| Here’s winter: we turn into bundled stick people living with dramatically reduced sunlight, heading for festive occasions with Uncle Awful and Aunt Shrill. And depending on your ethnicity, throw in some New Year navel-gazing. It’s no wonder that many of us are depressed this time of year.
An estimated 25 per cent of North Americans suffer from the winter blues. Feeling sluggish and sad, struggling to get out of bed and craving carbohydrates are just some of the markers of a subtype of major depression known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
But rather than reviewing the usual interventions for winter depression, I’d like to shift focus from the sufferers to those around the sufferers. You suffer because you care that they suffer – you are the vicarious Meta-Sufferer, if you will.
I sympathize with you, I really do. It’s hard to know what to do when that former plucky friend is sad, drained of energy and withdrawn. Sometimes our desire to help leads us to make perky suggestions and offer unsolicited advice. You begin to feel frustrated because your friend doesn’t follow up on your recommendations and may even withdraw from you further. There are reasons for this. A person with the winter blues is already hyper-aware of their emotional heaviness and its sharp contrast with your sunny mood. Pressure on depressed individuals to think, feel and behave differently emerges from our own discomfort and helplessness with others’ heavier feelings. Sometimes this leads to the desire to "fix."
It’s important your friend spends some time in the company of others, gets outdoors into some fresh air and sunlight, and gets moving in manageable ways. Bear in mind that even small tasks might feel like performing in a jaunty Gap commercial. The last thing you want to do is undermine small efforts with well intentioned – but careless – conversation. I recall a wise grad school professor’s mantra: "I will not ‘should’ on myself and others today." The following unhelpful statements are, well, rather "should-y:"
· "Be grateful. Some have it worse than you do." Depression is not ingratitude or the inability to handle challenge. Depression is challenging. All this "At least you have your eyesight/legs/own two hands, etc." only deepens the guilt often associated with depression.
· "You’ve got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Oh, if only we buried this frontier work-ethic stuff with the bootstrap.
· "Try to think positively." "Cheer up." Mindlessly issuing directives about changing thoughts or feelings is naïve. If a depressed person could do this on demand, they would. It’s not that easy. Often thought processes and concentrating is exactly what are disrupted. Has telling someone how to feel ever changed how he or she feels (other than adding guilt)? For example: "Just stop caring so much about your depressed friend." Ineffective, right? Try sentences that acknowledge and validate what is difficult, like: "It’s hard for you to watch your friend struggle."
We need to shift from this "fixing" mode to one of acceptance and support. It’s interesting that as a culture we tend to be more accepting of grief-based sadness. Try to extend this same acceptance – after all, many sufferers describe feeling additional sadness over the temporary loss of their former happy selves. Listening and just being with someone in their struggle might be very difficult for "chronic fixers," but is, in actuality, enough. The Wise Professor also said: "Don’t just do something, stand there!" It’s OK to set limits on the amount of support you give. Remember to take care of yourself, too.
Janet McMahen is a chartered psychologist with a private practice in Calgary. The foregoing is not intended as professional advice and may not represent the views of psychologists in general. |
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