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If you live with someone who is depressed, you come face to face every day with the negative manifestations of their depression or bipolar disorder, and it’s not a pleasant experience. Yet despite the unlovable behavior you are witnessing, the person you know and love is still there, doing battle with the illness on a daily basis. Unless and until effective treatment comes to the rescue, the depression often wins. Your task is to root for the home team, and you can’t do that if you forget they’re still there.
The renowned neurobiologist Oliver Sacks has written that “Any disease introduces a double-ness into life – an ‘it’ with all its own needs, demands, limitations.” This is what has happened to you. An “It” has entered your life and intruded upon a long established relationship with the person you love. The more clearly you can perceive his or her illness as the newly arrived It, the better you will grapple with It’s impact on everyone concerned.
Coping effectively with the “It”
If the “It” has been around for a while, either treated unsuccessfully or not at all, you – demoralized and resentful – are probably so busy blaming your loved one for the way you feel that you’ve lost sight of the real villain: depression. This unexpected truth, once recognized, is key to finding a solution. Only when you have accepted that your depression fallout is part of the problem will you be able to apply the recuperative formula.
Boiled down to essentials, the formula has three parts:
- First, learn to distinguish between what you can change and what is beyond your control.
- Second, recognize that you cannot take responsibility for someone else’s life, no matter how much you love and want to help them. Everyone, including those suffering from serious depressive illness, must take responsibility for the way they behave and actively engage in their recovery.
- Third, you, the fallout sufferer, must look to your own needs and wants, not only to those of your loved one. Thrashing about in emotional turmoil never solves a problem. When we lose objectivity, we lose the ability to assess what’s happening and think rationally. We can’t see solutions and put them into effect.
An important P.S.: Never put your survival in the hands of someone unable to handle their own. “How You Can Survive When They’re Depressed” illustrates these points with the story of Clarence and Lina and explains how Clarence got his own life back and helped Lina reclaim hers.
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