Dealing with a depressive is very complicated, but if someone you love suffers from this illness, it is possible to help them.
avoid saying
1. ‘Get your batteries’. Depression is not only a lack of energy, it is also a state of chronic annoyance. If we knew where the compartment to put the batteries is and that solved what we have, we would do it.
2. ‘Everything is going to get better’. In general, depression is not a state of sadness, it is a very long lethargy where there seems to be no way out, and no matter how much they remind us that it exists, at that moment the more they tell us, the more difficult it is to find them.
3. ‘Everything is temporary’. Sometimes far from being a consolation, depressives perceive this as one more reason to get depressed: if everything is temporary, why try?
4. ‘Life is worth living, life is beautiful’. Imagine that you got ready for an hour, your hair is like the cover of Twentysomething, the smoke effect of the shadow looks professional on you. The outfit you bought looks better on you than Emma Watson, you have the best plan to go out, the best date. You arrive at the place where everyone is waiting for you and BOOM! you stumble Your heels break, your skirt breaks, the blow messed up your hair and splattered you with dirt from the street. No one laughs, in fact everyone is friendly and tells you: don’t worry, you look amazing. And you walk through life like this, beaten, with a broken heel, with dirty makeup and your hair wet with water from the drain. And everyone tells you that it’s okay, and that life is beautiful. Isn’t that logical? That feeling of what are you talking about? It happens to us depressives when they tell us that life is beautiful, that it is worth living.
5. ‘It’s just that you haven’t tried another way of doing things’. Sometimes it is true, and in many cases, if it is true, the chronic depressive tries anything to get out of the hole in which he is. Sometimes he already tried what you propose and it didn’t work. It is absolutely absurd in the logic of someone who is not suffering from depression, but for a depressed person, the idea of changing something is not always a good one. Changes scare us because depression may have originated from one, or because we have tried to change and have not succeeded.
6. ‘You’re very strong, you’re going to get ahead.’ One of the biggest frustrations of a depressive is that, no matter what we do, it always fails. So, we know we are strong because we keep trying despite everything, but we feel bad because we don’t get what we want. It is a constant struggle that is sometimes waged against a small detail such as getting dressed and other times with getting a job.
Now don’t despair, there are things you can say and do to help.
Aid
1. Hug us. Long and tight. Containment therapy is very effective in calming anxiety in any living being. The effects of feeling hugged, contained in someone else, makes us feel safe and calm, we know we are supported and that relaxes us. Hug us without asking permission and with all the sincerity you can. I assure you that either you make us smile or we can finally cry.
2. Listen to us. And don’t interrupt us. We say things that you will not understand, or that do not make sense to you, but if you look us in the eye and take our hand and let us continue, you will help us a lot.
3. Don’t panic. Many times we talk about suicide, but that is not why we will commit suicide. And no, we do not do it to attract attention, it is an idea that travels in our heads as in that of any woman cheap shoes.
Try not to freak out and just stay on the lookout. If you are afraid of leaving us alone, find us, talk to us, send us a message and remind us that you are there.
Related note: Three reasons to cry, here.
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