Joshua Galyon
If a loved one has depression, it can be hard to know what to do. You want to help them get better, but you don’t want to be too pushy or accidentally push them away. You want to know the right things to say, but you don’t want to therapize or ask prying questions. Helping a loved one battle depression is all about finding the right balance of encouragement and boundaries. Here are some healthy ways to support a loved one with depression, without getting over-involved.
1. Help Them Access Treatment
When someone you love is coping with depression, the solution might look obvious to you. They should find a therapist, get on medication, or check themselves into rehab for depression, and bam, they’ll be better in no time. If you’ve never experienced it from the inside, observing your loved one’s lack of drive and motivation to get help can be incredibly frustrating. It can be impossible to understand why that person doesn’t just get up and do something already.
That’s the thing about depression, though: it doesn’t just make your loved one sad and miserable. It dampens their self-esteem and confidence, and replaces them with fatigue, lethargy, hopelessness, and shame. They would get help, they suppose, if they had the energy, but every obstacle feels impossible, and they just can’t see the point. After a while, even just brushing their teeth or getting out of bed feels like trying to climb Mount Everest in a pair of flip flops.
That’s where you come in: because your mood-balancing neurotransmitters aren’t all wonky like theirs, it’s a lot easier to problem-solve. It’s no big deal for you to hop online, find some good mental health providers, and make a plan to get them there. Yes, you’re busy and you have other responsibilities, so it’s important not to take on too much. However, even just taking that initial step of making the first phone call could make a huge difference in your loved one’s life.
2. Listen and Validate
“We listen and we don’t judge” says the popular TikTok saying, and this is especially critical when your loved one has depression. They might be complaining a lot, for many months, about things they never take action to change. They might be more irritable than usual and frustrated by every little thing. They might be really, really sad or negative about their life, themselves, or the state of the world. You can help them by listening no matter what.
This is more challenging than it sounds, because the temptation will be to challenge their beliefs or offer solutions. You might be tempted to say things like “just cheer up” “it’s not really as bad as you think it is,” or similar. You might want to tell them that eating better or getting to the gym or getting more sunlight would fix them. While you can offer some small lifestyle suggestions, very gradually, it’s much more important to just receive whatever they have to say.
One powerful thing you can do, as you listen, is work on validating their feelings and offering reassurance. You can say things like “that must be really difficult,” or try to reflect back what they’ve said in their own words. If you’ve had depression before, it’s OK to share some of your own experiences in order to validate theirs, but avoid centering yourself or talking about how you got better. Keep the focus on them and try to stay present with their current emotions.
3. Offer Practical Support
As mentioned above, when you have depression, it’s really hard to do basic things that normally don’t seem like a big deal. Everyday tasks like dishes and laundry can pile up very quickly when you’re focused on just making it through the day. You have your own life to manage, so don’t burn yourself out supporting your loved one. However, there’s still a lot you can do to make a difference in keeping their environment clean and their to-dos done.
Start by making a simple list of things that absolutely need to get done, like keeping the kitchen free of pests and mold. Consider transportation needs, like picking up refills from the pharmacy or driving to therapy appointments. Try not to include anything too extraneous: they don’t need to worry about perfect lawn care or folding each and every last sock. They just need to stay as healthy as possible and live in a relatively clean and safe environment while they get better.
Next, think about what to do yourself, what to help them do, and what to outsource. If you don’t have bandwidth to help with laundry or dishes, you could research cleaning services or call a laundry pick-up and drop-off service. If you don’t drive, you can schedule their rideshare to the clinic, or call the pharmacy to set up medication delivery. Include some “fun” things too, like accompanying them on a short walk outside in the sunshine, so they don’t stay inside all day.
Take Care of Yourself First
You can’t be a good support person or role model if you’re struggling to manage your own life and care tasks. Before you help your loved one, always make sure you’re managing your own to-do list effectively. Of course, if they’re in crisis or their immediate safety is in danger, it’s OK to drop everything for a little while. However, when it comes to long-term healing, remember you need to keep your own engine running to jump start theirs.
