Habits You Unknowingly Do That Trigger Depression

 

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Millions of people suffer from depression. Some are aware of their situation while others are not, and both instances are crucial in dealing with life struggles, even in the relationship. If you have depression, and you’re in a relationship, Michael Brustein, Psy.D. says  “If you feel like they are a good candidate for the long term, you feel you can get very close to them, and they’re someone you could potentially love, then you should tell them.”

Sometimes, you tend to do things because that’s what you know is right and that makes you feel better. But then at the end of the day, you still feel the pressure and stress because your depression stays with you that make it difficult for you to create better actions.

 

Here are the things that you think you’re doing right to avoid stress and depression but turn out to be a triggering factor.

 

Spending Too Much Time On Television

When you try to avoid depression by sitting on the couch watching your favorite movie too often, you give up the chance to decrease your tension, improve your sleep, and stabilize your mood. Therefore, your daily activeness makes a direct effect on your mood through psychological disruption. It creates an impact on your relationship because you tend to fall into the category where you limit your social activity with your partner.

 

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Too Much Browsing Through Social Media

It’s a regular habit that you tend to scroll through your social media accounts whenever it’s your free time. However, it affects your relationship because the more you spend time on your mobile phones or computers, you tend to take away the importance of doing other things with your partner. In some cases, there’s some information on the platform that can make you feel sad, gloomy, jealous, upset, and disturbed and that affects your emotional and psychological aspect.

 

Trying To Skip Meals

One way to deal with stress is by eating healthy and nutritious food, and when you skip meals, you don’t only allow your body to feel stressed but also deprive it of its right to achieve healthy and balanced nutrition. In other words, you only complicate the function of your blood sugar when you don’t have enough to eat, and that will make you feel sluggish, anxious, and irritated. That’s where you tend to have a higher state of depression.

 

Drinking Too Much Coffee

Surely, some studies promote drinking coffee because it helps in boosting your alertness and keep you away from stress. However, it doesn’t serve as a solution to get rid of depression for those people who are particularly sensitive to caffeine. Too much caffeine can give you an upset stomach, sweaty palms, shaky hands, and increased heart rate. Those things are not good when you are experiencing any type of depression. It somehow affects your relationship in a way that you tend to focus on simulations that you think are enough to give you reasons to stay positive, but they don’t.

 

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Avoiding Getting Enough Sleep

To feel healthy and energized, you need at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep. When you deprive yourself from having a good sleep, you only make your depression worse. From there, you tend to have mental dysfunction and low energy level that will hinder you to work on things positively. And when that happens, it affects your relationship because you develop uncontrollable mood swings that can somehow impact decision making.

Counseling psychologist Dr. Monica Cain said that “Physically, depression impacts energy levels. People sometimes feel very tired and want to stay in bed all the time.” This doesn’t even mean that the person is sleeping while in bed.

There are instances that depression is hurting your relationship and you probably can’t seem to notice it. It takes a lot of consideration to control a situation and sometimes, the things you opt to do that you know are helpful are the ones making it worse. So don’t hesitate to ask for professional advice from a healthcare specialist if you think that your depression is taking on your life. “If you suspect your spouse may be depressed, the most important action you can take is to help him or her get proper diagnosis and treatment. That can be difficult, though, since one of the factors of depression is hopelessness; depressed people tend to believe nothing will help. That’s why it’s important that you be persistent.” This was said by family psychologist Kip Zirkel, Ph.D.

 

Reasons Why Depression Is Dangerous In A Relationship

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When your partner suffers from depression inside a relationship, it’s time that you immediately look for ways to address the issue. When you don’t feel the need for assessment, it will guarantee to give you a stressful and failed relationship in the long run if you won’t pay attention. It will make things worse over time and leads you to the point of no return.

Marla Deibler, Psy.D. explains that “Those who struggle with depression tend to isolate themselves from others and it is not uncommon for them to reject help. Therefore, it is so important for loved ones to support those in their lives who are struggling with depression.”

What Can Depression Do?

“Some days you feel well, and other days, darkness envelopes you. You feel achingly sad, or you feel absolutely nothing,” according to clinical psychologist Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.

Depression can change everything up to the point that it takes away all the genuine things in your life. In some cases, it alters your partner’s personality produces negative qualities in him that are harmful to both of you. Eventually, it can also affect you in significant ways as well by putting pressure on everything you do for the relationship. There’s no instant remedy for this kind of mental illness, so there’s a need for assessment, consideration, patience, and adjustment.

“There’s this saying in the industry that depression can be contagious — not in the traditional way, of course — but sometimes when you’re with somebody who doesn’t want to do anything and is always feeling low and down, and speaking about negative things, it can be hard to keep up your own healthy self-care,” according to Clinical psychologist Gemma Cribb.

  • Denial – Depression can cause denial in a relationship. When your partner feels an intense emotional struggle, he might ignore the fact that he needs proper assistance and consider it as an excuse to justify the negative behaviors he does and will do in the future. It will be hard for him to acknowledge the importance of both of your development.

