Chapter Fourteen

WHEN SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS DEPRESSED

“Whatever you give of yourself to somebody else is never lost, no matter what happens to that person.”

—Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers)

The pain of seeing a loved one in the depths of clinical depression is almost as torturous as being depressed oneself. If you are the partner, parent, child or friend of someone who is undergoing a depressive episode, your understanding of the illness and how you relate to the patient can either support or deter his or her ability to get well. Here are some important ways in which you can help the healing process.

1) If a friend or family member's activity and outlook on life starts to descend and stays down not just a few days, but for weeks, depression may be the cause. The first way you can be of support is to help the person to recognize that there is a problem. This is especially crucial, since many people fail to realize that they are depressed. Begin by encouraging your friend to share his or her feelings with you and by showing him or her the self-rating scale for depression on pages 122–123. Contrary to myth, talking about depression makes things better, not worse. Once it becomes clear that something is amiss, you can suggest that he or she seek professional help. (This is critical since only one third of people with mood disorders ever receive treatment.)

You can be of further support by accompanying your friend to his initial doctor's or therapist's appointment and subsequently monitoring his or her medication. In addition, explain that seeking help for depression does not imply a lack of emotional strength or moral character. On the contrary, it takes both courage and wisdom to know when one is in need of assistance.

2) Educate yourself about the illness, whether it is depression, manic depression, anxiety, etc. Learn about symptoms of the illness and how to tell when they are improving. Your feedback to the psychiatrist or therapist about how your friend is faring will help him or her to assess if a particular treatment is working.

3) Provide emotional support. Remember, what a person suffering from depression needs most is compassion and understanding. Exhortations to “snap out of it” or “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” are counterproductive. The best communication is simply to ask, “How can I be of support?” or “How can I help?”

4) Provide physical support. Often this means participating with your friend in low-stress activities—taking walks, watching movies, going out to eat—that will provide an uplifting focus. In other instances you can ease the depressed person's burden by helping with the daily routines—running errands, doing shopping, taking the kids out for pizza, cooking, vacuuming the carpet, etc.

5) Monitor possible suicidal gestures or threats. Statements such as “I wish I were dead,” “The world would be better off without me,” or “I want out” must be taken seriously. The belief that people who talk about suicide are only doing it for the attention is just plain wrong. If the person you care about is suicidal, make sure that his or her primary care doctor is informed. Use the suggestions listed on pages 359–366 to keep the patient safe. Don't be afraid to talk with the person about his or her suicidal feelings. Meanwhile, hold on to the possibility that your loved one will get better, even if he or she does not believe it.

6) Don't try to talk the depressed person out of his feelings, even if they are irrational. Suppose the depressive says, “My life is a failure,” “Life is not worth living,” or “All is hopeless.” Telling him he is wrong or arguing with him will only add to his demoralized state. Instead, you might want to say, “I'm sorry that you are feeling so bad. What might we do right now to help you feel better?”

7) Maintain a healthy detachment. You may become frustrated when your well-meaning advice and emotional reassurance are met with resistance. Do not take your loved one's pessimism personally—it is a symptom of the illness. When the light you shine is sucked into the black hole of depression, you may become angry or disgusted. Direct your frustration at the illness, not the person. People who suffer from depression complain that their families’ resentment over their condition often leads to neglect or outright hostility.

8) If prayer is something you believe in, then pray for your friend's healing.* Turn his or her welfare over to the care of a Higher Power. In addition, you may wish to place his or her name on any prayer lists that you can locate (see page 275 for a listing of prayer ministries). Prayer goes directly to a person's unconscious where it will not meet the negative thinking so commonly found in depression. To respect the person's confidentiality, it is best to pray privately. Moreover, if you put a loved one's name on a prayer list, use first name only.

9) Establish communication with other people in the person's support network—e.g., family members, friends, physicians, therapists, social workers, clergy, etc. By talking to other caregivers, you will obtain additional information and perspective about the depressed person. If possible, arrange for all of the caregivers to meet together in one room for a brainstorming/support session. In this way, you will be working as part of a team—and not in isolation.

