How to: help someone with depression
When I first came across this quote, written in ‘Furiously Happy’ by Jenny Lawson, I felt freer. There have been a couple of moments since I recovered from a ten month period of depression that spanned this year and last year that have made me feel physically that little bit lighter. The reason? Because I felt a little less shame.
Depression — and I’m sure all mental illnesses, though I don’t have experience of others — is a terrifyingly lonely experience. While in its grips, you feel like no one understands — hell, you don’t really even understand how your mind is working yourself, though it seems like the only way you can be. Then, when the murky grey of depression has been left behind (though its shadow lingers near), there is more isolation — no one understands the lasting impact that an experience like that can have, no one can properly connect with the past ten months you’ve just had and then there’s that shame. The shame that makes you not want to talk about it and isolate yourself even further. Thankfully, on the latter point, I’ve managed to counter shame by doing exactly what shame doesn’t want you to do — I’m writing about it and in so doing telling the world. Shame cannot live in public. Shame thrives only when hidden in dark corners.
Yet, still, I feel ashamed. I feel like a survivor, more than I can tell you, not least because there were many occasions which might have led to me departing this world early. Though we are all survivors, suicidal or not. Yet I feel ashamed of surviving what I went through. It feels like an unworthy battle to have wagered. This is why this quote spoke to me so. It’s not that I feel any sense of stigma around depression — there is none of that amongst my friends, family, or circles that I mix in, thankfully (it’s not the same for everyone, sadly). It’s that I feel immensely guilty for how I treated people, how I behaved, the days that I didn’t get up from the sofa when I could have, didn’t peel my eyes away from This Morning even though I hate make-up tutorials and don’t watch the soaps to understand the soap round-ups. I love Holly Willoughby and could follow along with the X-factor gossip (favourite programme when depressed), so that’s some small blessing. In essence, I hate that I gave up.
So I posted this quote (on my new instagram account, @thedepressionjar) for me. For reasons like: I felt my heart soar when I read it, I felt it was lifting the lid on parts of people that non-depressives would never have thought to consider, I felt that it would connect others to me in the same way that I felt connected to others when I first read it. But more than anything, I posted it because it is my truth. I am the “survivor” that is ashamed and feels guilty about the battle she has just fought.
But then a good friend got in touch. She simply said “I need to understand more… thank you for posting this”. It refers to the last line.
Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.
It turns out this quote wasn’t just my truth, it’s the truth of so many people — mothers, fathers, girlfriends, boyfriends, siblings, best friends — that stay by the side of those who suffer from depression, or indeed any mental illness. Collecting up the pieces that insist on scattering at the tiniest of prompts, like a dandelion seedhead scattering its seeds into the wind. Imagine trying to collect all the tiny floating, fluffy seeds for most of your waking hours — you’d feel not only exhausted, but like you weren’t getting anywhere at all. The person you are helping feels no stronger, no more resilient to the forces that are pulling them apart — they will still fall apart at the slightest gust of wind. Yet you continue to circle them, putting them back together — with only some success. And, by her own admission, my friend was well and truly exhausted.
When we spoke, the question arose — how do I help my partner more? For her, the crucial word was “understand”. She felt she didn’t know enough about the illness and that that could be hindering her ability to help. Of course, understanding depression can only make you a more empathetic support for your loved one. Which is great. Next I’ll be writing a blog post to try and explain how depression makes you think, how it makes you feel, with detail I’ve never done before. It’s going to be fucking hard.
Understanding depression can also relieve the frustration that someone might feel around things like: a seeming lack of effort on the sufferer’s part, that they might have given up, that there seems to be no progress, no end to this struggle. The first time I was visited by depression, I remember Mum wanting me to get the fuck up and go to work. “Plenty of depressed people go to work” she stood in front of me, in the way of the TV, and said. The thing was, I couldn’t. A huge problem is, however, that not even I understand fully why I couldn’t go to work. I know that I felt too disgusting to be out in public, to the extent that it made my skin crawl, and I felt so wholly incompetent that going to work would have been a waste of time. Perhaps if she understood that, my inability to go to work might have made sense. Perhaps it wouldn’t have because a non-depressed person could just think “oh I’m being stupid, I’m not gross”, put on their suit and jump on the tube, direction Moorgate. But I couldn’t.
Understanding isn’t the whole story though. Nor does it fix your loved one. And let’s face it, we all want to fix them, so very desperately. My Dad once said that he would do anything — anything — to take it away. And my Dad is not the type to use hyperbole. It truly broke my heart to hear that. There was nothing he could do to help me. Nothing anyone could do. Plus, someone being “fixed” is the surest fire way to end the torment and give your loved one and yourself a break. Though, I would argue, that no one who has experienced depression — especially if it’s a number of times — is ever fixed. I’m the watch with the strap pin that keeps coming loose. I’m not broken, but I need to make sure my vulnerability is kept an eye on and managed. I once thought I was fixed but now I know that I’m a constant Work in Progress, as we all are really.
I was supposed to come up with a neat bullet-pointed list of ways to help a loved one — or anyone, for that matter — going through a depressive episode at the beginning of this blog post. But if there was ever a topic that encouraged me to be even more verbose than usual… so I will cover that in the next blog post. But what I do want to get you thinking over, before that post arrives, is the need for the carer to care for themselves. The supporter to make sure they have the support they need. The one whose shoulder has been cried on countless times to have another shoulder to go to to cry on when they need it. The one who has listened silently and patiently to have someone to talk to with complete abandon. To swear, to shout, to weep. And the one who can’t sleep for more than a few hours, because their mind can’t rest until it’s solved the problem (even if not truly in your power alone, or even at all), to be given a break. Whether that’s a break in terms of time away to spend on themselves or whether it’s a break from the voice in their head that tells them they should be able to do better, to help her more. Self-compassion and an understanding of your needs and how this is affecting you is the first step. It’s then that you’ll be in a position to fully and profoundly understand the one you seek to help.
This is, first and foremost, a post for my friend that I really want to help. I’m writing it for her. But this is also a post for all the people out there, the unspoken heroes who are supporting a loved one through a mental illness. We are all survivors in our own right. And when there’s so many of us, we can’t be alone.
If you want to talk to me about caring for a loved one with depression or just want to have a good old chin-wag about depression and mental illness, my twitter DMs are open @JacsGud.
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