Letter to an Anonymous Reddit Girl

This message was sent to a girl who asked me for advice on helping her clinically depressed boyfriend. I hope this gives you some better insight on where I kind of come from and perhaps you can steal some knowledge from it -AP

Dear Anonymous,

First off, I think your boyfriend must feel really grateful to have such an amazing girlfriend such as yourself who cares for him this way. And I can’t say exactly whether or not this advice will be entirely applicable to your boyfriends situation (not all depressed people are the same xD), but I can say with certainty that it helped me.

A lot of times when I was depressed I wanted to be alone, and I’d push away my friends/girlfriends because I felt somewhat selfish making them share the pain I was going through. I have no doubt in my mind he cares deeply for you and for that reason he doesn’t want to take away from your happiness by making you attend to him every time he’s having a depressed episode.

Talking to him in some ways is a short term fix… As much of a hopeless romantic like me would like to believe, we can’t just find happiness through one person. We need the stability of a whole support group: … Friends, family, lovers, but most importantly ourselves. It’s not your job to make him happy. In fact, that would be unfair to him as well as to you. That would only be a short-term fix for him.

In the end, it all comes down to whether or not he has the hope and drive to make things better for himself. Being depressed isn’t something you can change right off the bat. I had been clinically depressed since I was 15 years old (and back then I, like your boyfriend, started cutting* myself). But I always had hope that things could get better, even though I didn’t know how. I just kept trying 😀 I started doing a few things I guess –

I started thinking more objectively. I denounced my religion (something about fate made me feel helpless and that I was bound to certain limits) and really that’s all that there is to being happy. It’s mentally going through every one of your problems and being able to objectively make them so that you’re able to cope with them. Sometimes you need help with it though (number 3 elaborates on this) I started caring about my physical health – IMPORTANT ONE I am thoroughly convinced that there is a rather big physical (not just mental) component to depression. I run 3-5 miles a day / six days a week, and I went from eating Fast Food 5 times a week to 0 times a week and learning how to cook. Depression creates a really bad positive feedback loop. It makes you feel physically and mentally fatigued so that you don’t want to do anything strenuous (school work, schedule meetings with people, etc.) but then when you realize that the lethargy yielded nothing positive for you you feel even worse and the cycle continues downward. The best way to help break that cycle is by improving yourself physically** I got a good support group. I have an awful family. My dad physically abused the shit outta me. My mom is a crazy conservative christian. So I found great friends. I got a therapist through the school.*** I also found people I could turn to whenever I felt down. And unfortunately that person can’t be you. lovers make things complicated because the risk of losing you is too high and its rather stressful. He needs either a good male friend or family member or I found a great neighbor who is always willing to listen to me (Think Mr Feeny from Boy Meets World). Help him find these people 😀 I started taking antidepression meds. I’m not so sure about this one. I only take them because my family has good mental health insurance and its cheap. I’m not entirely convinced they work, but meh… they’re affordable and it doesn’t hurt to try.

So yeah those are the things!

I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for your boyfriend to take a break from college and try to soul search a bit.****

Lastly, I would also certainly advise asking other people for help. there are LOTS of people smarter/more experienced than me on reddit, although optimally you’d want to seek a wise friend/family member. I’ve found that therapists can be hit or miss. but if you find a good one they can be an invaluable resource.

You are a great girlfriend for taking your time to message me and find ways to help your boyfriend. And you wouldn’t do that if he weren’t an awesome guy, so clearly he is deserving of your presence. But like I said, there is something about you being his girlfriend that makes it so that it is harder for you to help him than say a neutral therapist. But you can help him by exercising with him 😀 Making him think objectively about his problems. And just being there for him when he needs it.*****

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

AP

*as a former cutter there are different forms of cutting. sometimes i would cut just to ease the emotional pain with physical pain (double sidenote: i would often cut myself but beforehand i would sterilize my wrists with alcohol so that i wouldn’t get any infections. talk about safe mutilation >_>) other times i would do it because i wanted to have physical scars to show people how serious my depression is. a lot of time when i would talk about depression with people nobody really understood, because the problems aren’t any worse than the average person, they just seem worse to a depressed person. in fact a lot of happy people i know have worse living situations, but are able to work through them because of their different perspectives on life.

**and you gotta be patient, the fatigue relieving effects of daily exercise don’t kick in until about a month in, the first month was kind of a bitch. I couldn’t put too much pressure on myself. I did it at my own leisure. Sometimes it would only be twice a week. But I tried to keep it as a habit. Now its really easy to just go to the gym 6 times a week 😀

***I’m almost certain UCI will have a free therapy service, every university I’ve been to has had this. Usually they’ll have grad students training to become licensed therapists who help out undergrads. Find out about it 😀

****Success and happiness are mutually exclusive. Your boyfriend has everything he needs to be happy at the moment. He just needs to be able to see that.

*****Also if he asks for you to leave when he’s feeling down the best response in my opinion is “Okay. But I really care for you and if you feel you want to talk I’ll be here for you.”