 

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  • Distrust – When your partner experiences a lot of emotional turmoil because of depression, he tends to create ideas in his head that causes argument in your relationship. He suddenly develops trust issues about the things around him and begins to question the importance of commitment, the value of affection, and even your capability to love. He becomes insecure about the future of your relationship.

 

  • Rejection – It is one of the vital problems that you may face whenever your significant other suffers from depression. The mental condition makes your partner lose his interest in everything, including you as well. He then tries to push you away out of his life and isolate himself from anything that can drastically affect his emotional and psychological well-being.

 

  • Sensitivity – When your spouse or significant other is depressed, he becomes pessimistic. Everything around him doesn’t feel or seem to look good. He avoids criticism as much as possible because he doesn’t want to feel emotionally beaten up by anyone’s words or advice. He takes everything seriously and sometimes, even the slightest out of nowhere comments becomes unnerving and damaging for him.

 

  • Irrationality – Depression is a serious state that can make your significant other lose himself. He can get to the point where he would think of you as an enemy and doesn’t want to be with you anymore. In worst cases, he can end up creating decisions that he would regret after. His mental conditional can push him to become unreasonable and unpredictable at some point.

 

  • Stress – Since there’s a psychological and emotional problem accompanied by depression, stress becomes present in the relationship. It helps the purpose of the mental disorder to ruin your loved one’s cognitive state and affect his overall health. It causes him to break down, feel pain, get anxious, and have sleep disorders, among others.

 

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Depression is something that you should not ignore because once it starts to get in your relationship, it is sometimes hard to get it out. So before you end up losing the one you love, make sure that you immediately find ways to get rid of the mental disorder once and for all.

 

Can You Handle Your Depression Alone? (Unspoken Words Of Marriage)

 

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Many people often experience depression in a relationship, and they don’t even notice it sometimes. It causes a lot of complication in marriage because couples tend to feel the pressure when it comes to decision making. In most times, they get preoccupied with a lot of stress that’s why they become less interested in finding ways to overcome their marital issues.

“When one spouse is depressed, a marriage is depressed,” according to Fran Walfish, a relationship psychotherapist.

Life With Depression

Depression is something that you can’t instantly take out of your life. It requires a lot of effort before you can finally say that you’re over it. Sometimes, even if you think you’re not affected, and you don’t find the situation alarming, the people around you may feel differently. The signs and symptoms turn more evident after a couple of weeks (even days), so you may feel exhausted, gloomy, irritated, agitated, and anxious about everything. It may also come to the point when you behave differently and won’t have the energy to function normally.

 

It Affects Everyone

You may think that depression can close its box on you alone, but the truth is, it affects everyone including your partner. The people around you feel the intense pressure of the mental disorder because of your actions toward them. “Many people are living with a spouse who is depressed and are suffering because of it,” says John A. Lundin, Psy.D. Depression can be frustrating and difficult for a spouse to know what to do.Sometimes, you won’t notice that you’re genuinely trying to push your significant other away. You become irrational and out of control and that’s something that they can’t seem to handle most of the times. When it comes to your married life, depression takes everything away from you. As the condition continuously stays untreated, you become a different person. Well, it’s not your fault why there’s a sudden shift in your personality because it’s the psychological effect of the mental illness that harms the function of your brain, making you think and act differently compared to your usual.

 

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Seek Help

There are times that you may feel the need for isolation and that’s okay. However, you still need to consider making the right choice and personally ask for help. Depression can harmfully damage your life when you let it, so you need to be brave and firm enough to handle the situation. Use every help that you can get from people around you and don’t stop chasing for possibilities of a well-deserved mental and psychological development because, in the end, only you can create the necessary changes in your well-being.

 

Don’t Push It Too Hard

“Depression diminishes your ability to connect with your partner and creates doubts about your union,” as emphasized by psychologist Shannon Kolakowski, PsyD.

Trying to push your limits in understanding what depression is all about is also not helpful at all. You need to realize that there’s a need for internalization. You have to know yourself better for you to be able to address the mental illness in a less stressful way. From there, you can slowly try altering the things that trigger your condition and become aware of the things that you perhaps need and don’t need to do.

 

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No one said fighting depression is going to be easy. However, with proper knowledge of what the mental condition can do to you, you can have an idea of the kind of life you’ll want to avoid. And with the help of your significant other, you’ll have better reasons to stay focused on getting better.

Marriage 101: Let’s Talk About Depression In A Relationship

 

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Depression is a mental illness that hinders a person to function normally. When it comes to a relationship, it influences couples to treat each other differently. It can either get them closer to each other when they tend to understand the situation or create complications when the couple ignores the signs. When a relationship causes anxiety, we are groomed to believe our relationship anxiety is the problem. After all, anxiety can strangle love, suffocate it, tear it apart, leaving most of us to believe that relationships and anxiety simply don’t mix,” says Alicia H. Clark, PsyD.

