For those of you who have spouses w/ depression

[KCT]

and other issues, how do you keep from getting sucked into your spouses moods and problems?

Not that we shouldn’t be part of helping them, but when they get negative, blame you etc, how do you stay detached? (yet still love them, of course)

I’m not sure if I’m being clear . I mean detached in the healthy sense - acknowledging what is their responsibility and what is yours.

 

[Feanaro_s_Wife]

**Thankfully my hubby is not depressed, but I do have other family members that I have to deal with. It is often very hard to “detach” myself from their negativity/moods and not take things personally. And the worse mood I am in, or if I am tired or hungry etc, makes it harder. So I guess taking care of yourself would be the number one thing. Keep your strength up, so to speak. Physically (eat right, get lots of sleep, exercise, do things to de-stress etc) as well as spiritually.

As for things like them blaming you… always give them an “out”…a way to save face. Make it easy to apologize. Most of all, try not to over react (much harder done than said, I know!). A quiet " that really hurt my feelings" gets through to them way more than a return of their negative energy. Also something like “that’s the depression talking, I know YOU would never mean to hurt me that way… is there something you’d like me to do for you/help with? I love you”.

It is your responsibility (since you asked) to remain the calm and level-headed one. To always ascribe the best possible motive to your spouse’s actions. And most of all, to be completely honest with them. Jut because they are ill does not give them a free pass to be mean or hurtful or irresponsible. It may excuse some slip ups but they should be trying really hard to not let their depression get the best of them… they need to take responsibility for getting help and sticking with it (whether that be counselling, meds, or both).

I will pray for you and your spouse. It must be a difficult cross to bear when the person you have become one with is suffering.**

 

[maria29]

It’s extremely hard to deal with depression in a spouse. Especially one that refuses to take meds, and thinks that its okay to say certain things and not apologize for them. I try always to remember that it is the depression tallking and making him say those things. But its really hard, I won’t lie.

 

[KCT]

It’s extremely hard to deal with depression in a spouse. Especially one that refuses to take meds, and thinks that its okay to say certain things and not apologize for them. I try always to remember that it is the depression tallking and making him say those things. But its really hard, I won’t lie.

Thank you!

I am grateful that I have a spiritual director who knows my situation. I also frequent confession when I’ve been angry at my spouse. If I didn’t have the benefit of those, I don’t know where I’d be.

 

[dianaballein]

As a newcomer to this thread (the title jumped out at me), may I ask if you know the root cause of the depression? Were they officially diagnosed by a doctor and are they on medication?

 

[KCT]

As a newcomer to this thread (the title jumped out at me), may I ask if you know the root cause of the depression? Were they officially diagnosed by a doctor and are they on medication?

Officially diagnosed by a doc - yes. The rest is more personal than I care to answer on a public forum.

 

[dianaballein]

Ok, I understand. It’s just difficult to give my full honest opinion without knowing the underlying facts.

 

[smallcat]

Feanaro’s wife gave you some great advice above. This is so, so hard- I have struggled with this for years as my husband has struggled with depression on and off. I’m glad to hear you have a confessor and spiritual director- it is so important to have someone impartial to speak with who shares your faith.

I found a couple of resources helpful- one is a book called Depression Fallout, by Anne Sheffield, which is specifically written for the family members of the depressed. If you go to her website (www.depressionfallout.com) you will find a message board that was also quite helpful for me in the early stages of my DH’s diagnosis. It is not at all a Christian book or board, but nevertheless I found great comfort from others’ experiences and advice.

As a wife, I also found Unmasking Male Depression, by Archibald Halt very, very helpful in understanding my DH’s illness and some of its manifestations-- depression in men can sometimes present very differently from what we (or at least what I) would expect. It’s often anger and bitterness, not weepiness and lethargy. It helped me to “depersonalize” a lot of his actions.

For a long time, I lived by the Nike slogan: Just Do It. If the kids wanted to go to the zoo and he wasn’t up to it, well, we went without him. If he couldn’t make it to the couples Bible Study, I went by myself. It meant rather living like a single mom for awhile-- and it was hard. very hard. But it was so much better than what I was doing before, which was living my life circling around his depression, living for that moment when maybe, just maybe,he’d have a spark of energy and liven up enough for a conversation.

