Bingo. I’ve been depressed. I’ve been in the place where its hell to haul yourself out of bed…and its hell to haul yourself out of bed to do anything - see your best friend - nah, don’t feel like it. Go to work, nah don’t feel like it.
However, a lot of people self treat depression with alcohol, and “so they aren’t alcoholics” will seek out company to drink with. So it isn’t a given if he can find time for his friends that this is “depression as excuse” instead of “depression as disease.”
What does he get out of bed and make time for?
And
Is he undergoing behavioral therapy? Not the “talk over your childhood for three years” therapy but someone teaching him new behaviors?
Drugs are cool and all - when I found the right meds it made a lot of difference - but you do want to learn the coping skills to handle life without meds.
If your brother is seeing a therapist, you need to seek your brother’s permission to talk with the therapist to arrange family counselling.
If your brother is not in counselling, your mother needs to make that a condition of his continuing to stay with her.
Work out a general agreement on paper so that your mother and brother can see a possible compromise and how it might look. For example:
Yes, your mother will stop reminding him to get up and go to school. She will not wake him at all. He will get an alarm clock and be responsible for waking himself up and getting himself to class.
If he doesn’t get to class on time he will have to pay a consequence – he will lose access to the car, beer money or whatever arrangement they work out. The same is true if he misses work – there must be a consequence.
On the other hand, he will be responsible only for himself – for keeping himself clean, studying, going to class, taking his medicine, seeing his doctor, getting enough sleep, etc.
If you can help them to reach an agreement, that would be great! Or if he chooses to live with you, then you can require these things of him. What you can’t do is impose this plan on your parents and your brother. Sometimes you just can’t fix things and you have to let go.
Your brother has the symptoms of his illness. That’s one reason why people with depression may not have too many friends sometimes. They can seem to be so totally self-absorbed and truly lazy.
Speaking as a person who has had low-grade depression for over forty years, I can tell you that laziness is a symptom of the illness. It’s the same laziness that you have when you are a total slob and it feels the same from the inside. But you can’t help it.
I’ve struggled with depression off and on throughout my adult life (I’m 45). From age 25-41ish it bit me in the ass every couple of years, for a month or so in duration, and medication was useful in getting me out of the slump and functioning again.
Then a few years back I fell into a black hole that put in me, literally, in the bed for eight months. During that time I rarely got dressed, loved my family but put no effort into nurturing them, my house went to hell in a hand-basket, and I could see no end. After losing it completely one day in a fit of rage I was finally (misdiagnosed) as bipolar II and medicated. The doctor required that I go to a talk therapist.
After many sessions with the talk therapist she helped me determine that I was not bipolar, advised I wean off the medication under the supervision of my doctor, and she helped me get to the nuts and bolts of the root of my depression and helped me with a plan of action to deal with it. As a direct result of the talk therapy I have had the happiest, most productive, stress free, joy filled three consecutive years of my life and have the tools in place to keep it that way. Talk therapy changed the course of my life.
Personally, I feel the individual talk therapy sessions (in combination with the short term medication) was the missing element in my recovery and can’t emphasize the importance of it enough. Please encourage your mother to require talk therapy, along with the medication, of your brother as a condition of his remaining under your parents care.
I’d also like to remind you how difficult it can be for the caregivers of someone with depression and it’s very possible that your mom was venting her frustration to you rather than looking to you for a solution, so please don’t feel like you are responsible for fixing this.
The main difference between laziness and depression is that when you are lazy you dont care, when you are depressed you cant care.
I’ve been both. I have major depression that went untreated for about twelve years partly because I was not held accountable. I had a very co-dependent relationship with my mom who also had depression that went untreated where we both put up with too much BS and allowed bad habits to become debilitating conditions. What would begin as moderate depression and general laziness would get worse since neither one of us would hold the other accountable. Unfortunately, what finally broke the cycle was my mom passing away. Fortunately, that is what pushed me to finally get professional help.
And it took two solid years for me to get back on my feet. And being held accountable for my actions was a major key. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have therapy in addition to proper medication, (and that took three tries for myself, and I’m starting to think I might need another adjustment.) During that time, I worked with a behavioural therapist and an occupational therapist on a weekly basis to break a lot of bad habits and negative conditions that had built up. (Now I’m down to monthly/quarterly check-ups.)
