Contents
Everyday advice from a person affected for those affected and their relatives.
How to deal with depression in everyday life? Remo Schraner has answers. He has lived with depression since he was a teenager. He uses this experience as a resource and was responsible for reporting on mental health at a large Swiss news portal. He also lectures on the topic as a guest lecturer at Swiss universities.
When to get help?
- Do you notice that you are suddenly taking a lot more risks and don’t care whether you get injured or not – for example when driving a car or playing sports?
- Are you still very tired after sleeping?
- Are you just not enjoying your hobby anymore?
These can be signs of a depressive episode. Confide in someone, be it a colleague or your family doctor. Dont wait too long!
sex life
An erectile dysfunction or lack of sex is actually “not cool”. But depression can trigger exactly this because it robs you of all your energy.
- Don’t force yourself to do anything. Talk to your partner about the situation. This doesn’t mean an hour-long discussion, but a simple: “Hey darling, I just don’t like today.”
- Keep your relationship exciting even without sex. Cuddle like teenagers on the sofa for an evening or treat each other to a massage. Not every physical contact has to end in sex.
- If the lull in sex lasts for a long time and it bothers you: Check it out with a medical professional.
Everyday working life
If you decide to talk openly about your depression, I can give you a personal tip that helped me a lot at the time.
Instead of taking sick leave when I had a depressive episode, I made a deal with my employer: If I was going through a downer, I let my manager know. She then didn’t expect 100 percent performance from me and thus reduced the pressure to perform.
Actually a win-win situation: my employer didn’t have to do without me completely. And it helped me get back on my feet quicker.
Tips for relatives
As a loved one, you can’t really do anything wrong as long as you do something. I find these three things particularly important:
- Keep in touch with the person concerned and don’t be surprised if your help isn’t always well received. It is all the more important that you continue to reach out even after this situation and simply show that you are there.
- It may be that at some point you are simply extremely hateful towards the person concerned. Even if you know that you are actually angry at the illness and not at the person. Give this emotion space and find someone around you to talk about it.
- The most important thing of all is your own health. So respect your own boundaries and see how much energy you have to help.