|
Some other things from my personal experience: - don’t offer help and suggestions and advice I hate and hated it when my friends would ask if I tried meditating, or say maybe start running, hit a gym, etc. Yes those things all make sense, and may have been proven to work, but here’s the thing: those things all take effort, effort that I just didn’t have to give. Yes, even the simple act of “sitting down and breathing a few minutes for meditation” required a monumental amount of effort. Does it make sense? No. But depression is not rational. What was worse, was that these advice and suggestions weren’t new to me. I’ve done the research. I’ve googled “how to not be depressed”. I know that exercise is good for me etc. You telling me makes me feel like you think I’m stupid, or that you think you’re so smart for thinking up that advice, and so on and so on. Is my reaction like this warranted? No. But again, depression is not rational. Instead of “maybe you should go running, there’s a lot of couch to 5k apps.” You say, “hey let’s start running together, every day after work at 6pm. In 5 weeks we’ll be able to run a 5k together!” etc |
Some people are just not good listeners. Something to watch out for.
Also to summarize the above poster: don't be pushy. And I'll add don't be condescending or patronizing.