The ugly part about depression is that is very similar to diabetes is that it can only be treated, but not cured, and taking medicine/insulin is not enough to control it. You have to watch your diet, your behaviours, and not self-medicate - something else for which I am guilty. (Depression:alcohol :: diabetes:sugar- it might not kill you outright, but you will regret it the next day, and it will fuck you up even worse in the long run.)
The good part is that depression is similar to diabetes in that it can be treated so that you (the generic you) can control the disease, the disease does not control you. I know I will most likely have to take anti-depressants for the rest of my life - which will be far longer than if I did not take them.
So I definitely second the advice given by others in the thread, especially Zoe, to make your brother be responsible for himself. He has to wake himself up, get to school, pay his bills, etc. If he is truly having difficulty with that, he should look into adjustments to his medication. And since he is staying at home, it is important that your parents be involved with his treatment and understand what roles they need to play.
Give him your support, but don’t give him any excuses. “Help those that help themselves,” Anonymous.
Another thing that occurs to me is that working and going to school is quite a workload, even if one is not depressed. Brother might need to drop one or the other. How many hours a week is he working? How many credit hours (or whatever they call them these days) is he taking? How much homework does he have, and what kind? IS he going to talk therapy? If the college has a counselling service, he should look into it. And I agree with the notion that he and Mom should probably get at least a few sessions of family therapy in.
Thats the thing that really sucks about depression. It doesn’t start getting better once it gets really bad. Indeed, when things start getting really bad, that usually just means things are more likely to continue to go badly.
Unfortuneately, medication isn’t always a magic bullet. It has done a ton of good for some people. But it doesn’t work that way for everyone. For me, I found that what I really needed was not medicine, but to rethink my whole identity into one that wanted a future, that wanted to be a part of life, that was ready to face things. That was, to put it briefly, hell. But it worked.
I think your parents are so accomodating because they think it’s just a matter of finding the right medicine. That might be some wrong thinking.
No real advice here. I think your parents probably are hurting his cause. He needs to get out in the world, work, and start having other things on his mind besides how crappy he feels. Short of that, at least turn off the Internet, which in my opinion is a bad scene for depressed people. It allows them to spend way too much time comfortably doing nothing. Make him take a laptop out to someplace in public with wi-fi if he wants Internet. You need to get out when you are depressed. Even if you hate it and never have fun. Eventually, you may decide to try liking it.
In my worst states, I lived through night-time rituals, too. As far as I can see now, it was a form of escapism, of being able to build a different world in which I could decide what and when things could happen. This is why this was bearable, when daytime and social interaction were desperately painful.
And I mooched around living with the parents. I’m sure plenty of people looked from afar and had Solfy’s reaction. It’s been a lot of small steps, over a long period of time, with setbacks along the way. I’m now working full-time, although I know I have to be careful that the routine of work doesn’t become another form of escapism, because this compresses the worst feelings and they end up being released (at one point I had to take a week off sick for this reason). I’m sure there’s people thinking “ah, he’s got a job and everything, so he’s alright now”. Not at all true.
Thank you all so much for all the different points of view. I admit I had misgivings about posting the OP after the fact (was always taught not to air dirty laundry), but I think the different insights made it worth while.
The internet is a blessing and a curse for my brother - he works in web development and graphic design. His work appears to be one of the few refuges where he can get some satisfaction of a job well done. On the other hand, I know only too well how easy it is to get lost in the electronic world to avoid the real one.
The schooling he’s doing right now is only three classes at community college, and the work is something between part and full time. He’s mostly taking classes to maintain student status so he can continue medical benefits. He claims the classes are going well, but Mom came home last week during the afternoon when he was supposed to be in calculus and found him home. He claimed class was cancelled, but she was skeptical.
And that segues nicely into a chunk of the problem - the family dynamic. It never occured to me to suggest family counseling. I can’t see my mother going for it, but I’m going to suggest it next time she brings up my brother. A large part of this, IMHO, is rooted in the relationship those two have. Our father is in the picture, but he’s always taken a hands off stance regarding child rearing and left things to my mother. She’s getting frustrated with his lack of involvement lately, as she’s tired of having to be the bad cop all the time.
