It’s important to remember too that there are different kinds of depression. Sometimes people feel hopeless and sad and sometimes they feel completely numb and seem beyond the ability to feel anything. Some people feel deeply saddened for a few weeks or months and others may experience confusion and a lack of energy and concentration for years on end.
Most of the time I am capable of doing things to make myself feel better – getting out of the house, going for a walk, doing something creative. But there have been a few times when I have been trapped – unable to speak or move from where I was sitting or lying.
I can’t really read myself out of this because I can’t concentrate well enough. My husband reads aloud to me and that helps me to focus, but I wouldn’t ask him to read anything he wouldn’t enjoy.
That doesn’t mean that I am sad all the time at all. Some of my problems are the side effects of the medication that I take that keeps me out of the deeper depression and I am grateful that they exist. I have come to terms with this.
I agree with those who have said that it is important that she knows that depression is not a character flaw or a personal weakness. If the doctor is unwilling to adjust her medications after two months, then she should find another therapist that will. She should also be able to trust the judgment of her therapist.
I see my therapist only 20-30 minutes a month. We focus on present concerns and how my medications are doing. But I am a long time patient. If your friend is new to depression, it is easy to understand that she may see her therapist more often.
Tell her not to be afraid. Good times will come again. Her judgment will be restored. Easy does it.
For me it was all about getting my sleep patterns back to normal.
I found I was churning tthe specific depressive thoughts over and over in my mind during the day, which meant that when I went to sleep my brain (I guess) had to spend the time working on the “normal” daily events, leaving less time for restorative sleep.
Lots of exercise helped to get me to drop off, avoiding heavy meals late in the evening, and doing something relaxing yet distracting last thing at night to give my brain a chance to filter through the day’s events.
Pills and sunshine also helped, so lunchtime walks are deffo a good thing!
One thing about exercise. It does help and it is a good thing, but there are times when someone gets so depressed it’s difficult for him or her to get out and do it. A few years ago, when I was unemployed and in therapy for depression, I used to drive past a very nice park on my way home from the appointments, but I never got around to stopping there and going for a walk until my therapist ordered me to. It’s now one of my favorite places to go for a walk.
Several years ago, that friend I mentioned was so depressed I was worried about him, in part because he hadn’t walked in his favorite park in a few days. I checked his schedule with his wife, turned up at his place, and kidnapped him at swordpoint for a walk around the park. It was the jolt he needed.
In other words, don’t tell your friend he needs to get some exercise; do it with him. The weekend after my friend moved back to our city, I took him to a hiking spot north of our city which it turned out he’d never been to. Left to himself, he wouldn’t have done it, which is why I took him there.
CJ
Whose actually a bit depressed because I haven’t been up to going out and walking for the past several week.
While the comments about exercise are very valid, it’s not always going to be successful. My situation included various anxieties, which made any venture outdoors extremely difficult. What benefit I gained from the exercise was far outweighed by the problems caused.
In the end, the anxieties had to be tackled first. Attending a few group self-help sessions made me realise that the depression was a symptom of everything else (which certainly isn’t the case with everyone). Medication partly helped, as did cognitive behavioural therapy. I had to turn around ways that I looked upon life, upon other people, etc., which have been with me from early childhood. Difficult.
‘Getting therapy’ isn’t as simple as it sounds, because there’s so many different routes available! The first therapist I saw was desperately trying to find some deep underlying cause for everything that I was going through. These sessions were helpful, in as much as they reaffirmed my suspicion that no root cause existed. It’s my day-to-day perceptions that cause the problems. (Oh, and I also saw four psychiatrists before I found one I felt able to speak openly to.)
Lavenderviolet, let me make a suggestion, if your friend’s still down. This weekend, get together with him and do something outlandish neither of you have done before. Go to an art gallery or a museum; go hiking somewhere you’ve never been; play a boardgame you’ve never tried; see a movie you’ve always wanted to see but never gotten around to. In short, do something spontaneous and completely unexpected. Don’t ask; just do.
A year ago this week, I was in a very nasty depression because I had just learned my apartment was being sold. I was in danger of committing suicide. Figuring I might as well find out the worst, I called a gentleman I’d been dating casually, although things seemed to have cooled off. When he realized how bad it was, he said two things which got through my pain: “You’re not alone,” and “Where are we going to dinner?” Now, I was so far gone, I barely understood the question, let alone was able to respond to it, which is why he asked the follow up question, “What time am I picking you up?” Note that he didn’t ask, “Would you like to go to dinner?” I would have answered, “No.” A year later, not only are he and I still very much a couple, I now own the apartment!
Does anyone recommend eliminating meat from diet? I have heard this from someone who tried it himself, but he is the last person I would take as an unofficial authority on anything.
Needless to say, this would not require a permanent commitment to any level of vegetarianism.
This could be complete quackery, at least as far as present knowledge is concerned. That is to say, “fringe”. Unless, of course, some serious studies on this do exist.
Also, most of my friends highly recommend RECOVERY, INC. methods. These can be learned either in such a group or in classes. I’ll check to see whether there are any online instructional materials.
“Recovery” in this case is not to be confused with drug/alcohol recovery.
This is true for me, too, though in another way. I became very depressed after starting a night shift job, and it didn’t go away until I was rid of that job and was able to readjust my schedule so I was able to see the sun for a few hours every day. For a few months afterwards my sleep was still disordered; it was as if my body was no longer able to listen to the “cues” that tell us when to go to sleep and when to wake, and I was falling asleep at random times and spending over a day awake at a time. It took at least three months to readjust. Night shift work is unnatural and unhealthy. If your friend works the night shift, convince him to switch to day; it really does make that much of a difference.
I have depression, which tends to be low-grade most of the time, and then becomes debilitating under stressful circumstances. Now I’m finally free of even the low-grade version. I feel like I need to be vigilant for relapses, but I am generally happy and engaged in life.
Cognitive behavioral therapy with a therapist I clicked with was vital. My family doctor recommended I find someone with a PhD in psychology, since medication was not my focus (in that case a psychiatrist would have been better).
I personally used medication as “training wheels” to help me make use of the therapy and ingrain better mental habits. But even with relatively short-term use, I had to try several before I found one that worked for me. Tell your friend it can seem like it’s taking forever to find the right medication, but it is worth the wait.
Regular exercise has definitely supported my other depression-fighting techniques.
And while depression isn’t just sadness or anxiety due to life circumstances, I did find that escaping from a job I loathed did wonders for my mental health. Attempting to stick with a wrong career choice had resulted in years of being reinforced in the belief that I was an inadequate, useless outsider. A big part of my depression was feeling isolated and feeling like an impostor, and going every day to an environment that accentuated that was hell.
Finally, as his friend, I would say make sure he knows he can let you see how he really is. One of the hardest parts for me was my belief that I had to keep up appearances. It both postponed me getting help, because people didn’t realize how bad off I was, and again reinforced the feelings of isolation and inadequacy.
The most important thing is to simply know that it does get better, even when it seems like it can’t possibly improve.
