Relationship Advice

If you haven’t yet tried it, you should try telling him how his new state of mind is affecting you, and not just operationally but also emotionally. How is his behavior making you feel?

If he’s old fashioned, that means he sees his role as protecting others and fulfilling his duty. Old fashioned men are more apt to sacrifice their self than to sacrifice another who is in their care.

Your legitimate claim is to his role as your husband. His own life is his own life, but his role as husband is yours to lay grievance against.

Have him read your post (as a letter?) on his own time, while you have explained beforehand that you wrote this while filled to the brim with love for him?

Take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve been going to therapy lately and I feel like most big parts of my healing process can be attributed to reading introduction to internal family systems.

I write a lot to process, but I’ve stopped recently to just sit with my emotions and face them without any distractions. Trying to sit with silence is hard, but the closer you get with genuine peace, the deeper you go. The book helped me understand that I’m all of me, and sometimes that contradicts, and that I don’t need always need words to define experience.

I don’t know how else to help, but therapy’s helped me feel more… real. Not so idealistic as a consequence, and things are scarier that way, but… life goes on.

I’m reading the red book by Carl Jung now. It is very helpful for me in understanding my own “human experience.”

What country are you in? I know you're writing in English, but no clear indication of if that's UK, US, Canada, Australia etc.

If you're in the UK, there's groups such as: Men's Sheds Andy's Man Club

There may also be a set of locally organised, free projects and events (through a recovery college or social perscribing link worker), which you can just turn up to - near me there's ones for walking, birdwatching, woodwork, gardening etc with other men who are depressed/bereaved and struggle to talk about their feelings. The idea being they're all low-pressure interest-led activities with other people in the same situation, and eventually you can optionally open up about stuff, if you want. Sometimes just knowing others feel the same inside helps, even if you don't open up yourself.

There's not the stress/worry/stigma of "actually going to a therapist" - though it may lessen to resistance to doing so later.

Hopefully similar things exist in other countries.

This may help: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame

In short: making yourself vulnerable (such as processing these issues) is courage - it's not weakness

Sometimes us guys need to hear that - I know I personally absolutely hate to break in front of others and that makes processing a very isolating experience that feeds depression unless I'm intentional about that processing

Remember that therapy isn't for everyone, especially not for people who don't want to go to it. There needs to be a will to change things, comming from inside them, and it needs to work out with them in particular. It helps some people, but isn't a requirement. Also, remember that you can't really force someone out of depression, or that you can help them yourself really. It is not you failing your husband when he doesn't get better, it's not your fault that he reacts to you in a certain way. The best things you can do is be a loving wife that supports him. There is no additional burden on you to cure him. Take care of yourself first. Don't be their psychiatrist / therapist, you are not trained to be one and you can say "I don't want to talk about this at this moment" when you are at your low yourself.

I have a lot of strong thoughts regarding the use of therapy. Specifically that I think everyone needs a therapist… everyone. It doesn’t matter how well things are going, and you don’t necessarily have to see them weekly or even biweekly… but someone to check in with from time to time to see how things are going. That way when a struggle does occur, you’ve got a fresh disinterested perspective from someone with the training to help process certain things that go through your mind. Everyone needs someone to talk to sometimes… someone with absolutely no skin in the game who can give the painfully honest answer others might not be prepared to give.

Another suggestion is to see if he’s willing to write out his thoughts. Don’t call it journaling or keeping a diary… just writing down thoughts. It’s amazing what writing things down can do to help you process things. When my grandma passed, it was pretty devastating to me (to be clear, it was absolutely nothing like what your husband experienced). We’d been close my whole life and now more than 10 years later I still find myself blindsided by feelings of missing her. I decided to write a eulogy for her memorial service. It was immeasurably helpful for processing our relationship and what she meant to me and so many others in her life. She was pretty amazing… Maybe that’s the thing… maybe he could write a eulogy for his dad… or something like that. Idk.

It just sucks to go through life depressed and anxious. Life is too god damned short to allow your time to be hijacked by it. If he’d call a buddy to help him work on his car so it didn’t take an entire Saturday to fix, why wouldn’t he do the same to help himself not feel this way?

Good luck to the both of you.

