The well-being of a depressed person is too dependent on external factors, for example, constant feedback from others, a relentless pursuit of achievements. Since it is difficult for us to exert a strong influence on the behavior of other people or the course of events, the self-esteem of a depression-suffering person is always under threat.
Most people need relationships to maintain confidence: they do the right thing and deserve love. Parents and partners, children, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and everyone we regularly interact with can give us such relationships. Dating someone with depression and anxiety, you will see that they are swimming in a sea of relationships that feed them and invisibly keep afloat. However, the need of a depressed person in a relationship is more distorted and disguised. If a person is depressed, they block all the good things and contacts that people have or generally avoid them. It is as if they are unable to swim or stay on the surface of this sea without effort, so they only exhaust themselves, frantically floundering and swallowing the air. What is dating someone with depression-like and how to help your anxiety-prone partner – read below.
Depression Symptoms and Treatment
If you do not have a partner, you are more vulnerable to depression. But, of course, one cannot limit oneself to this generalization. There are 20-30-year-old people who live on their own and do not experience any depression. However, if you already have depression, loneliness can aggravate it. Hopelessness and fatigue tempt people to close in themselves, to avoid contact, and this only wraps up all your negative mood against you. If you are lonely and have depression, be sure to continually make efforts to get out of the house and chat with other people.
We need communication. It shows perspectives, and it does not let us go mad or allow thoughts to break us away from reality. Train your willpower, set some specific communication goals (renew your contact with people you once were best friends with if nothing serious or problematic happened between you, call someone). And if you are loving someone with depression, there are some facts about this mental disorder you need to know and symptoms that will tell your partner is dealing with depression.
Symptom 1. Excessively cheerfulness can be a sign of depression too
First, depression has three degrees of severity, mild, moderate (clinical) and severe (chronic). Mild depression usually resolves itself within 2-3 months, the middle one can pass by itself or grow into severe, if it passes by itself, then it takes half a year or a year. As a rule, mild and moderate depressions can be worked out with a psychologist without the use of drugs, but with their use, they pass faster and easier. A special kind is a masked depression when a person is excessively cheerful and is constantly busy with something, so as not to feel the pressure of their life, how tired and sad they are. Usually, this leads to the breakdown and transition of depression into a difficult stage.
Symptom 2. Your loved one is not just sad
Before you learn how to love someone with depression, you need to understand that this disorder is not a lifestyle, it is a disease. Like a cold or flu, it can come from nowhere and hit your loved ones. And it will bring consequences with it.
Depression will deprive them of their ability to have friends. Depression will interfere with their social life. Depression will constantly put them into hell, making them nervous, doubting themselves and just making their lives unbearable. Depression will beat their body, and many people in depression feel real physical pain. Depression will take control of their whole life and all their feelings so that it will be easier for them to give up any feelings than to endure it. If one day you meet a single female and notice such behavior patterns, you should take actions to help her.
Symptom 3. Depressive behavior
It implies feeling discontent, anger, irritation that the person directs not to the object that caused them, but to themselves. They blame themselves for whatever happens. Such a defense mechanism is called retroflection. "I hate myself; I get angry at myself." Guilt is a leading depressive experience. It’s not just taking responsibility: it’s a painful self-blaming. But, paradoxically, because of this, depressed people may like others. Depressive people are an east catch for tyrants: they are comfortable. Such a person maintains the relationship even if they hurt them because they cannot leave.
How Depression Affects a Relationship
Future partners are attracted because each of them sees a way of solving problems, their self-esteem problems in their partner. Dating with depression is about thinking, “I have problems with myself - I feel unworthy of love, and this person loves everyone. I hate to make decisions, and they will decide for me.” But the partner often has the same problems. As a rule, marriages face a crisis of frustration, when one or both partners realize that the spouse is unable to cope even with their neurotic problems. Let's say a man has mild depression. He has low self-esteem; he is constantly worried about whether people accept him. And he marries a girl who seems to have absorbed all the confidence in the world. After a few years, he realizes that this first impression was wrong, in fact, she also feels out of place in various situations and is afraid of people, and he cannot bear it (instead of accepting and loving the qualities that have opened up, he begins to hate). It means when depression and relationships interfere with each other, serious problems may appear.
You can start blaming yourself
But this is not because of you. This is not easy to believe. Especially if some of your actions entailed a state of depression or when you are accused directly. But in fact, depression is always about a person and their relationship with themselves, and not about you.