10) Take good care of yourself and your needs. It is easy to get immersed in your friend's care and lose your own sense of self. You may also experience “contagious depression”—i.e., taking on the other person's depressive symptoms. Here are some ideas on how to “inoculate” yourself so that you can stay centered enough to truly help.

11) Finally, encourage the person you are caring for to create a support system such as the one that I outlined in chapter 7 my personal narrative, or help him or her to do so. Fortunately, it is possible to take advantage the “strength in numbers principle” to bring together a group of committed loving people for the sole purpose of creating a field of loving support that will catalyze the depressed person's healing. Let me now share some ideas on how such a support group can be created.

How to Form a Prayer/Support Group For Someone Who Is Depressed

If you know a friend or loved one who is going through an episode of anxiety or depression and you wish to enlist the healing power of a prayer/support group, here are some simple guidelines that will get you started.

1) Find at least three other people beside yourself (preferably four to six) who would like to participate in such a group.

2) Ask your friend who is depressed if he or she would like to be present during the group meetings. If the person is not able to attend because of the severity of his symptoms, let him know what you are doing and ask for his or her permission to begin the group.

3) Set a regular time—weekly is ideal, although every other week will also work. Meetings can last for sixty to ninety minutes.

4) Ask the person whom you are supporting to write a vision statement of wellness, using the instructions on page 148 of this book. If he or she is unable to do so, you can employ the affirmation found in the story on page, or you can create one of your own.

5) Pick a facilitator to chair each meeting (the facilitator can remain the same or vary from meeting to meeting).

6) Begin the group with an opening affirmation, prayer, meditation, etc. Once the group has been convened, ask the person needing support to read his or her vision statement to the group. (If the person is not present, one of the other members can read the vision statement.) During this time, each group member imagines the vision becoming manifest for the individual. Members can also affirm this reality out loud by saying, “I see your vision coming to pass,” or “I see you as whole and well,” etc.

 

Best Things to Say to Someone Who Is Depressed

It is not always easy to know what to say when a person you care about is clinically depressed. Here are some words to say that will show your support, while acknowledging the person's right to feel his or her feelings.

  1. “I love you!”
  2. “I care.”
  3. “You're not alone in this.”
  4. “I'm not going to leave/abandon you.”
  5. “Do you want a hug?”
  6. “When all this is over, I'll still be here and so will you.”
  7. “Would you like hold my hand and talk about it?”
  8. “I can't fully understand what you are feeling, but I can offer my compassion.”
  9. “I'm sorry you're in so much pain.”
  10. “I have empathy for what you are going through.”
  11. “I am not going to leave you. I am going to take care of myself, so you don't need to worry that your pain might hurt me.”
  12. “I can't imagine what it's like for you. I just can't imagine how hard it must be.”
  13. “You are important to me.”
  14. “If you need a friend, I am here.”

 

The goal of the meeting is to align the group mind with the individual's intention to heal. This in turn will bring forth the Master Mind—a benevolent spiritual energy (see page 282 for an explanation of the Master Mind concept). When the person's intention to heal, the group's intention and Master Mind are all aligned, a loving force is released that has the power to move mountains.

7) If the person being supported is present, ask him to check-in and let the group know how he or she is faring in his recovery.2 During this sharing, it is the role of each group member to listen attentively. The process works best if people do not interrupt or give advice at this time. After the person's sharing time is up, the facilitator will ask the person if he or she would like some feedback from the group. If the person requests feedback, group members can spend some time sharing their perceptions of how the person is doing as well offer advice or suggestions.

8) Finally, ask the person if he would like to make a request for specific support for the coming week. The request should focus on some aspect of his or her wellness program. The group then affirms the person silently or by using an affirmation such as, “I see you attaining your goal and hold for your a vision of your success.”

