How Do I Help My Depressed Mother?

Reader’s Question

I am 40 years old and my mother is severely depressed. She seems to think that everything that comes her way is a “curse”. When I talk to her it is very difficult because she constantly only has negative things to talk about. Many times those negative thoughts turn on me. By the time I get off the phone with her or leave her presence, I feel that it is my fault for whatever has just happened. I finally decided to only talk to her once a week to keep from being upset myself. If for some reason I miss my once a week conversation with her, then I get very nervous about calling her the next time. In the meantime, she would not call me and check on us. I do understand that she is depressed and can’t help what is going on. I have been depressed before so I do know how easy it is to fall back into depression once you’ve been there. My mom has never pulled herself out. She will take medication and seek counseling; but she finds something negative about that also, then she quits. She also thinks that I have never been depressed; she has been so ill herself that she thinks that my life is just “peachy”. When I tell her I do understand, she lets me know right away that I do not understand. She doesn’t believe that I have been depressed. I believe this is only because I have a masters in counseling for k-12, and that I try to think very positively to keep myself from going back there. Also, when my depression was at its worse, I had to stay “strong” for her. I am growing very tired of staying strong and watching what I say to keep her from saying something ugly to me. I am an only child and my parents are divorced. This makes it very difficult on me. What can I do to help her not be so negative? How can I get her to think in a more positive way and pull her in a positive direction? I am always walking on eggshells. If she gets upset with me, I know she will not talk to me. She is my mother, and I feel I need to respect her. Please help.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Your mother has developed depression as a lifestyle. In a way, her misery has given her purpose and direction. When this happens, people become invested in being negative and miserable. They become somewhat comfortable with being miserable because it allows them to argue, say ugly things to people, and gain attention. They feel permitted to be mean. It’s actually hard for them to imagine how their life would be different if they weren’t depressed. When this happens, some guidelines:

• Recognize that your mother is invested in her depression at this time. She may subsconsciously feel that being depressed keeps people around her — keeps them paying attention to her. While being miserable is a bad strategy to keep friends and family, she may not realize that yet.
• She doesn’t talk about her misery to compare her life with yours. She doesn’t care if you’ve been depressed, are depressed, or have suggestions. She talks about it to keep you there and talking. It’s the difference between quantity and quality. She’s very lonely and wants more time (quantity) rather than more “deep” discussion about her depression (quality). She’s learned that you stay longer and try to help if she’s miserable.
• Protect yourself from her misery:
  1. schedule times to call and visit,
  2. ignore her personal comments about you,
  3. interject healthy comments and conversation — trying to talk more about normal things than her misery,
  4. prepare yourself with a ritual before visiting and upon your return — like a hot bath upon your return to soak the misery out of your system,
  5. bring her books, plants, etc. to side-track her focus on the negative, and
  6. maintain a steady focus on things she can do to help herself should she chose to do so.
• Allow her to pout. Right now, she’s trying to control your behavior (visits, calls, amount of time spent, etc.) with pouting and guilt. Set a predictible call and visitation schedule — then stick to it. Some calls/visits will be nasty, some neutral, some comfortable. Some folks keep a log with notes and rate the calls/visits on a scale of one to ten — one being a guilt attack and ten being a laughing discussion about the old days.
• To help your mother, you must avoid being sucked into the black hole of her misery. If you maintain a steady, upbeat, healthy approach to each call and visit, her mood is likely to rise to meet your approach. Trading stories about misery only keeps you both depressed.
• At this time, there’s no magic words to fix her. If you talk longer on happy topics and shorter on misery topics, she’ll begin talking more about happy times as her basic goal may be the alleviation of her loneliness.
• Continue to support her use of medications for depression and counseling.

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