Cope with the Other’s Depression and Enjoy the Holidays
When someone intimately close to your suffers from depression it becomes hard for you to enjoy the holidays. Here’s how to throw away the guilt and have a feel good time.
When a family member or a person intimately close suffers from depression, you do as well. Nothing feels right. You are always conscious of their troubles. Some people even go as far as to feel guilty about experiencing pleasure. This is a response brought on by a natural emotion called empathy.
What is empathy?
The Webster’s New World Dictionary defines it as the ability to share in another’s emotions, thoughts or feeling. We all have this gift. Caring about someone adds to our sense of empathy about him or her. This explains the feeling of guilt we get when we a person we want to our level of happiness with cannot. Some try to cut themselves off from “the problem.” Denying emotion is not a good thing to do to the mind or your relationship. A core of all motivation teachings from James Allen, author of the book “As a Man Thinketh” in 1904 to the present day expert Anthony Robbins is “you are what you think.” If you keep denying that you care, you will stop caring. The process of emotional indifference is similar to putting the edge of a piece of paper towel right up to the edge of a puddle of water. Slowly, the water saturates the paper towel making it all wet and bogging it down. Emotional indifference over time soaks up your emotions. Loss of emotion and empathy are the deathblow for any relationship.
You have to make decisions that allow both your feelings and let you experience full-fledged enjoyment without guilt. The power is yours. After all is not that, what the holidays are about, experiencing the receiving and giving.
How do you release yourself from the guilt?
You learn how to understand what depression is. Social stigmas portray people who suffer from depression as weak and fragile victims that in need of protection. In your relationship you most likely view yourself as caretaker-helper-protector and guardian. By applying this social dynamic within your relationship, you unknowingly release the other from full responsibility for their own emotions. This includes accountability for their own happiness. No one person can be held prisoner by the liability for someone else’s happiness. A trap many in the depression involvement fall into on both sides. True happiness comes from within. Any opposing ideals are not based in selflessness, as some caretaker-helpers believe. It is a seed that helps the growth of selfishness in which the depressed one comes to depend on.
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