My mother’s the one who first questioned whether it was depression or laziness, and she threw that particular zinger at my brother a couple of weeks ago. It really set him off. (she’s good at pushing buttons, and has been known to fight dirty) Neither she nor I have had first hand experience with clinical depression, but thanks to the Dope I’ve got some points from that perspective to pass along as well as some helpful suggestions next time Mom needs to vent. Thanks all!
Solfy, when you talk to your mother about family counselling, be careful. For a lot of people counselling is something that only the ill person needs, so if you suggest that she might benefit from counselling, even though it’s with your brother, she may react emotionally - as though you’re accusing her of having something wrong with her thought processes.
What’s going to make this dynamic worse is that, almost invariably, family counselling will reveal legitimate complaints that the ill family member has towards the rest of the family. This leads to a common reaction: “Now that idiot therapist is saying that this is all my fault because…” What a lot of people can lose sight of is that even with legitimate complaints, a healthy person won’t let those drop them into bouts of depression. It’s simply that for someone in the depths of depression small slights can grow into mountains. It is one of the dynamics of the illness.
Don’t soft-sell the idea of family counselling. For counselling to work, it’s got to be, almost axiomatically, gruelling. If she gets your family to go, they’re in for several hours of very emotional, very difficult discussions. It’s frigging work, and often feels like a lot of work for little obvious benefit.
What particularly worries me is your comment: “she’s good at pushing buttons, and has been known to fight dirty.” I’ve never known a person whom I’d describe like that who took their first hearing of a documented recital* of such behavior as anything but a personal attack, so I suspect she’s more likely than most to respond with defensive anger.
*By documented recital, I mean that the therapist should be telling people not to make their complaints about other people in generals, but with specifics, pointing to actual instances of the behavior they’re talking about. It can get pretty astonishing for someone whose self image is that they’re always fair and supporting, forex, to hear these instances that sound to everyone hearing them as dirty fighting.
What particularly worries me is your comment: “she’s good at pushing buttons, and has been known to fight dirty.” I’ve never known a person whom I’d describe like that who took their first hearing of a documented recital* of such behavior as anything but a personal attack, so I suspect she’s more likely than most to respond with defensive anger.
*By documented recital, I mean that the therapist should be telling people not to make their complaints about other people in generals, but with specifics, pointing to actual instances of the behavior they’re talking about. It can get pretty astonishing for someone whose self image is that they’re always fair and supporting, forex, to hear these instances that sound to everyone hearing them as dirty fighting.
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(Sorry about the post above - It appears guests don’t get the handy edit feature for when one hits “enter” accidentally)
Well, I mostly doubt that she would consider going to counselling in the first place. She’s stubborn about not ever needing medical attention, be it physical or mental. Doesn’t do check ups. Waits five days with a raging fever before finally caving and going to the ER with a kidney infection, etc. I am going to suggest it anyway. She really wants to help him, and doesn’t have a problem helping others seek help. She arranged for him to see the current health care practitioners and was slightly frustrated that, since my brother is over 18yrs, she couldn’t make the appointment for him. (he was away at school at the time and she was trying to get him in over Christmas break) I see it as a subtle frustration at being totally in the dark beyond what my brother shares with her, so maybe she’d be open to attending sessions with him if it meant she could understand him better.
I know this trend from direct experience. My mother and I fought like cats and dogs the entire time I was under her roof. I know that most of it was well intentioned, but I also know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of relentless nagging and browbeating. She admitted to throwing out the comment, “I don’t know if you’re depressed or just totally lazy.” to my brother. This was likely for two reasons, the first being that she’s legitimately wondering, but the second reason would be to get a rise out of him. Honestly, how would one respond to such a thing?! “Yes, mother. You’re right. I’m just lazy. I’ll get up now and make dinner. How’s chicken sound?” She likes to pick fights. I know this because I have to squelch the same tendency in myself.