I don’t mean to sound like I abandoned him to his depression- not at all. we attended therapy together,we prayed together, I certainly spent many, many hours on my knees alone for him. What I do mean is that I did not allow my life to be taken hostage by his depression.

God bless you in this journey. It is a difficult one. As DH has recovered, I see that our relationship, our family was strengthened by the experience. I pray the same will be true for you.

 

[KCT]

I don’t mean to sound like I abandoned him to his depression- not at all. we attended therapy together,we prayed together, I certainly spent many, many hours on my knees alone for him. What I do mean is that I did not allow my life to be taken hostage by his depression.

Bingo. That’s what I mean. Thanks .

 

[mrsfrazier]

For a long time, I lived by the Nike slogan: Just Do It. If the kids wanted to go to the zoo and he wasn’t up to it, well, we went without him. If he couldn’t make it to the couples Bible Study, I went by myself. It meant rather living like a single mom for awhile-- and it was hard. very hard. But it was so much better than what I was doing before, which was living my life circling around his depression, living for that moment when maybe, just maybe,he’d have a spark of energy and liven up enough for a conversation.

My Dh suffers from depression, and this thread has made me feel better already! Thank you thank you so much for this post in particular–as a young mom I really struggle–most times I feel like a single mom. The hardest time is when DH is at home and I feel that it would be easier if he were at work or school. In fact, I just sent him to NY for his entire vacation to visit his brother because I could not deal with having him in bed all day and irritable for a whole week My big problem is having the bravery and self-possession to really go out and make social connections onmy own. I am not very active in our parish because I feel uncomfortable being seen that way–as a single mom–even though it is inevitable b/c DH won’t participate. How do you explain to others who ask about your husband–I don’t want to broadcast the fact that he is depressed…

This is another situation in which NFP is making things difficult. We have very few safe days because I am nursing, but DH’s depression makes us both afraid of having another child. How did you other moms overcome this to the point where you felt you could grow your family (which i want to do) without DH’s depression making it overwhelming?

 

[nana3]

and other issues, how do you keep from getting sucked into your spouses moods and problems?

Not that we shouldn’t be part of helping them, but when they get negative, blame you etc, how do you stay detached? (yet still love them, of course)

I’m not sure if I’m being clear . I mean detached in the healthy sense - acknowledging what is their responsibility and what is yours.

I feel that I am failing in this area and being sucked into my spouse’s moods and problems. I pray a lot and make use of the Sacraments, but I too feel that I am getting depressed too. It doesn’t help that we both have physical chronic pain as well, but his moods and depression does get to me at times.

I think it was Mrs Frazer that asked how do some continue having children. I too wonder that. I have stopped at one, but my husband’s depression and mental health is only one reason for that decision, the other reason is my chronic medical problems. I do wonder how those who continue having children deal with it all for from what I have seen sometimes more children add more problems to the depressed person. They can’t seem to handle it. I know for sure my dh would not be able to handle more than one child. He admits it too. It is too stressful for him and he doesn’t handle stress either. He is on medication though and that helps tremendously.

It is not easy dealing with a spouse with depression. Sometimes, I feel I am going to fall apart too and I can’t, I have a child to raise.

 

[mrsfrazier]

Nana3, does the medication work for your husband? My husband has been on medication for 10 months now and I just don’t think it’s working. He too admits that he cannot handle another child, I think because the normal acts of caring for anything seem too much for a depressed person.

I have similar feelings that I “catch” his moods, but that I have to be strong for my child. I worry about the effect on my son that daddy’s depression has.

For those of you whose spouses have been depressed for a longer period of time, what effect can you see on your children? Do you shield your children from it, or are you upfront about it? How does that work?