Depression is the complete and absolute inability to be sincere with oneself, and it is harder endured when there are people nearby who know you well. That is why depressed people sometimes find it easier to communicate with strangers: they can pretend that things are not so bad. And if they succeed, you can believe that it is only your presence that makes a person depressed. But in reality, it is not. If your loved one gets depressed next to you, oddly enough, this is a good sign. This means that you are trusted enough to share this condition with you. Sometimes, on the contrary, they try to push you away and hide their depression, this is also a form of defense. The only thing you can do is to accept what is happening and be near them.
When people start getting out of depression, their emotions return to them in an exaggerated form
Some people go through a period of tears, sobbing, and destruction. Feel free to support them. Other people go through an incredible feeling of happiness, which against the background of the experience seems to be an absolute fake. Encourage them too but be careful. Dealing with your partner’s depression in a relationship, please note that their mood can change quickly. Many pass through anger. Anger, for some unknown reason, seems to them the easiest way to express the months of despair they have experienced. So be prepared for the fact that you will be aggressive too. Sometimes it will seem to you that this is a step back. But this is a real improvement because now your loved one has feelings. Let them express their displeasure. Encourage them, or at least do not stop at this stage.
You can start forgetting about your feelings
Your first desire will be to take care of your loved one but do not forget about yourself too. You feel that you should be there always, but it’s not so. You must take care of yourself, remember your own goals and dreams. Sometimes you can feel a terrible shame just talking about what you did at work or how you hanged out with your friends. You will feel that you must hide your progress from your loved one or downplay them so that they do not get sad or jealous. But do not do this.
They can and will feel happy for you. Your success and happiness may remind them of what they lack, so you cannot sacrifice yourself for their depression. You have to spend time with friends and do unwind. You must live.
Real communication problems appear
Dating with depression is having to deal with the feeling that envelops you like a dark cloud or fog, through which all life is perceived gloomily and drearily. It influences your thinking and energy levels; it leaves less and less opportunity to enjoy life. Because depression affects your sense of confidence and self-esteem, your perception of self-in-relationship changes dramatically. Your depressive partner becomes particularly sensitive to conflicts, criticism, worried that they are being mistreated. Turning away from a partner, loss of communication and interest, or the need for constant words of encouragement from a partner, such as “you are good,” the fear of being abandoned for no reason are the consequences of depression.
Other symptoms of depression in a relationship: loss of sexual libido, avoidance, and distrust of the partner's feelings
Lack of motivation or strength to engage in everyday activities such as shopping or housework. The problems with falling asleep at night and the difficulty of waking up in the morning, skipping work due to not being able to wake up. Long hours of sleep throughout the day. Constant criticism and devaluation of the partner. Becoming aggressive and conflicts prone. Sudden and unpredictable outbursts of frustration and anger.
Dating Someone with Depression: Key Tips
Good, trusting relationships can be a great stress vaccine. Being a part of a couple has an advantage for the depressed, it is a unique relationship that allows them to express their feelings honestly and fully, which is almost impossible in other cases. A crisis, of course, can arouse dormant problems or expose previously invisible, non-obvious cracks. However, the crisis can be turned into a benefit: use this experience to learn how to deal with a partner with depression, support and cooperate, appreciate each other’s strengths, accumulate credibility and perseverance, sincerely understand how you need each other.
It is widely believed that communication, especially between loving people, should be easy, that truly close people are almost obliged to read each other’s thoughts. But overthinking is dangerous. We need to talk about our feelings and desires. We are discussing below this and many other pieces of advice on how to date someone with depression.
Determine how bad the situation is
Finding recommendations for the relatives of all patients with depression is quite difficult. Therefore, it’s probably worth starting with understanding exactly what kind of depression your close person has, how long it lasts and what is needed for it to go away.
For example, if you meet single ladies, and they show signs of asthenic and psychogenic, as well as child and adolescent depression, you should provide them with rest and recovery, they need love and support from loved ones, hope is very necessary as well as confidence in a bright future. Over time, the body will recover itself. And while it is recovering the approach to the depression is the same as in the case of severe flu, you should remind your loved one to drink pills, hold hand with them, stroke them head and support in everything.
Be involved
The partner has an important role to play during times of stress, but some consider that they cannot help them and do not offer constructive ideas, criticism or emotional support. When one partner is depressed, the other does not require advice, not a solution, especially if the person is not asking for them explicitly, but simple, targeted human involvement. You should listen, be interested and accept the feelings of a partner; consider alternatives, brainstorm, play different scenarios; to give hope and inspiration, to show that person is not alone.
