My husband is clearly depressed. He is also a proud man, and some degree of old-fashioned. I am 4 years younger than him, and am far more open to the idea of therapy and medication.
For context, he has dealt with his dad (whom he was close with) committing suicide when he was a teenager, a long-term girlfriend (whom he really wanted to marry) cheating on him with multiple men (including a good friend at the time) for years, and his best friend of 10 years (my brother) dying in a rafting accident that we were both part of. I’ve been struggling personally myself, but I have a few different things I’m trying, including therapy. He is unwilling to try therapy or medication, but isn’t getting better, cause holy shit, that’s a lot of unprocessed shit to deal with.
It’s manifesting in really nasty ways, and hurting both of us. I don’t think he means the things he says; I think he’s hurting a lot and doesn’t know what to do.
For what it’s worth, I really have not been great to him or myself. I’ve been dealing with my own emotional baggage, but I’m not going to get into that. I’m working on it, and feel like after many years of work, have come through a breakthrough where I understand that I do in fact want this person in my life.
How can I help guide him to anything that will help him? Doesn’t need to be therapy, medication, or a psychiatrist. Those do seem like the obvious answers, but I’m open to virtually any suggestions.
This man is amazing and a wonderful person, but he’s really struggling and doesn’t seem to want help, but at the same time, seems like he needs/wants help. Any thoughts?
Edit: I’m really touched by all of the thoughtful responses I’ve received. I don’t like to talk about my marital issues with people in my life, and I know my husband wouldn’t want others to know what he’s struggling with. This is a great community.
I’m slowly working my way through each response. Seriously - thank you all.
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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.
Your last paragraph is something I haven’t thought of or heard before. I’ve been wanting to respect his boundaries on this, and have been struggling to feel like I have any right to say anything.
You’re also right that often times, being direct and honest is the best approach. I just need to take some time to think about the right words to say.
Thank you.
A similar success story:
My dad is in the early stages of dementia. This has been quite draining on my mom. As a result, she had been pushing him to go to a kind of day care for dementia patients. She tried over and over to convince him by telling him he would like it there, with absolutely zero success. My dad is way to stubborn to admit such a thing.
Eventually she told me about this, and I advised a change of strategies: tell him how he can help you. Focus on your needs, not his happyness. Because, although he is stubborn, he is also the kindest and most willing-to-help person I know.
She ended up telling him telling him, how she needed some time for herself, where she didn’t need to worry about him.
I now have some pictures of him, where he is smiling his ass of while on an excursion with the group of the daycare. Mom was absolutely right about him liking it, but it was useless as an argument to convince him.
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?
This is great. OP is at the end of their rope, pleading to strangers for help at this point. He will understand that, surely, conceptually. OP does not out their partner in any way.
This feels like a good way to open the conversation, in my opinion.
Like I mentioned in my reply to the original comment, this is a terrifying thought. Your support is helping sway me in that direction. Thanks for your response.
My pleasure. Like you said in your response. You were hoping to be anonymous so you could be completely honest.
Completely honest.
That’s what I feel is best when it comes to these things. Something has to give, and you have to be honest about it. It’s scary but necessary.
I’ve done some similar complete honesty stuff in my relationship when my partner was completely stressed out and I felt like this won’t work out unless we talk and I lay everything on the table about how I feel.
It was nothing but positive, in the end. Knowing what feelings your partner has is very important.
I wish you the very best!
This response has terrified me the most. I guess it’s because I didn’t write this post with the thought that he’d see it. On the contrary, I was relying on the full anonymity for me to be honest, and for me to receive honest responses.
That being said, maybe you’re onto something… these are my unfiltered thoughts and feelings, and I truly do feel nothing but love for him.
I’ll need to think about this suggestion more.
Thank you very much for the response.
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.”
I don’t comment/post online much. I’m depressed and I think my girlfriend hates me, but these upvotes give me hope. Thank you.
If you find something that helps, please let me know. I’m so tired.
The thing that prompted me to write this post was that my husband admitted that he felt like I was mad at him and didn’t want him around.
We play Project Zomboid together with my brother, and while the three of us were building out a sick base in Riverside, my husband drove out to West Point by himself to find new adventures. Little odd, but no problem - in the morning, my brother and I made the journey to meet him at a new base he was creating. When we got there, we started scavenging around for wood/supplies/etc for the new base, and were working together to set it up. Next thing I know, he’s driving to Louisville by himself. If you’ve never played the game, that’s the big mama jama city with all the zombies, but also all the goodies. When we logged off for the night, I asked him what was up with that? Honestly, I was upset that he didn’t even ask if we wanted to join. After several minutes of back-and-forth, he let me know that it’s because he knew my brother and I didn’t really want to do anything with him. That we didn’t actually want to drive to West Point, and that I was mad at how little progress he made before we got there. He knew that I felt he should’ve had the generator running, several rain barrels that were all plumbed, and some sort of a cooking station. This was all news to me because I absolutely didn’t feel that way, and was just trying to catch up with him cause I wanted to play with him.
