put it into a logical inline post in response to something. This happened and continues to happen, and what you call it or what I call it is pretty stupid to argue about. To me it's being a man, but, not like I have to fake it, just, I have to suck it up. These gender roles serve well because, just imagine if you or I had a nervous breakdown. We're not allowed that.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#237

Post by joshgrib » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

ceedan wrote: post #45

Listening is everything. Turn off the problem solver part of your brain and just experience their emotions and listen. Ask questions based on what they have said, try not to assume or think 2 steps ahead. Going through different medications with your partner is rough too. The side effects suck, and some medicine doesnt help or makes things worse. Trintellix helped my partner, after 2 or 3 others failed medications. T…

Just want to add that I think these are useful to get general ideas of what different personality traits there are, but there's little to no science backing the Meyers-Briggs assessment. These type of tests can be nice framework for a starting point, but you should never rely on them to predict how someone will act in the future more than you would astrology.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/does-the-myers-b... For background - the test was created by a mother-daughter team who were authors but with no background in psychology. They were inspired to create the test, but they couldn't convince any psychologists it was legitimate so they instead sold it to businesses as a way to assess employee strengths and weaknesses.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/myers-briggs-test

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/myers-briggs-personality-test... > As Emre explains, the test has become part of our neoliberal discourse about making yourself into a commodity, selling your personality, loving what you do > It seems their ideas about personality and gender made them blind to structural problems so that they saw gender inequality as an individual problem.

Kinda unrelated to this discussion, but there's also this darker side to all these personality tests where they encourage people to fit into a certain role because it benefits a company and not because it's who they really are.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#238

Post by joshgrib » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #210

e_i_pi wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This narrative is provably false and harmful (and insulting) to people with any mental illness. Psychologist has been fighting such social stigmas for decades.

Do you have a source? This is coming from how I feel when depressed so at least for me it is definitely not false. But that's just anecdotal and I don't have any studies to back it up. Just on intuition I have a hard time believing a depressed person would rather be surrounded by happy people they won't be able to relate to, then they would to have someone to share and talk about the bad feelings they're both experiencing.

I'd also add that (again maybe just for me) it's a way more helpful way to view it. It helps me recognize when I need to just go through the motions of being positive until I can get back to doing it naturally. It usually feels a lot better in the moment to focus on the negatives but somewhere in my head I know that's not going to help me.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#239

Post by amznbyebyebye » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

I won’t comment on the depression, but I do see a lot of marital struggles reading through the comments, and that resonates with me too. Marriage can be such a struggle sometimes. Last year I finally said enough is enough.

I can’t recommend for everyone, and I’m not a doctor, so please take with a grain of salt. Some practical things that has helped little old me.

Date nights once a week. Get a babysitter. For me and my wife we both grew up in very conservative families where it was taboo to get one and to leave the kids and go out for a date (heck even dating was taboo). But we found a nice babysitter and went out. It helped us a lot, just making space to talk and spend time away from the house.

Couples psilocybin session. Again I’m not a doctor and there are risks here, so do your homework. But this is really good for coming closer. It helps unearth some of the possibly toxic dynamics that see poisoning the relationship and makes it apparent to both parties. But then you have to do the work of continuously staying conscious and integrating the lessons in your life.

*Saying enough is enough and being the partner to initiate the above and do something about it.

Re: Loving Someone with Depression

#240

Post by joshgrib » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #218

e_i_pi wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

Maybe I'm implying too much intentionality but that's not how I meant it. I'm not trying to say anyone truly _wants_ it to happen - just that it happens one way or another, whether subconsciously or as a second-order effect of something else.

I think we're in agreement that a depressed person generally doesn't want to be cheered up and won't be receptive to it, so you can be positive as much as you want and it won't do much.

I've been on both sides of this, and as the depressed person it seems most helpful to remember that I need to put in the extra effort to try to be positive especially when I don't want to. And as the partner it's helpful to remember that you need to create some separation so you don't get too pulled in and then are unable to help in any way.