Cease to idealize each other
It is important to understand that gradual idealization is the healthy aspect of mature relationships. At this point, the relationship turns into real work. It is necessary to come to terms with the fact that not a single good relationship will survive without the conscious efforts of both parties concerned, and this work leads to real opportunities for self-analysis and personal growth. By doing this, we strengthen ourselves and become less vulnerable to depression.
Tip 4. Care is always necessary
People in this state cannot do even basic household chores, especially when taking antidepressants because the body begins to recover and drowsiness may appear (and, as a rule, libido gets lower). Therefore, such things as long-term sex, extreme sports, a week-long trip to a remote place, playing snowballs and long shopping trips will not turn a person into life.
Tip 5. Do not blame yourself
If you are not the cause of the development of depression in a person (you didn’t cheat, betray or leave a person in a moment of hardships), stop thinking about it. Depression, like cancer, is caused by a complex combination of various factors, and you are probably not the most important one of them.
Dating Someone with an Anxiety Disorder
Knowledge is power. This aphorism should be the main motto for you if you want to help yourself and your partner gain control over anxiety disorder and minimize its negative impact on your relationship.
The Internet is full of information about this mental disorder, confirmed by clinical studies and personal experience of patients. The more you know about the disease, the effects it causes on the patient and the methods of treatment, the easier it will be for you to understand how best to act to support your loved ones without causing them additional harm through ignorance. Also, awareness of the problem will help more accurately determine when the actions and words of your loved one are controlled by an anxiety disorder, and when they remain themselves. Dating someone with anxiety disorder requires complex help, love and a lot of patience.
Allow yourself to grieve
You do not have to stoically endure all the hardships associated with the illness of your loved one, not allowing yourself to lessen up and give vent to overwhelming emotions. You have every right to “give yourself a little slack” if you feel that it is too much for you to bear the burden of dating someone with anxiety. In the end, this is a serious test for both of you.
Let your emotions out too
Cry your heart out if you need, reflect on the situation, talk to your friend and have a glass of wine, do not keep your sadness inside yourself. It is quite possible that by giving free rein to your feelings, you will reach catharsis and find the strength to accept the situation, not perceiving it as the end of the world as a person dating with anxiety needs even more love. “Over time, these complex emotions will be replaced by love and compassion,” says David Karp, a professor of sociology at Boston College.
Learn how to communicate with a partner
When anxiety disorder overwhelms a person, communication with them can become extremely difficult. In depressive periods, you will need all your patience and sympathy to remind your partner, why they need to get out of bed in the morning, give them a shoulder to cry on, help them with household chores, encourage when they feel good without a reason.
Listen to your partner
When your partner gets things off their chest and pours their whole heart to you, do not rush to give them advice, do not load them with your assumptions but just listen. Often, even the wisest words do not bring such relief as the manifestation of silent attention.
Try to create a safe environment for your partner, in which there will be no place for value judgments, instructions, restrictions or indifferent nodding.
Ask questions
Despite frequent mood swings, in most cases, your partner is quite capable of telling you what bothers them. Sometimes you just need to push them a little to this. Communication is extremely important, even though the frequent and sudden mood swings of an anxious patient can complicate it.
Watch for triggers
It is important to keep track of what causes your partner to change moods, not only to avoid diving to the bottom in the future, but also to know what kind of environment helps maintain the stability of their condition, or how they can feel better. Watching the behavior of your loved ones, you may notice that certain triggers in the environment or your relationship cause them to fall deeper into their state, think about which things have both positive and negative effects on the human condition. Use your knowledge of these triggers wisely to support the model of patient behavior that suits both of you.
An Important Factor in Being Close to Someone Depressed Is Caring for Yourself
Remember that living next to someone who is constantly anxious, afraid, or crying is also not easy. Do not stay at home alone all the time, otherwise, depression will get over you too. Look for support in work, friends, nature trips (if you are happy), shopping, jump with a parachute, watch funny comedies and in general, do not forget about yourself. Your life goes on, so does the life of a depressed person.
Do not forget about letting out your aggression. If you are an ordinary active person who is used to living and enjoying life, then a slow, tearful, tired and weak person will cause you a lot of irritation. Find yourself a place where you can argue about such a life and such a sad state of affairs. Spread your attention evenly, so as not to leave the near one without support, food, and help, and yourself without life and pleasure.
If your loved one is sick seriously and for a long time, remember that there are support groups for relatives of patients with psychiatric diagnoses, as well as psychologists and psychotherapists who can support you.