Hi, Megan and Sherry
You offer on your blog to provide advice upon request, and I keep finding myself in a dilemma, so I hope you may be able to help.
What is the best thing to do or say for my friends who are perpetually sad? These are people who I love for many reasons -- they are variously smart, funny, warm, hilarious, generous, gentle, quirky, creative, affectionate, talented. But for some reason, there seems to be a dark cloud over them that keeps them perpetually feeling sad, worthless, unloved, hopeless. I suspect that they would be diagnosed as clinically depressed, but they mostly seem to be unwilling to seek professional help. There are four or five folks that I'm thinking of that fit this description.
These are not folks going through a temporary rough patch -- them, I know how to help (food, booze, extra emails, empathy, listening, compliments, reminders that time heals all wounds, etc.) But all my tricks pretty much come up empty with the perpetually sad folks. I mean, they like being with me, so I assume I am giving them a small amount of comfort, but nothing is getting any better.
Mostly what happens is that we have endless conversations on the same themes, with me murmuring that it sounds hard to have those feelings, and maybe they could consider exercise/therapy/yadda yadda yadda, and them going on and on about how they feel worthless, but they are mad at themselves for feeling that way and not being able to snap out of it, and it goes around endlessly. These conversations are becoming more difficult for me to sit through, particularly when it seems like nothing has changed from the last five times we've had the conversation. And it doesn't seem to be getting them anywhere either. I don't think it even gives them much comfort to rehearse their longstanding complaints.
But I love them, and don't want to give up on them as friends. So how do I interact with them? Does it help or hurt for me to talk in an upbeat way about how happy I am with my partner, and tell cute stories about my baby? Should I create a time limit for the "recitation of grievances" portion of our conversations? Should I try only to hang out when we have something distracting to do together? I need to stop the cycle where they are using me as a (terribly ineffective and now getting bored and irritated) therapist.
Sorry for the long-winded question. As with many things, just writing about it has made me feel a little further along in my thinking. But I would love to hear if you all have any suggestions?
Love, M