Surviving A Household Of Depression?

[Emilie]

I would love to know if/how any of you have dealt with family depression.

Some backstory...I'm living with my in-laws. They are both (mother in law and her boyfriend)widowed, and one has PTSD(I believe) as well. My husband's brothers are depressed people as well. They all have addictive personalities. I'm the only person seeking help, so they all center the focus around me and my husband. They gossip about my depression and PTSD and past-I think in part because they refuse to see it in themselves and want to draw the attention away from themselves. But I can't stop loving them-I guess because I was raised to love broken people.

I know it's a bad situation I need to move out of, and that I need to stop being so supportive of their behavior, but at the moment my hands are tied till December 5th. And do I really feel like stirring the pot? Does anybody have coping strategies for dealing with depressed behavior? I always retreat to my room but it's hard with kids. Whenever I am around them I feel like a vortex of negative energy is sucking me in, I can't help but feel their pain and despair. I try to counter it with loving gestures, and it works for a minute, and then they think I'm up to something or being neurotic. Like I'm trying to suck up or blow smoke up their butts. When all I'm trying to do is make things easier for them and try to make them happy. Then when I decide I have to stop being so nice, or I'm too exhausted to carry on, they get nasty about me not doing those nice things for them, like I "owe it" to them. Then *I* become depressed myself because I feel hopeless and trapped.

By the way, I take kindly to harsh criticism. I'd rather know what to fix than to never know.

 

[anthony]

If the depression is external, then there is little you can do directly, as each of the persons must change themselves... out of your control.

There are obviously more sarcastic ways to be around depressed persons, being when they provide a negative, you provide a positive. If they're being dreary and worst case based, then you go to the opposite spectrum.

That is a psychological game, and not something I would normally endorse or encourage, but each situation must obviously be measured on its own merits.

The desired affect will possibly be wills of who will win, negative or positive. When persistent, they will usually give up saying much around you, because you will be considered "too positive" for them.

There are other pro's and con's with this... but it works when done with belief.

 

[Hashi]

I'd say something a little different from anthony, which is to aim for neutral.

You indicated that being straightforward is OK, so I hope you don't mind me saying that you sound a bit hooked into this. What would you need to let go of in order to disentangle yourself? Could you accept that everyone isn't going to be happy? (Because they aren't anyway.) Can you acknowledge their despair and let it be what it is, without trying to fix it? Is your self image tied up in being a "nice" person? Is your sense of safety tied up in making everything all right?

You can love people and stay away from them. If you really can't physically remove yourself until December, then I think you need to work on mentally and emotionally detaching now. You can already work to stop being so supportive. For example, how does the day start with them? Can you run through it in your mind and imagine what you could say to them, and to yourself, in order to not engage with their demands? What can you predict they'll say and do? Plan and rehearse in your mind a different way to respond/not respond - be breezy, vague, direct, quiet, change the subject, or whatever you think would be effective. Plan for how that might make you feel at first, and how you'll deal with that.

Something I do is imagine somebody I think would deal with a situation very well - a friend, a TV personality, my therapist, a cartoon character, anyone I can imagine being able to brush it all to one side without being bothered about it. Then I imagine the situation and what everyone might do and say, and I practise "being" the person who can brush it aside.

Something else you could try - if you felt you wanted to - is visualising something to protect yourself from the vortex of negative energy. You could imagine a protective shield, or light, or your feet being firmly attached to the ground like the roots of a tree, or any idea that works for you.

Roll on December, though.