Quote:
Originally Posted by EnglishDave
Hi StillIntending,
I am sorry you feel unable to approach your parents for support and to access treatment for your Depression. You and your friends need more help than you can provide each other, but until you feel able to speak up in the Real World (or you reach Majority), know that you have unlimited support here. It is no substitute for Therapy with a Psychologist you have a rapport with, but many of us have had years of experience.
First of all, stop telling your friend to leave you. That is simple to do. It is his choice to be your friend and to try to support each other. If he can accept your behaviour, but is friend enough to call you on it, then accept his decision and be grateful for a good friend. He sounds a lot like me, conditioned to suppress emotions and issues. This is not healthy and he needs your support and patience as much as you need him.
I understand the root of these incidents, an overactive mind, constantly churning. Of course, this will be addressed in Therapy and techniques will be discussed, but there are steps you and your friends can take together before this to help. What may suit you all as a Group is looking up and practising Simple Breathing Meditation. It is a very powerful mind clearing and strengthening technique which is easy to get results from. Practising with your friends will promote encouragement. 10-15 minutes in a session should produce a couple of minutes of clarity to start with, which rapidly lengthens and expands into times when you are not Meditating.
Over analysing, reaching wrong conclusions, distorting information and manipulation of questions could well be symptoms of your Depression. You will need to actively work on curtailing this behaviour, but one thing at a time.
It is good that you accept you are hurting your friend, better that your behaviour causes you pain. That shows you are a good person really, just with issues. He will have a limit, everyone does, but you are now in a position to change so you don't push him near that line.
Work on the Simple Breathing Meditation for a few weeks together, then see how you are for moving on to addressing your behaviour.
Dave.
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Thanks. I will try that. I know I abuse him. I want him to leave me sometimes because I know I abuse him and don't feel I have the power to stop myself, but even this I know is a form of abuse. I punish him for trying to help me. I alternate randomly between assuming that he is invincible and can take any amount of strain I put on him, and deciding to completely change my personality in order to protect him from it. When the former, I do exhaust him, and he has a tendency to run away. When the latter, I fail, because I can't protect him, I'm not mentally strong enough to, and really, I know I shouldn't need to anyway. I just love him so much, damn it all, and I don't want him to feel pain. I would take all the pain he has ever experienced into myself, if that would free him of it.
When the apostle Paul said in Romans that "what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do," (referring to sin nature) I feel he wrapped up how this feels to me rather well. I would like nothing more than to either proverbially or literally, I don't really care which, burn myself up to keep him warmer. But I can't. I literally am incapable of that. I know because I've tried. Instead, I attempt to be the best friend I wan be, inevitably fail, and become a panicked and depressed alter-ego who comes to pummel against his own frail emotional state until we are both exhausted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vonmoxie
Hi StillIntending,
You sound like a remarkably lovely person to me. Terrible people don't put nearly so much thought into how their behaviors affect other people, however, rather than dream of afflicting others with your troubles, you've taken it all on yourself. Not entirely effective, as a good idea would be to consider showing yourself at least as much kindness as you are showing others, but clearly you have a most excellent heart and that's a great place to start. Have you ever read Desiderata? It's the most lovely personal prayer which includes the passage "Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here." It's a reminder I've often needed to give myself.
Regarding relationships of friendship: I believe there is always some intrinsic mutuality there, each gains something from and of the other; we are mirrors unto one another through which we can also know ourselves, and no doubt your friendship has such gains for both you and your friend as well. However, sometimes what our friends gain from us can be mysterious to us simply because we're living on the other side of that coin. I think it's great that you're able to have self-awareness about what you gain, but are also interested in evolving the friendship through that awareness. To me the best friendships are those that exist over time, that grow with us in sometimes new and surprising ways, even while the broader gifts of constancy between who we are to one another also evolve.
I wish you focus and love on your continued journey. And remember, only the very best people are introspective and thoughtful enough to have depressive tendencies.  |
Lol to the last bit. To the rest, very insightful, thank you. I do think he needs me in some ways, but a lot of the time knowing that just serves to make me feel worse in thinking that I can't deliver what he needs of me. If I were healthier I could focus on helping him more, but I'm not healthy, I'm far from healthy, and that knowledge leaves me in perpetual agony.
My username is Still Intending, but sometimes intention isn't enough. He probably stays with me and loves me because of my intentions, because my intentions are where my heart lies and I think he knows that. But unfortunately, my intentions are oftentimes not my reality. The disparity between the two causes both of us much turmoil.
As I think I must have said several times by now, I feel like I'm abusing him. He claims I don't. Given how I've said I've acted towards him, though, how could I not be?