Is your client smothering under a blanket of depression?

As therapists, we know that depression is an intense, long-lasting, and debilitating experience that affects every aspect of a person’s life. It’s distressing to both sufferers and the people around them. And it can contaminate relationships, work, activities, sleep, and even eating.

When depression settles on a person, it can weigh them down like a heavy, wet blanket.

When a person is under that depression blanket, life is oppressive, it’s difficult to find space to breathe, experiences are dampened, and its hard to muster the energy to lift the blanket high enough to look out.

The joy is sapped out of life.

Everywhere they go, and everything they do, a depressed person lugs that heavy, wet, suffocating blanket with them.

It’s exhausting.

In my experience, there’s three common ways people are likely to deal with the depression blanket:

• Wrapping themselves up in the blanket and dragging it around with them everywhere they go
• Protecting others from their depression by pretending to be just fine
• Putting the blinkers on and refusing to acknowledge the depression blanket

When a person's wrapped up in the depression blanket

You’ve seen these people. They walk through life clearly weighed down by the heavy and suffocating depression blanket.

Everything’s hard for them. They’re easily exhausted. And the glass is always half empty.

There’s a limpness to them, a lack of energy that can be contagious and drain others if they’re not careful. Let’s take a look at an example:

28-year-old Julie knew she felt depressed, but didn’t think she had reason to be . . . well . . . you know . . . depressed, depressed.

Depressed like a depressed person who needs to go on medication and talk to a counsellor. That kind of depressed.

All Julie needed was someone to tell her how to fix her problems, and she’d feel better. Except she knew she was wearing out her friends and family as they tried to help her, and nothing seemed to work.

She just felt tired all the time, kept getting colds and various illnesses, and needed to take sick days and cancel out of things. She was scared people would stop wanting to be her friend, but she didn’t know what to do.

She’d been this way as long as she could remember, but nothing had really happened that she could say: this thing happened to me and as a result, I’m depressed.

So clearly she wasn’t depressed. She just needed to be stronger and take control of her life. Which she would, if she could only work out how…

If someone’s been feeling like Julie has felt for so long, chances are it IS depression. And it’s time to do something about it.

It’s not okay to live your life suffocating under that wet blanket of depression. Life doesn’t have to be that hard.

Protecting others from depression by pretending to be just fine

These people are suffocating under the depression blanket. They take it everywhere with them, but protect friends, family, and colleagues by pretending it isn’t there. Their life is miserable, but their focus is on pretending to be okay to protect others.

Despite the exhaustion of living under the heavy, wet blanket of despair, they force themselves to muster every ounce of strength, to go through life with a smile on their face, as if there’s nothing wrong.

They’re often so good at fooling others, no one suspects how much they’re struggling. Let’s take a look at an example:

Peter was miserable. He knew that stuff from his childhood had affected him all his life. But he was very, very afraid of getting help. It felt like if he told even one person, the floodgates would open, and he’d never get out of bed again.

And he needed to keep going to keep his job and look after his family.

Peter was strong, and was really, really good at pretending that nothing was wrong. He’d been doing that his whole life. As long as no one suspected, he’d be fine.

Except he wasn’t. He often got mad over little things, and his partner complained that he was closed off. It was getting harder and harder to keep up the pretence, but he didn’t know what else to do.

There’s a limit to how long Peter can maintain the façade that everything is okay. The pretence of holding up that cheerful mask is exhausting, and in my experience over time, it only gets harder. Until the ability to manage, slowly starts to grind to a halt.

Peter has every reason to fear being overwhelmed by depression, but shouldering the burden by himself isn’t the answer. Even though he fears the depression will harm those around him, ultimately it will harm them more if he doesn’t seek help.

Put the blinkers on and refuse to acknowledge the depression, even to themselves

Putting the blinkers on and determinedly not seeing or acknowledging depression, is a way of coping for people who are likely to be very, very anxious about what it means to be depressed.

They feel the stigma and shame of depression: depression’s for weak people. They fear depression is one step away from annihilation. They’re convinced depression will turn those they care about away from them.

Perhaps they have an intimate experience with depression: a person in their life who was poorly managed, or undiagnosed. A person whose depression created havoc for everyone around them, or dragged everyone around them down with them.

Their understanding of depression is shaped by a bad or poor outcome. So they don’t acknowledge it, even to themselves. They spend their lives working very, very hard to outrun it.

If they can just work harder, do more, do things to a higher standard, they’ll be okay. They daren’t stop long enough for the depression to catch up with them.

Here’s an example:

At 46, Cathy knew she was exhausted, but she daren’t slow down. If she slowed down, it felt like something terrible would happen.

So she maintained a pace at work that caused other’s to shake heads and wonder how she did it.

She exercised religiously for an hour every day. She organised the kids, her hubby, the house, her ageing parents, the dog, and her best friend within an inch of their lives. She researched the life out of any purchase or activity she or the family were considering. She volunteered at the school. She organised cooking rosters for sick friends . . . you name it, Cathy took it on.

She moved so fast, the family joked she was a blur as she whizzed through their lives.

She couldn’t afford to put her feet up . . . because . . . well . . . something bad would happen. It would be a disaster if the washing wasn’t folded, and the fridge wasn’t stocked with made-from-scratch nutritious snacks.

Does Cathy’s story remind you of anyone?

Cathy has specialised in filling her life past the brim. Her blinkers are firmly in place, and she won’t take them off to see what’s there. She’s too scared.

So she keeps on zooming round that hamster wheel. Round, and around, and around.

Seeking help when you feel like Cathy is extremely confronting. How do you face the very thing you’re terrified of?

But keeping up the pace takes its toll.

People with blinkers on like Cathy may also need extra help and support to get through the dark days that follow the realisation that they’ve been running all this time from depression.

Working with these clients may be challenging but it's ultimately enormously satisfying as together you create a safe space to acknowledge that ghastly blanket of depression, and then start to look at what's weighing it down.

In my experience, it's about the patience to sit under that blanket with these brave but frightened people for as long as it takes to build up the strength to lift a corner of the blanket up and take a peep at what's on the other side.