Sorry for the ramble, but I’m trying to illustrate how the depressed mind can work. I went from feeling frustrated to heartbroken when I understood that he just thought I was mad at him and didn’t want to be around him. It was so far from the truth, and I know that it was so far from how I acted. But that doesn’t matter- all that matters is how he perceived it.
I’m not sure what the story is with your girlfriend, but please keep in mind that it’s very possible that your mind is misconstruing things.
Best of luck to you. If you wanna talk, please PM me, or please feel free to hijack my post. :-)
My husband isn’t much of a writer, but he does like reading, so I’ll suggest that he give intro to internal family systems a try. Either way, I’ll do that myself. Your response was very insightful, and I need to be better at understanding and processing my own shit.
At the end of the day, you definitely helped at least one of us. :-)
Cheers, friend.
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.
Thank you for your response. We live in the US unfortunately, but I’m interested in seeing if we have something similar.
I’m not sure that he’d actually go for it, but if we do have a resource like this available, it’s certainly worth providing him the option.
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.
Reading your response has made me a bit self-reflective. As I mentioned in my post, I have not been great to him. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for a little over 1.5 years, and it took a huge toll on me. What I went through is nothing compared to many other people, but it was enough to be something that damaged me. Because of this, I’ve struggled to understand the very message you wrote to me. Thank you so much for what you said.
That being said, he means so much to me. I agree that in general, one shouldn’t go to detrimental lengths for others without keeping themselves in mind, but he has genuinely done that for me. I feel like it’s my turn to do that for him.
But building off what you said, it doesn’t need to be a vicious cycle. We both need to learn to love ourselves, so we can love each other properly. I fully believe we will get there - it’s just a little rough right now.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. It’s helped deepen my feelings of love and support for this man.
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.
Loss is never a competition. I can tell by your words that you know that pain; it’s immeasurable and incomparable.
It’s always worth repeating, “Life is too god damned short”.
Thank you for that reminder, and your thoughtful response.
Hope things are improving for you and your family.
They actually are. I tried talking to my husband about a lot of the suggestions I was given in this thread, but he wasn’t very receptive to really any of it. I’m trying to keep in mind that he comes from a background where being depressed and struggling emotionally is considered mental weakness. Not to mention, I feel like it’s really hard to accept you need help (or even feel like you can be helped) when you’re extremely depressed. But I said my piece, and he at least listened to everything I had to say before turning it all down. In the past, he would have cut me off to turn me down.
Maybe doesn’t sound too optimistic lol, but when I saw him shut down those advances, I tried one of the other suggested approaches where I made plans for things that I know he loves. We go bouldering together and we love it, but had kinda dropped off due to depression on both our ends, but I started getting that routine going again. He had also mentioned that one thing he was struggling with was understanding what he was working towards, because he couldn’t see any clear goal in mind. He just feels like he’s going through the motions without actually moving or progressing anywhere. We used to always do projects, but again, that had kinda dropped off due to depression and just life being busy. So I took the initiative to start a “Life List” outlining the projects we need to do, want to do, and just other fun things we’ve been wanting to do. Goal was to get the ball rolling so that we could both build this list together, prioritize, then essentially plan it out on a calendar to create realistic objectives.
I’ve never been good at planning - I’m more of an “on the fly” type person, but I see that he needs help getting going with this, because this is important to him.
Anyways, all of these gestures seem to have helped pull him out of the deep darkness, and he’s starting to feel more like himself again.
I know that the goal isn’t to get back to exactly where we were, but I feel like things are a little bit better in the sense that he’s been opening up to me a little more. Sharing more about his feelings, and more importantly, being honest about them. It’s a huge step in the right direction, because he in general seems more comfortable with addressing his feelings. Hopeful that in the future, he’ll be finally willing to open up to a professional that can help him work through his deep-seated trauma. Especially hope that he has the confidence and knowledge that I’ll be by his side the whole way (not literally, of course).
Sorry for the ramble. Means a lot that even though you don’t know me, you had the thought to check in. You and everyone else in this thread have been truly amazing. We’re not making leaps and bounds here, but any progress is good progress. :-)
Yeah, I’ll sometimes scroll through my comments for fun and came across our little conversation again, and thought I’d check in. I couldn’t be happier to read that there’s genuine progress!
When we watch those we’ve chosen to share our lives with struggle, it’s an intense burden to bear. Especially when you often feel powerless to help. I’m a helper and a fixer. My wife struggles with a lot, and it’s been something for me to walk that journey with her. But I’ve also seen her grow and improve her mental (and physical) health and I can take pride in knowing that I was able to help in some small way. She might tell you I had more to do with it than I did, but she’s the one who put the work in. She’s also led me down my own path of mental health awareness and personal discovery. I say all that to say this… we can’t fix our partners, but we can be supportive and enabling towards them helping themselves. I loved your “ramble” because you speak your husband’s language and know how to enable that for him.
