This article could potentially dissuade people from reaching out to someone who is depressed, or equally it could encourage people to reach out because they might understand some of the things that need to be overcome in order to actually help.
There are still far too many conversations that occur that are supposed to serve the depressed person, the anxious person, and don’t. And that’s a real problem, because too many of these experiences lead people with mental illnesses to decide ‘it’s all too hard’, or ‘nobody really cares’, or ‘it’s all my fault’, or ‘nothing will help’, or ‘you’ll just misunderstand me, so let’s both not even bother going there’.
People don’t feel heard when they get advice — when the person who should be listening does most of the talking. Honestly, this is such a common problem. Hear the person’s spirit scream this out: “Come on, get over yourself already; you want to help so why don’t you begin by shutting up?” Probably the most powerful thing anyone can do to help someone who is depressed is simply to BE THERE with them. No judgement, no expectations, no demands, just being present.
Many people who need help have absolutely no idea what to say. It’s almost the reverse, in that the person needing help has very little to say, and the person helping just feels awkward; actually, they both do. But there is a lot to be said for just being present with one another, and not needing to fix the other or be fixed. There is a lot of therapy for us all in silence — in just being there together. It isn’t a waste of time! As believers, God’s Spirit is actively at work in these spaces.
Very often when we are depressed, we feel guilty for feeling lazy and sad, or we feel others perhaps think this — worse if we can’t escape that kind of thinking. More than ever we need to give ourselves permission to rest on days we need rest, and to move forward gently on those days we have a bit more energy. Sometimes all we need to hear is, ‘You are doing the best you can’, because you really are.
People can often feel missed in the process of being helped, in that the person helping believes they need more help than the person being helped does, or the person needing help doesn’t feel they’re taken seriously enough. I’m not sure what’s more disconcerting, being diagnosed or being glossed over. Both are graphic examples of being misunderstood. One says, “I know what you need!” when they don’t, and the other says (without saying it in words so much), “Come on, get over it already.”
Very, very often when we are depressed, we are so tired of overthinking things that we barely have the energy to communicate, besides it is so complex and is often so hard to find words for feelings, and even the process of thinking is tiring, discouraging, even painful. So the issue here is that in being depressed we are not even convinced ourselves of what we need or how we feel, and it could lead others who may try and support us to feel just as confused and frustrated. It all adds up to just feeling more a burden. Empathy is the only thing that works in these circumstances.
People experiencing depression typically find their movements and thinking are slowed. Yet they’re thinking and moving as quickly as they can. But they often find people are impatient, and having their sentences completed for them, and having things done for them when they don’t want that, reinforces to a person suffering depression how useless they feel. To help someone who is depressed, we need to remind ourselves to slow down and deal with our own anxiety, which is often the real reason we are impatient.
Depression includes self-judgement hyperactivity, and when we’re depressed, we may feel keenly aware of how threatening people can be without them even being aware of it themselves. This includes being worried about being rejected, or being told off, or being helped in ways that aren’t helpful. This includes people taking control in dozens of different ways when taking control only disempowers someone with depression. Sometimes the best help we can be for the depressed is simply to be safe, to be of no threat at all, and to serve them by not doing anything.
Probably above all the saddest issue when we’re depressed is, we don’t understand ourselves, and therefore we can easily project that onto others — ‘If I can’t understand what I’m feeling, what hope do you have understanding me?’ This can either leave us despairing or frustrated. An inwardly directed disdain or an outwardly directed anger is often a cover for a visceral sadness. The best thing we can do is attempt to understand how confounding it is and actively refuse to solve it and just sit with the sorrow and pain. At least when we just sit in the sorrow and pain we do no more harm, and from such a place God can do glorious healing works; when we’re depressed, we just need a modicum of the right kind of support.
Photo by Michael Shannon on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment