Depression and Relationships

Depression is a fickle bitch that decides to poke her head in exactly when you don’t want her to. My depression personally keeps me from doing things that I’d like or being as social as a I should be. This is most evidently apparent in my recent relationship where my depression hurt my fiancé who I was living with.

My depression was preventing me from happiness and because of my poor emotional maturity, I hurt her as well. I was in such a deep depressive episode that I couldn’t hear her screaming in pain. I destroyed the best thing that has ever happened to me because I couldn’t deal with my emotions in a competent manner.

The questions I have for today are:

How does one find happiness in the world and maintain it?

How do you grow at the same rate as your partner such that one isn’t left behind or holding the other back?

How does one become aware of their anxiety and depression so that they can ever let their partner down? So that even when you are weak, you can stand up strong for your loved ones?

Finding happiness is a question unique to each and every person. So rather than focus on what that happiness may be specifically, what if we instead asked how do we find it in this world. This world where it is so easy to screw up and fall behind. A world that already feels impossible to get ahead in. I only found my true happiness through the loss of it. My personal happiness is my fiancé and dogs. I was an asshole and I disregarded her feelings because I didn’t understand them. I threw her and her feelings aside which is the worst thing that I could have possibly done. I want her and our animals to be a part of my life forever, but I need to keep them happy, so how do I make them a priority in my life despite whatever depression or things that I might be feeling? I am still trying to answer that question. The only answer I can come up with is that you have to work for it. That means that I have to fight my depression each and every day to put those in my life that I love first. It’s an extremely hard process, but when faced with the reality of losing my loved ones given my inability to evolve, I found something deep in my soul that was calling out for them and only them. Now that I have discovered what makes me happy, I am going to do everything I possibly can to prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again. But how do you do this when people grow at different rates?

It is hard for me to picture long term relationships. There are many reasons for this, but I think the biggest worry that we all have is growing apart from each other over the course of time. How can we grow at the same relative pace as our partner so that no one is left behind or being dragged along? The answer I have come up with is love. You have to love that person more than yourself, more than anything in your life so that you are always working for them and their happiness. This didn’t work too great for me because I was not an intelligent listener. I couldn’t hear the pain in my lovers voice saying that she needed more from me. Now that I am alone and have reflected, it has made me want to do therapy. I want to work on myself so that I can always be the one to pickup when things get hard. I need to focus on all the things that I struggle at like empathy, emotional understanding, and communication of my feelings. There is no way to just know these things without understanding and feeling the negatives. I used to turn my emotions off and I could just walk away from whatever or whoever was in front of me. This prevented me from growing for the longest time. I am now on a path to figure out how to satisfy myself on a daily basis so that I can not only support myself, but also those around me.

How do we notice when we start entering into a depressive episode? This is something that has taken great time and practice. It is a skill only developed through self awareness. In the same aspect that I used to cut off my emotions, I would could no longer feel anything. This prevented me from being able to acknowledge and understand the various emotions that I have. Since it is hard to monitor yourself over a long period of time, I suggest either listening to those around you or creating a daily schedule for yourself. If you listen to those around you, it could be phrases like “I’m concerned about you” or “I haven’t been feeling happy or loved”. Those phrases are major tell tale signs that you need to start looking for outside help to identify and correct the factors that are changing in your life. It is impossible for any individual to be acutely aware of everything going on inside of them ranging from vocal tone to sleeping patterns, so you have to ask for help. The other method is having a daily routine. This sounds difficult because life is so busy and things are always popping up, so instead of a detailed line by line schedule, prioritize a checklist. Each day focus on getting that short checklist done. Mine for example has items like: brush your teeth, make the bed, workout. Nothing too crazy or time consuming; just little things that add to your daily health and well being. Where this becomes a tool for noting peaks in anxiety and depression is when you start comparing how you’re feeling with what was checked off your list. If you notice that you’ve eaten out more times in a week or you've been putting off doing the dishes, laundry or even skipped working out. These are all signs that there is something more affecting you. So now you need to circle back round to the support network that you have around you where you can safely ask, have I been different? What has changed? Why am I acting or feeling this way? I am now asking myself these questions every single day. I am growing so much as an individual because I am asking these questions. I am growing particularly fast at the moment because I have always rejected feelings or notions of this manner. However, after throwing my family away because of one of my depressive episodes, I had a choice to lose everything or to grow as a man and an individual.

These are impossible questions to answer. Not to mention the fact that their are infinite correct answers possible. I want to be better for those that I love so that I can keep them in my life forever. How do you approach these questions for yourself? How do you notice when you are entering a depressive state where you feel like you're being drowned? How do you put the people you love first in your life? I would love to hear your answers and maybe I could even put some of them to use.