 

[CatholicNerd]

This is a very small contribution from a spouse *with *depression. It may be a good idea to try and find a good Catholic therapist for your spouse and propose the suggestion that they start seeing him or her. My own therapist made a very compelling case for me to continue my discussions with him regardless of how I’m feeling. I’m paraphrasing here, but maybe this image can help your spouse:
*The human person is like a building, and sometimes during our lives we find that our foundation is weakening, cracking, or simply in need of shoring up. Rather than viewing it as a catastrophe, we should view it as a special grace, because there are options for us. There is the divine medicine of the sacraments, which work in ways we can’t even begin to fathom, and then there is a powerful combination of medication and therapy. *

Therapy can be compared to concrete being added to our foundation. Sometimes a bad batch of concrete needs to be broken up entirely and thrown away, and fresh concrete needs to be poured. Medication can act like the wooden framing surrounding the concrete, and it is only to be left in long enough for the concrete to harden.

The one thing we can’t do is sit around letting our building crumble around us. I don’t want to give any of you the impression that I, too, don’t have days where I’m just a walking shadow. But real therapy has helped. My psychologist has a website that might help you or your spouse. It’s ad free, and he doesn’t sell or advertise any of his own works.

guidetopsychology.com/intro.htm#General

 

[KCT]

This is a very small contribution from a spouse *with *depression. It may be a good idea to try and find a good Catholic therapist for your spouse and propose the suggestion that they start seeing him or her. /quote]

We have some excellent, Catholic therapists locally, but he will not use anyone who’s not covered by our insurance.

 

[smallcat]

I realized I didn’t actually answer KCT’s question earlier- how do you stay detached in a healthy way?

I’m not sure that I ever mastered this- it is so, so hard- but here are some things that I learned:

1. Back off. I was constantly wondering how DH was doing, what his mood was like, why he said what he said, if he loved me, blah, blah, blah. Well, I had to learn that eventually DH would open up to me, but it wouldn’t be as fast as I would like. I am impatient, and efficient to a fault. All of my “caring” was coming across to him as “nagging” and made him withdraw even further. So I learned to just back off, stop asking so many questions, and give him more space. He was more likely to come to me this way. I restrained myself by doing things like allowing myself to only ask him once a day how his mood was, or by only trying to have one “big” conversation about depression a week or something like that. Backing off had the wonderful side benefit of allowing me to focus on my own life more (ie detaching).

2.Love is a decision. OK, this phrase gets thrown around a lot and I had heard it and believed it long before DH was ever diagnosed with depression, but when he was down, boy, did I GET it. Every day I DECIDED to love him, because I sure didn’t feel it. He wasn’t often downright hurtful or mean, but depression can make you so self-centered. He was always looking inward to himself and wasn’t able to extend himself in any way- to me, to the kids, to his parents- anyone. Everything external was an effort, so believe me, I wasn’t feeling his love (though intellectually I always knew he loved me). So I decided to love him very concretely. I’m not a great homemaker, but I made the effort to get up a bit early and make him a lunch, sometimes with a note tucked in or a picture from one of the kids. Or I would give him a backrub (something he loves) after dinner. Or I’d clean the kitchen top to bottom (something I hate hate hate doing but something I know he appreciates). And here’s the key it took me a long time to learn:

1. I did these things for him **without expectation **of any kind of reciprocation. I did it because I had decided to love him. I did not expect him to call me from work to thank me for the love note (something he would have done when not depressed), though occasionally he did. I did not expect him to be effusive about the clean kitchen. I did not expect him to feel all warm and fuzzy about my kindnesses and respond by pouring out his heart to me in a wave of emotion. I just did these things for love. Maybe this sounds like the opposite of detachment, but it’s really not-- because I decided very consciously to do these things, and I did not depend on his response in order to decide whether to do these things or not.
2. I continued to **respect him **as a person and as a husband. It was so easy for me to feel anger and even rage at times at him for the way this disease devastated our family- but he was (is) still the man God gave to me to be my spiritual helpmate. The most important role I have as a wife is to help my husband get to heaven. This is such a humbling responsibility, and (easy for me to say now that DH is no longer depressed) I feel privileged to play this part in his life. I have no doubt that he is playing his part in helping me achieve eternal salvation through what he has taught me in this illness.