The nagging and fighting is her way of trying to get him riled enough to do something. I’d like to think that she’d figure out by now that all that does is make my brother shut down and retreat. It’s really her main tactic. She won’t quit enabling him, but she’s good at giving you things while making your life miserable for accepting/needing them. This is why I like the idea of family therapy - it might introduce new ways of dealing with the situation to both my brother and mother. She vents to me, but suggestions go in one ear and out the other. They seem to be locked in the same dance and it’s getting them nowhere.
Does simple laziness not even exist anymore? Just because your brother is taking antidepressants doesn’t mean he’s actually depressed. It could be that he and his friends are playing at being depressed because all the cool kids are doing it, or because they feel like getting a free ride from their parents. The way you have described it, your brother’s “depression” is a sweet deal for him. That alone makes me skeptical about whether he’s really ill. And reading between the lines, I think your native horse sense tells you that he’s faking or exaggerating. Not so?
I’m not trying to insult anyone here. The diagnosis of “depression” is also a message-board diagnosis, unless we’re willing to believe that doctors always get it right, which they don’t, in my experience. I’ve always found them a little prescription-happy, and I have no doubt whatever that I could go into my doctor’s office and get a prescription for antidepressants by saying the right thing.
For what it’s worth, I’m not saying the guy is not depressed. I’m saying the jury’s out, and if he’s not depressed, I vote for lazy. He’s getting fed and housed at no expense to himself, which is what I call a sweet deal.
I wouldn’t call Sal Ammoniac’s comment a diagnois, any more than the rest of us describing our experiences with depression as something that his brother could be going through. “Could be” , “Skeptical”, “doesn’t mean”…
That daid, Sal Ammoniac, some of us (myself included) can be very sensetive about “false” depression. Some people are lazy. Taking medication for depression, and dealing with the accompanying side affects, does not strike me a likely for someone who is “mearly lazy” however. I’ve known (briefly)an award winning journalist who couldn’t get out of bed because of her depression (due to bi-polar in that instance) and I’ve known vetrans and professional athletes who also where bedrridden. (Yes, I’ve met these people in hospitals)I’ve been there myself. I may be a bad example, because I am at times a bit lazy anyway
Big on stigmatizing people for fun and sport? Clinical depression isn’t just a fun little term that doctors toss out for the heck of it. I think your skepticism is better suited to other situations. It’s exactly this sort of lack of understanding and lousy attitude that has kept people who are truly ill from seeking help. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s much worse IMHO to have someone who’s ill fear getting help than that one lazy person slips through the cracks.
Of course, when the going game is judgmentalism, lots of people want to ‘play’.
:mad:
Not faking, but maybe taking advantage of the situation? Sort of a larger version of milking extra sick days out of a nasty bout with the flu, and please could you get me some more Jello and flat ginger ale because I’m too weak to leave the couch, oh and could you fluff my pillow again while you’re at it?
The reason I totally believe there is depression in the picture is that most A/B students who participate in cocurricular activities and do community service out of the goodness of their hearts just aren’t likely to spontaneously find themselves with a grade point average of 0.8. My brother wasn’t an overachiever in high school, but a solid performer. He was top chair in band. He built computer networks for our church school from spare parts he scrounged. He socialized an appropriate amount. He helped the church organist write a mass. He had ambition and goals and was working toward them.
Now he sleeps through class. He sleeps through work. In his own words, he sees no reason to get an education because the life a career would finance would be “void.” He’s lost all ambition. He has no drive to do anything because he sees no point in it.
But I fear it’s too easy to sit and wallow in being miserable when too many people around you are saying, “Oh you poor, poor dear. Your life is so miserable. Here - have a car. And don’t worry about that pesky rent.” Or, the flip side of that, saying, “I told you half an hour ago to scrub the bathroom and there’s still toothpaste in the sink! You don’t do anything around here! Snap out of it and get over it!” isn’t going to solve anything, either. (all exaggerations here, but I hope the point gets across)
I can assure you, at least from my experience, that the last thing you want to do when in that state is to indulge in the situation. To continue the analogy in a slightly absurd way, it’d be more like trying to prolong the gastric part of flu rather than the convalescence.
“Sweet deal”? The kid is working & going to school. And he’s dealing with a mother who definitely needs “family counseling.” Or maybe personal counseling.
Here’s hoping he continues to take his meds–or finds better ones. And gets all the help he needs to escape from that “sweet deal.”