I’m a 35 year old man who has dealt with various mental health issues for years. Mine are more caused by physiological things, and I understand that you’re husbands seems to be more trauma related, but I hope this helps

For me what has helped is a change of perspective. When I started dealing with mental health issues about 15 years ago, at first I was hesitant to medication because I didn’t want ‘fake happiness’ or a pill that changed my personality. Some of that comes from not wanting to feel weak.

What I have come to learn with mental health is the correct treatment does one thing - puts me back in control. My anti depressant doesn’t ’make me happy’ or ‘keep me from getting sad’. What it does do is prevent episodes of depression and lethargy that I can’t control or don’t have a cause.

My ADHD medication doesn’t take away my odd personality, it just puts me back in control of what I focus on and how.

What I’m getting at is that mental health treatments can too easily be viewed as a ‘fix a mood’ treatment, which they aren’t. When done right, they help you be more like yourself and put you back in control.

As a husband and father, I’ve come to realize how my mental disorders (when not handled properly) negatively affect my family. Your husband sounds like a man who values that role as husband. It might help him to know that seeking these treatments will help him be a better husband. I was off my meds for a bout a year and saw the affect on my family, which was the catalyst for me.

If your cars transmission wasn’t working correctly and you had a hard time switching gears (like depression can be in people) working on it wouldn’t be lazy or your fault or giving up. I. The same vein, working on mental health because your brain is having a hard time shifting is certainly not defeatist.

Hope this helps and hope you two are able to get through this together

I absolutely feel for you. It can be so distressing to be with someone who simply refuses to address their issues.

Unfortunately, you can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do. He will not get better unless he makes an effort to do so. You can give all the love and support you can, but there's a point where he simply needs to professional help in order to be healthy, for the sake of both of you.

He's hurting you. Maybe/probably not on purpose, but it's not right.

You need to address that, first and foremost— that you are being hurt by the behavior that's manifesting as a result of his past. You understand it, but you are not equipped to help him heal. If the both of you want to maintain a relationship, he needs to see a professional who can help him through this process. You will be there to support him through that, but, as it stands, you are being hurt if he continues down this road.

If he cares about you and your well-being, he should absolutely go. Is his "pride" worth more than the person he loves dearly?

There's lots of things you are able to fix on your own, but there are cases when you really need to get help from someone who has more in-depth training and tools to deal with more complex issues. Mechanics, HVAC, doctors, electricians, therpists..... they can help. And it's okay to get help.

I hope that the both of you are able to find peace, no matter what happens.

i think clinical depression is when youre depressed while not in depressing situations. seems like his situation is justifiably depressing.

need to start finding some small wins and pleasurable experiences and peaceful/safe respites and some good things to anticipate and achievable goals etc.

change some routines and have some fun.

I went through a period of severe depression following some life-changing events. These changes caused me to suddenly become isolated from my family so my wife was really all I had. I lost my job and struggled to find another one in the industry which only made things worse and made it so that we didn't really have money for therapy. It was a rough few years, but we made it through.

The best thing you can do for him right now is to be there for him and remain his ally. Try to make him smile when you can and give him hope for a brighter future. If you want to do something more pro-active then you could try to keep his space clean or cook healthy meals for him as these things will help with his mental hygiene, but it's mostly up to him to make the necessary effort to get better.

Make sure you take care of yourself, too. Practice good mental hygiene so that you can stay positive and motivated to make it through this. You got this.

It's really difficult to get someone to seek help or accept help. Even more so with depression.

Maybe he sees himself in a pit with no way out and doesn't believe therapy can help him. Maybe he's too depressed to become active on his own accord...

I'd say people like that sometimes need an outside perspective. Have a talk and make sure he realizes the situation he's in. Maybe he doesn't care enough about himself to do anything about it. But he may very well care about you and how it's weighing you down. So I'd try to explain that... How you feel. How it's affecting you and the relationship. What you'd like to be different. I'd say don't judge/argue or push him. In the end that won't work. The decision needs to come from him.

And I'd concentrate on your side of the story. Make it about you and your perspective, less about him. You don't need to tell him your analysis... Some people don't like being analyzed. And I'd say if he's intelligent, he can figure out the connections by himself. So tell him your perspective on him and the both of you and your emotions. And maybe give him some time to make up his mind and get to a conclusion.

You can also offer help, tell him you like him and make it easy for him. E.g. offer to make the first appointment for him. Recommend your doctor to him. Or ask him if he wants to hear how a therapy session works and how it helps you.