It really fills me with joy to see steps in the right direction.
Thank you for sharing a little about your own journey with your wife. I’m really happy to hear that y’all are in a better place now. I feel like too often, I hear about the couples that didn’t make it through something like this. Things like this certainly put a huge strain on a marriage, and many times it’s going to be what makes or breaks a couple.
I hope my husband and I are able to come out of this stronger as individuals and as a couple - like you and your wife. I think we’re definitely headed in the right direction.
Cheers!
Well, from what you’ve told me, you’ve got about as good a chance or better as any other couple I’ve seen. Your own strength to stay by his side through this says a lot about the person you are, AND the person he is. It says you’re the kind of person who willing to fight for the important things, and he’s the kind of person worth fighting for.
I think a lot of folks don’t take the whole “in sickness and in health” part seriously. I genuinely try not to judge folks because you really never know everything that goes on inside a marriage that isn’t yours, but I have a hard time not judging when I hear of couples splitting amid physical or mental health issues. Like… that’s what the vows are for. That’s why making the commitment is important in the first place. Because shit will get hard and it will be harder for some than others. If there’s no commitment, there’s no marriage.
But one thing is for sure… while we are definitely in a really good spot now, we’re not past it and we never will be. That’s why commitment is so important. One of the things I do is stick around and that’s probably the biggest piece of what I contribute to her progress. I fuck up for sure… and some of that makes her mental health trip up. One time, I forgot to fill one of her meds that has really bad withdrawal symptoms around Christmas (and she already really doesn’t like Christmas for a lot of reasons). It was when the face tingles started that I realized she had the med in nearly a week! But I ain’t going anywhere. Doesn’t sound like you are either.
I’m more fortunate than most, I’d wager, but I’ve watched several people close to me suffer in what, to me, were previously unimaginable ways.
Good luck with everything. I’m thinking of the both of you. Lots of good advice in this thread.
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
Thank you very much for the link, and for providing male insight. I just shared this with him, and he says he’s willing to give it a listen.
In the vein of what s3rvant said, being vulnerable to anyone is scary because opening up and being rejected or dismissed is terrifying. At least that’s how I feel. I don’t open up to my wife anymore. She’s burned that bridge. I was hesitant on therapists until my 30s. Once I warmed up after a few sessions and realized he wasn’t going to insult me or blame me or leave me because of how messed up I am, it was nice.
I’m sorry to hear that you feel like you can’t open up to your wife. That’s gotta be rough, but based off your description of her reactions in the past, I totally get it. Glad to hear you have an alternative.
I never want my husband to feel like he can’t open up to me, so I’ll use this as a cautionary tale.
I hope you find some level of peace, trust, and communication in your marriage.
That’s great! He’s welcome to message me as well if that might help break the ice a bit more.
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.
Thank you very much for your response. To a large extent, you’re echoing what I know to be true. It’s a hard reality to face, but I appreciate you taking the time to emphasize this for me.
You are very very seen.
Don’t be afraid of the future, no matter what it may hold. And remember that you and your well-being are also important.
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.
I have so much love for this comment. Fills me with hope to hear that you and your wife came out better and stronger on the other side. May y’all have many more badass years together. <3
Thank you for the advice.
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 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.
Clinical depression is defined as a state that lasts more than two weeks. There aren’t really distinguishing factors - there is one for grieving people, but that’s it. If all of this stuff happened a year ago or more, then it is depression, not “justifiably sad situation”.
Also depression isn’t “feels sad and needs to get a small win”. Depression is the opposite of life - you can’t do anything, it saps your energy, it makes you think “why bother”. It makes pleasurable things not be pleasurable anymore. There is no small win, no hobby or safe spots which make your depression go away, since it is a sickness that makes you not feel better in any of them.
These are certainly valid points, but I do appreciate the spirit of the original comment. May not fundamentally change anything, but there’s no reason to miss out on some happy times during the grueling process of self-healing.
After all, we all need something to work towards.
Damn son, this is some clean advice. Seems obvious, but I’ve been so in my head that I haven’t thought of this. Giving this a try starting tomorrow. Worst case scenario, if this doesn’t fully fix the problem, we’ll at least have some fun memories out of it.
Thank you.
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.)
