“When I went through surgery and recovery with my brain tumor people brought meals to the house, cards came in the mail, people called. But two years later when I crashed with depression, I felt forgotten. Nobody called and someone in our Bible study group told me that I just needed to get over it,” said Jamie Meyer, author of Stepping out of Depression; Fresh Hope for Women Who Hurt. (Available on Amazon.com)
These healthy friendships can have positive impact on your depression.
When you love someone that is experiencing deep depression it can be exhausting and frustrating. You want to encourage your loved one but don’t want to push them too much. Encouraging them to “push through” but knowing when not to do so is a delicate balance. You might even find yourself feeling the depression emotionally. No doubt caring for someone who is in the depths of depression can feel as though life is being sucked out of you. You can end up having no idea as to how to help or encourage your loved one.
Being focused is essential for getting a lot of different types of tasks done in this life. However, sometimes being intensely focused or “stuck” in our thinking about something is not good and we end up needing to be distracted from it. We need to be interrupted! There are times we can become intensely focused, ruminating over and over on something negative. It’s at that point that we need to interrupt and distract our thinking.
The Bible offers practical advice on developing and maintaining good friendships.
Good friends take time for each other. Friendships don’t occur in a vacuum. “Be devoted to one another…” Romans 12:16. Spending time together doing activities that you enjoy or working on projects together create opportunities to build relationships.
When others find out that I have experienced no symptoms of mental illness for the past 14 years, they usually want to know what I have done and do in my journey to have 14 years of sustained recovery.
When you and I connect with one another, we empower each other to live well in spite of any possible daily battles with our disorder. Individually, no one of us has all the answers. But, together we have solutions for one another. Corporately we have answers for one another as we encourage each other and share what “works” for us as individuals in living well in spite of our bipolar disorder.
Depression lies.
It convinces you, ‘“My friends don’t want to be around me.” “I’ll just bring everyone else down.” “I am not worthy of having friends.” “Nobody likes me anymore.”
When you are depressed, making and keeping friends can be a challenge. But research shows that a group of positive friends makes a difference.
It’s not that we should not have moods or feelings, but for those of us with bipolar disorder or depression (anxiety too) it is because of our brain malfunctioning that without recovery our moods can swing too drastically or get stuck and interrupt our daily living.
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