
Reaching my limit - Page 2 - Carers UK Forum

Reaching my limit

For issues specific to caring for someone with mental ill health.
Jenny . Hi - I think the answer lies in her changing the timing of her medication and seeing and hearing how much worse or unlucky other family members have been recently. (Schadenfreude?).
Oh dear, I'm probably going to sound like a right cow, and totally unsympathetic etc etc, but I truly do think that everyone with depression should be frogmarched round a children's hospice - and then asked 'OK, still think your life is miserable???????????????????????????????????'

(I know, it's more complex than that - apparently! - but all the same 'Gratitude Therapy' is a recognised way now of tackling depression, and to my mind it's an excellent one!)

So, if seeing other's worse off than her has rung a bell with your wife, great!

(I think that Schadenfreude has the implication that one is GLAD to see others suffering, rather than feeling relieved on is not suffering as badly as they are!) (I think?!)
That wouldnt work in my opinion Jenny, its like saying all the poorly people with broken legs/cancer etc should be shown people on their deathbeds.When you have depression your ill and feel ill as well, its not like a choice thing.
Alex can your wife try to work out what it is thats causing her depression and address this?, when I was depressed that was the only thing that worked for me.Also does she have any interests or helpfull friends etc. I would be encouraging her to go out with friends or do things like an interest/hobby which she enjoys. This would hopefully have a positive effect on her and would give her some pleasure and lift her mood.
Also you need to have time away from your wife as well, no one can put up with being dragged down by a depressed person 24/7. I think you need to explain to your wife that she has to make some efforts towards improving her situation as you cant go on like this.
From what I've read and heard, Gratitude Therapy is a recognised form of therapy. Maybe it won't work for some personalities who are entirely self-focussed and negative, and of course those who have a high quota of 'secondary gain' from being mentally ill, but nevertheless, it remains a viable option for many.

Depression is a highly contentious issue, and probably comes in as many forms as there are personality types!

And I see no reason GT wouldn't work for physical illnesses as well - there's always, sadly, someone worse off than ourselves, and whilst of course we shouldn't be glad they are, we should also be glad we aren't!

In the end, it just comes down to what works - in my own book, anything that helps lift the mind is worth considering! Even if we don't understand why it works.

But, like I say, it's a contentious issue, I'd be the first to agree to that!
Jenny, I think gratitude therapy means being grateful for what you have, rather than going round seeing people with broken legs! Have you got a source for your suggestion?
I know you don't really believe in depression, but if it was as easy to snap out of it as you always suggest, I don't think it would be such a problem.
I'm not talking about myself as I don't suffer from depression.
I do have a friend who broke both her legs recently falling down some crumbling steps, but I am going to wait for her to recover before I see her.
Greta, there's quite a bit on Gratitude Therapy on the Internet, not all of it 'whacky'! The whole point is to attempt to develop a state of mind that 'shifts' the person with depression from focussing on what is WRONG with their lives, to what is RIGHT (and there will be so, so much, even something as 'simple'....!....as sight).

We know that depression is a deep dark hole that sucks you deeper and deeper, and the point of GT is to try and provide a ladder to reach yourself up with. Partly by a 'habit' - eg, writing a gratitude journal - and partly, yes, by moral will power.

The monster of depression 'wants' us to be negative. That's why anything 'positive (eg, gratitude for our blessings)' is a weapon against it.

It 'wants' us to feel powerless and helpless - so ANY form of 'empowerment' is a weapon against it.

It's all about changing brain chemistry - if that can be done, or started, with pills, then excellent. The rest, after all, does have to be done by the patient themselves, by whatever means. They can't be 'cured' from outside - only they themselves can 'cure' themselves. And belieiving that is possible is, as I say, a weapon against depression in the first place.GT is only one of an armoury of weapons that can collectively help free the victim of depression.

However, as I fully admit, the intermix between the 'abnormal' state of mind that is depression, and any 'actual' power to do anything to change that, is complex.

My own personal bottom line, like I say, is ANYTHING that works is worth trying out! Especially when depression takes a toll not just of its immediate victim, but of those who are in contact with them. Worst of all, the longer one is depressed, the more 'normal' it seems, the more 'freedom from depression' seems impossible.

I wish everyone with depression as well, well, well as can possibly be, for as long as can possibly be. I dont' for a moment disbelieve it is a very dark, malign force in the lives of all too many, but believing that it is 'incurable' is playing into the hands of that force!

Guess it all does boil down to how much power we do actually have over our own states of mind.....and that in itself is highly debateable still.
It was new to me, Jenny, but I did google it before I wrote. It was the looking at people with broken legs that seemed unreliable advice to me.
No no! That was the analogy with physical illness/injury! Mine was with visiting a child's hospice - no sadder place on God's earth, surely, and surely, if anything could teach us to value what we have, it must be that......

(Though, yes, I also concede that if any place could plunge us into despair at the state of the world and humanity, it would be that.....)

Just to say, I know I so often sound 'hostile' to depression, but that is to DEPRESSION itself, NOT to those who are afflicted with it! I just think that when it comes to physical illness, we are limited in what we ourselves can do by way of 'cure'....but with depression (and I don't mean distinct mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar), it is 'ourselves' at our mind's core, that is afflicted. And yes, if the very instrument of ourselves is 'altered' then changing that ourselves (with therapies and so on) is a huge, huge challenge -BUT, unlike physical illness, we 'are' our minds, it's who we are, and that, surely, must at the very least provide a 'potential' for 'cure'.

If 'mind' itself is pliable, and plastic, then it gives potential for change in a positive direction, as well as a negative one. Surely, above all, we have to believe that depression is potentially curable - because to do otherwise is, as I would say, a victory for depression.

Anyway, that's my credo - and I'm all too aware that actually, my 'optimism' about life and problem-solving could be nothing more than my genetic inheritance, the 'luck of the draw' and so on. And something not all are blessed with, so all my 'You can do it!' Gung-ho encouragement could well be entirely and completely useless. As useless as telling someone with a broken leg that by sheer effort of will (etc etc) they could run a marathon....

Anyway, anyway - so sorry, I've hijacked someone else's thread, so will back off.
This all seems to have got deeper than I intended. I'm sticking to the hope that the modified drug timings help .
I have visited a children's ward (hydrocephaly) many years ago when at uni. I had managed to push that memory deep until these posts. I don't think that would help.

However , karma or something is at work . I arranged a weekend break that she wanted, (Andre Rieu - show plus hotel) and she had some second thoughts having a heavy cold and cough , etc.
But, we got a text while en route , to say the performance had been cancelled!