Obviously I'm not an expert so don't take my opinion as proper advice. And I'm missing parts of the story... For example: Has he changed? Was he different at some point? Or did you come to the conclusion he needs therapy because you changed or some external factor happened? Also are you able to communicate well about emotions? Does he have any other people who he listens to, that can provide him with their perspective?

(Or maybe he needs to take a different path. I've listened to a few podcasts about depression or emotional wellbeing. I suppose there are also good books about the topic... I mean the hardest thing is getting things going. I'm sure it'll get easier after that, the question is just how to get to the point to do the first step.)

I'm very prone to becoming depressed and recently found out that it's tightly linked to a feeling of not having control over my life. I discovered this after my wife and I decided to make some changes on our dailly schedules to accommodate dailly gym sessions for me, after all other responsibilities are taken care off. Now I have something to look forward to eveyday of the week that I alone control.

It changed my life. There's something primal about lifting heavy stuff on top of having some alone time away from home (children demand a lot from us). Also looking better in the mirror as helped.

This worked for me because exercise is something I'm passionate about. Perhaps it could work for your husband, having some regular activity he enjoys.

Good luck

I was a manic-depressive, with a 2-4d up & 2-4 months down, cycle.

I've experience with profound long-term depression: years & years of it.

There is a mechanism in us that calibrates our brains to the amount, and kind, of light we're immersed in.

the Seasonal Affective Disorder treatment lights angage this mechanism.

Our eyes contain rods ( black & white vision, night-vision, motion-sensing, etc ), cones ( gives us seeing of the yellow-blue contrast & the green-magenta contrast ) AND some pigmented-ganglia ( nerves, that was the term in what article I read years ago ) which reach back into one's brain, which directly alter our state re depression.

Those pigmented-ganglia are most-senitive to the color of a clear daytime sky.

The more profound, & more long-term, the depression, the higher the light-threshold is, that has to be crossed, to get one's brain-chemistry to change.

If one does a simple series of experiments, with mixing "daylight" & "warm white" high-CRI ( color-rendition index ) bulbs, in some place small & bright like a bathroom, one can discover one's threshold, in 1 of 2 ways.

1. easiest, simply put sooo much bulbs in the room, that when one flicks them on, one feels the "kick" of one's brain-chemistry changing ( others have replicated this experiment. I usually found that 150w or more of quartz-halogen light in a bathroom was required, but the "kick" was sooo distinct/clear, that they were instant believers in the mechanism ). I spent years having 500w of fluorescent AND 500w of quartz-halogen light in my main room, of the apartment I was living-in, and eventually my brainchemisty changed..

2. use some kind of light-panel, with a dimmer & a switch, to discover how much light it takes to make one's pupils shrink, then stop-shrinking ( 1st-shrinking is rods/cones, then pause, then 2nd-shrinking is the pigmented-ganglia mechanism ), and when the person's pupils begin shrinking again, as one continues increasing the amount of light, that's the threshold they need to cross. Now switch off the lights, while keeping that dimmer exactly where it is, let their brain stabilize for a half-minute, or so, then flick it on, & see if they feel the "kick", or if you have to go a bit higher..

You can use the light-sensor within your phone ( there are light-meter apps ) to give you a means of identifying if you've got enough light for that person's discovered threshold.

Also, I discovered that "alarm clocks" based on sound are destructive, and you need, instead, to put a pair of timers on lamps:

have a "warm white" lamp come on 1st, & about 5mins later, then the "daylight" one.

Light on one's skin has been measured to affect one's .. is it melatonin? .. that chemical having to do with sleep.

The researchers who discovered that bit, were trying to prove it couldn't, so they were shining light behind people's knees, but it actually worked, so that nuked their intended-result/belief.

Anyways, living in a light-box works against depression, and has much less side-effects than, say, Norpramin ( living zonked was its side-effect ), or lithium-carbonate, but one must cross one's light-threshold, or it doesn't work, and each person's light-threshold is unique-to-their-current-condition.

I'm an old bastard.

Evidence has proven this trustworthy & solid.

Please consider asking your husband to read it.

( it is too exhausting ( unrelated health-problems ) to even comment on a few posts per month, at the moment, so I don't reply to replies .. this year .. sorry. )

I hope this helps liberate a life from the inner-darkness.

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?

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