In between meetings each of group members can aside a few minutes every day to read the person's vision statement and see him or her as whole and well. The process works best if the entire group (including the individual receiving the support) repeats the visualization at the same time of day. Moreover, if the depressed person is having difficulty reading his or her vision statement, some of the group members can volunteer to call the individual at a specified time of day and stay on the phone while he or she reads the vision out loud (see Sherry's story on page 267). Receiving these daily phone from my support team made a huge difference in my recovery.

Over a period of months, this type of daily and weekly focused group support can make a significant impact on your friend's healing. While I cannot provide any guarantee that healing will automatically happen, my experience with this process, both as a patient and as a supporter, has been universally positive.

Examples of Healing

The idea of creating a depression support group first emerged at the peak of my illness when the ministers at the Living Enrichment and my friends and family joined together to see if they could do collectively what none could do alone—i.e. bring about my healing.

Fortunately, I knew about the first recovery principle—setting the intention to heal. During the initial meeting, I wrote out a simple “vision statement” of what wellness would look and feel like for me. The group members then agreed to read that vision statement every day at 9 A.M. while picturing me as whole and well. Over the next six months, my symptoms of anxiety and depression went into a complete remission.

About eighteen months later, I had the opportunity to use these principles again on somebody else's behalf. My nephew Jesse had recently been hospitalized for a depressive breakdown that he experienced while attending his first year at college away from home. His symptoms were fairly severe—he wasn't eating, drinking or speaking. At that point I asked his father, stepmother and friends of the family if they would like to join with me in forming a prayer/support group that would hold a vision of Jesse's recovery. Everyone agreed, and for the next three months we met for ninety minutes every other Sunday evening. During the session, we shared our perceptions of how Jesse was doing and how we could support him. At the close of the meeting we repeated the following affirmation:

Jesse, I know that you are experiencing a safe passage through this dark night of your soul. You notice, accept and receive all the gentle and powerful nurturing from those watching over you on your journey. You are returning to us in radiant health and with glorious treasures.

We also agreed to say this affirmation every day at exactly 8:30 P.M. (Thank God for digital watches with alarms!). Often times, my alarm would go off in the middle of dinner with a friend. I explained that I had set aside a few minutes to say a prayer for a relative who was ill. Invariably, my friend would join with me in speaking the prayer/affirmation.

Three months later, Jesse was well enough to appear at our Sunday evening sessions. At the meetings, he gave us an update on how he was feeling and formulated some simple goals for the coming two weeks. Meanwhile, his six supporters continued to repeat his affirmation at 8:30 pm every evening.

In mid-August, Jesse was discharged from the hospital and moved into a group home. Our group had been met for six months, the exact length of time that the Living Enrichment Group had taken to see me through my condition.

A third manifestation of group support occurred when my publishing assistant discovered that a good friend was experiencing crippling panic attacks. Over a four month period, she, her husband and two friends met with Chris on a weekly basis. His anxiety decreased and eventually he became well enough to return to work. A year later he got married.

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Although the examples of healing that I have shared are not “scientific studies,” they have convinced me that focused group prayer support can make a difference in a person's recovery.3 Because I am wanting to see this type of group support adopted by the mental health profession as a low-cost adjunct to the traditional treatment of depression, I would appreciate receiving feedback from any readers who organize a prayer/support group for a friend or loved one. You may find my contact information on the author information page at the back of the book.

1 The serenity prayer is, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

2 If the depressed person cannot attend the meeting, the group members can spend the remaining time brainstorming ways to be of support to the patient as well as giving each other support in their roles of friend or caretaker.

3 Unfortunately, there are times that despite one's best efforts, healing does not occur. In extreme cases, the depressed person may end his life. (This is what happened with my therapist, Anne, to whom I dedicated the this book.) If suicide does occur, the caregiver may need to deal with guilt and self-blame as well as the grief—through counseling or joining a survivors of suicide group. Visit the SAVE Web site (http://www.save.org/index.html) to find out more about such support groups.