WRT the kids- our kids were still fairly little at the time his major depressive episode was diagnosed (the oldest was 6), so I didn’t have a whole lot of explaining to do. They were satisified with understanding that Daddy was sick and wasn’t able to play with them because of that. When my eldest asked more detailed questions, I said that Daddy’s head and his brain weren’t feeling very well and that it made him very tired and sometimes angry. I was very careful to tell the kids ALWAYS how much Daddy loved them. One thing I did was to remind DH to tell the kids “I love you” when tucking them into bed at night. I don’t think it was condescending in our case- he needed the reminder at the time to know that was important to them, and they needed to hear it from him. It was actually our kids that prompted DH to first get help. When he started yelling at the little ones irrationally and becoming almost incapable of caring for them at home was when he realized this was serious and he needed outside help.

We struggled with NFP at the time, too, but DH was so disinterested in sex while depressed that it wasn’t much of an issue. Honestly, we still do struggle sometimes with how many kids we can handle- the stress of crying babies, screaming toddlers, demanding kids- it gets to him a lot more than it does to me and brings back depressive symptoms sometimes. I want more kids (like now) and he wants to wait (like a long time) and I’m not sure that I can ever “overcome” this in the sense that I can magically convince him to desire as many children as I do. I think I need to realize (this is a very current struggle for me) that my desire for more kids isn’t the only factor at work here! I need to be sensitive to his needs and weaknesses and we both need to take that into account when discerning our family size.

Sorry this has been so long- I could go on forever. God’s blessings and strength to all of you who are dealing with this.

 

[nana3]

Nana3, does the medication work for your husband? My husband has been on medication for 10 months now and I just don’t think it’s working. He too admits that he cannot handle another child, I think because the normal acts of caring for anything seem too much for a depressed person.

I have similar feelings that I “catch” his moods, but that I have to be strong for my child. I worry about the effect on my son that daddy’s depression has.

For those of you whose spouses have been depressed for a longer period of time, what effect can you see on your children? Do you shield your children from it, or are you upfront about it? How does that work?

Yes, the medications worked for his depression, but not so much for controlling his anger. The doctor had to find the right combination of medications to help him best for both conditions. So if you see that the medications are not working, your dh needs to tell that to his doctor, so that another can be tried or even added.

My dh has been depressed for many years, all our married like, 10 years today, and it is pretty much controlled by medications. What do I see in my 9 year old dd is resentment that daddy and mommy (due to my physical limitations) can’t do more active things. She would like us to be more active physically, like bike riding and etc. But my husband and I do what we can with her like playing board games and rock, paper and scissor and other games. She loves to play tickle with daddy. He has to be feeling physically okay to play that and sometimes he is not and in too much pain. His depression started when he injured himself and could no longer work. He felt worthless. I think he wishes he could work, but he can’t. We both can’t. So we remind our dd the gift of having both parents home all the time and that not all kids have that. I would tell her how I only saw my dad after he got back from work and on some weekends. I remember the good times we had playing tickle too. She is getting older and accepting the fact that she has two disabled parents. I think she handles it pretty well. She doesn’t see her dad too depressed for he handles it with anger and that she sees. I try hard to shield it from her and many times have to defend her when he is getting anger over something silly. What have I seen in her on that part? Unfortunately, anger.

I have had a talk with her about daddy’s mind and brain and how it is not functioning correctly and she understands that. She will get upset and wish she had a “normal daddy” but that is normal I think. She gets more upset when he does things that would not normally upset or bother a mentally healthy man. For example, he can’t stand it if she is listening to music, even Catholic praise music, and starts to sing outloud. It doesn’t bother me, but it drives him crazy. It bothers him if she is making a noise with her shoes while he is driving, a noise I don’t even notice for the radio is on, but it is like he focuses on it and it bothers him. Those are the things that she wishes her daddy didn’t have.

My dh has more than just depression as a mental disorder, as some of you guessed by what I described. But I have chosen to love him, he is difficult at times, but I love him. He really tries to improve himself, but can’t seem to go all the way and I think it is because he can’t. He was abused as a child and that is a lot to forget.

I hope that answered your questions.