Road To A Better Understanding

When you are in a relationship with a depressed person, or you are the one who is experiencing the mental illness, it creates drastic changes in your psychological, spiritual, behavioral, and emotional well-being. And when couples think about it as something draining and upsetting, they become aware of their capabilities in handling stressful events in their lives. Somehow, it helps them to understand themselves better because it gives them enough reason to fight for the ones they love. “If you feel like they are a good candidate for the long term, you feel you can get very close to them, and they’re someone you could potentially love, then you should tell them, Michael Brustein, PsyD.

 

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Its Connection To Failure Of Marriage

On the other hand, the main reason that makes couples end up with divorce is due to their lack of understanding of things when it comes to depression. They need to stop thinking about the other person’s mental condition as their responsibility because they can’t do anything about it. However, that doesn’t mean they need to stay away from their loved ones just because they can’t seem to handle the tension. Though the mental condition is something unworthy for some people, the person who is experiencing the psychological illness is having a different battle.

 

So Why Do We Complain?

We often complain about depression because it affects how we treat people. Our decisions can end up positive or negative depending on the intensity of the required approach. In some cases, we see it as something that can make us appreciate our strength in dealing with the situation. However, for those people who can’t seem to get out, they think that they are unworthy. Hence, they tend to motivate themselves to do the opposite instead of focusing on the things that matter in the relationship.

 

How Can We Overcome It?

Seriously, there are tons of ways that we can do to address depression in the relationship. However, not all of it applies to everybody. The solutions to the problems vary from one person to another. One way to deal with it is to know where it comes from and what causes it to flare up so we can gradually work our way through the step-by-step process of addressing it without stressing ourselves or hurting the people we love. Understanding your own role in a relationship, learning to sustain healthy relationships, and choosing to end (or not enter) unhealthy ones, are skills that can be learned but often take time and practice,” says Dr. Vince Berger.

 

The Power Of Experience

Even if we think we have all the knowledge that we need to address depression, there will always be a loophole especially when we are not the person who personally experiences the mental illness. We might say that we understand it very well, but it will still require us to feel and experience it before we can make a concrete judgment. We can’t base our decisions on assumptions because it will be hard for us to find solutions.

 

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In general, there are millions of people who are in a relationship that suffers from depression. Some of them are still ongoing, others ended it, and some are still undecided. So if you’re one of those people who suffer from depression or your partner may be suffering from it, you need to address the condition as soon as possible.

 

Steps In Addressing Your Depression (It Can Help Your Relationship)

 

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Depression is a mental state that often refers to an extreme sadness that takes out your energy. It affects your behavior and personality. Depression is not a static illness. There is an ebb and flow to symptoms that many non-depressed people misunderstand.” Says Deborah Serani, PsyD. You occasionally experience doing things that you don’t usually do and sometimes, it even gets in the way of how you treat yourself and interferes with how you handle your relationship. Therefore, it is essential that you know the steps for addressing your situation. Here are the ways on how to deal with your depressive disorder.

 

Know The Cause Of Your Emotional State – When you say that you’re depressed, you need to be specific. You have to determine your current condition and know what causes the depression that affects you as of the moment. From there, you can think of options on how to address the ongoing issue you’re dealing with because sometimes, due to overthinking that you’re experiencing a mental condition, you are just formulating an idea that you’re indeed in the state of depression even if you’re not. The fact is, despite decades of research into this question, scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and research universities around the world still don’t really know the cause of depression.” says  John M. Grohol, PsyD.

 

Address One Issue At A Time – It’s understandable that you want to attain peace of mind and be yourself again. However, pushing yourself in simultaneously figuring out solutions that can address tons of your problems won’t help you. It will only add pressure to your emotional and psychological well-being. You need to address one issue at a time so you can control your behavior and emotions. You need to focus on one available result and cut down the number of your problems to get a reachable goal.

 

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Allow Yourself To Talk To People – When you are depressed, you attract the negativity that comes along with it making you feel that you are alone and unworthy. However, you need to stop doing it. Do not allow yourself to embrace isolation because it will only make things worse. Try to talk to people and open up about your condition. Let them know that you’re willing to change things and show them that you are trying your best to become the better version of yourself. Psychotherapy, or “talk therapy,” is a general term that refers to treating depression by talking through your triggers and responses with a licensed mental health professional.” says Katie Hurley, LCSW.

 

Do Not Be Afraid To Ask For Help – Gather strength from the ones you love and let them become part of your life. Don’t try to push them away because you know it will only hurt your feelings if you do. Ask them to be there for you and let them know how much they mean to you. Don’t let your mental state ruin your relationship with the people that are willing to stick with you in your battle with depression.  Allow them to witness you at your worst so they can be with you at your best.

 

Seek Professional Advice – If you think that you no longer feel in control of your mental condition, don’t hesitate to undergo therapy and treatment. Professional advice from a therapist will give you a chance to understand the things that you’re going through because their expertise will walk you through the process of recovery so you can allow yourself to become more aware of your capabilities when it comes to handling certain stressful situations.

 

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Don’t let depression define the kind of person you are and aim to become a better you. Addressing your psychological and emotional state can guarantee you to have a better working relationship in the long run.