He has changed, but so have I. Been together for 7.5 years and married for 3.5. We both came into this relationship with a lot of emotional baggage, and 2 months after he proposed to me, my brother drowned to death during a rafting accident we were both part of. My husband and other brother almost died that day, but I was able to pick up my other brother in my raft and flag down help in time for my husband and us. It could’ve been a lot worse. But we still lost my older brother whom we were all 3 very close with. He was going to be the best man at our wedding. We didn’t find his body right away. We spent the next 2.5 days after the accident searching for his dead body on foot along the coast of the lake, until his body finally floated up to the top of the lake - not 20 ft from where i had picked up my other brother. My husband couldn’t help because of a severe viral infection he was fighting for having swallowed too much lake water while trying to survive.
This was extremely hard to deal with and process for a lot of reasons, and we almost didn’t make it as a couple. I could feel the shift after several months. Took me that long because it was all too much for me to handle. By then, we both had said and done a lot of hurtful things in our grief.
As a couple, we have not historically communicated well emotionally (because of individual emotional baggage + collective trauma). However, we have come a long way, and are significantly better today. But we still have a ways to go.
One of the big struggles is that he doesn’t have other people that he trusts like that, so he just doesn’t open up unless it’s with me, and he certainly doesn’t always open up with me. It’s not my preference that he only opens up to me, but it’s a product of a few factors, and I know he’s not happy about it either. Just not sure what to do about it.
Oh wow. I don’t know what to say… I can see how that’d mess you up. I’m not sure if that’s something a person can even cope with, without any professional help. I think all things aside (you, your relationship, other trauma from the past…) just this severe accident and the serious trauma that goes along with it is clearly enough to talk to a professional and get help to even begin processing it properly.
Some more reasoning: I think most people agree that bottling it all up isn’t a healthy strategy in the long run. Maybe your husband can agree to that. And opening up to you is nice and the right thing to do, but I suppose in the end you’re not an expert and don’t have the means and background to provide him with tools to handle severe trauma. Talking to a professional is probably unavoidable.
And he shouldn’t have a false/unhealthy pride/ego and stubbornness… People tend to treat therapy differently… But in the end he should ask himself if he’d go to a doctor if he were to break his leg. And if that’s any different to this situation. He’s also been in an accident, just that his main injury isn’t a physical one. But still, it’s an injury and there’s doctors specialized on that. And not every injury heals by itself. Plus, it’s not his fault he ended up in that situation (which could be a reason to think it’s also his business to deal with it on his own.) Instead it was an external factor happening to him, and there’s no shame in needing external help with things that are beyond our control.
I can see how that’d weigh down on your relationship. Glad you made it. And it must have been hard for you since you had to deal with it yourself and were right in the middle of it all. That’s not a comfortable situation to also handle relationship issues and how other people experience grief. You needed to grieve yourself, deal with the situation, somehow make sense of it, get your life back… and that’s bound to take months or years. From your text, I’d conclude you made some progress in the meantime, because you’re now in a place where you’re able to focus on your relationship and your desire is to also help him.
he doesn’t have other people that he trusts like that, so he just doesn’t open up unless it’s with me […]
I can fully empathize with that. That description also fits me very well. I don’t know why, but somehow it’s really really hard to open up about the real emotions, innermost fears and desires. I see how some other people can speak about their feelings, or just talk to friends and get their advise on relationship issues (which we all have.) But somehow I can’t. I’m better at opening up to my partner, and I put some effort in to learn how to do it right. But still: It’s hard. Some people suggest it has something to do with being a man, and the cultural expectations and stereotypes that go along with that. Some people also suggest it has to do with upbringing and if you learned that in early life… I don’t have an answer to that. I’ve had a nice childhood, understanding and open parents and siblings. I don’t have any issues with my manliness… Still I struggle to talk about my innermost feelings, even with the person I value and respect the most.
I really hope you can figure out a way. I think the analogy with going to a doctor when you’re physically injured is a valid one. That’s the argument on a rational level. And I’d also include the emotional level. Speaking from my perspective, difficulty to express own feelings doesn’t mean you’re unable to fully empathize when it’s the other way around. To me it matters a lot if my partner says something is affecting her. Or she thinks I’m doing something wrong or I need to work on myself. And it’s a different thing when it’s about emotions than when we’re arguing on a factual level. It doesn’t always lead to change. Sometimes I’m unable to escape who I am, even if I wanted to. But I think the (emotional) arguments get through to me more than she thinks. Ultimately we’re all humans and have our individual limitations. And our partners need to accept us including those. But you seem to at least need an explanation what’s holding him back and why he wouldn’t get treatment for his mental injuries. And if he sees your perspective on that.
(Maybe there are a few other tricks, depending on personality. For some people it’s easier to write something down than to talk about it. If that’s the issue.)
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.
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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…
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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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Man, I’ve always said to him that the amount of sunlight I see affects my mood! He’s always said it was nonsense, but you’ve inspired me to do more research to back up my claims lol. I always say we live in a cave because the windows are usually closed (one of those “choose your battles” situations, and he prefers the darkness).
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I’m very happy to have an excuse to bring more sunlight into my day.
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