What do you do when someone you love is very depressed /or sad?

What do you do when someone you love is very depressed/or sad? –@Unpacktherat

Most important: know that you cannot solve their problems. When people are depressed they are like an onion. The topmost skin is the official reason they are depressed. Maybe someone didn’t return a call or someone at work said something about then. However, if all you do is respond to (eat) that skin, it won’t taste very good and it won’t help anyone.

One layer down might be they are feeling shame over what that person said about them, or feelings of insecurity on why this person didn’t call them back. The nameless person who is supposed to call back might not even know he or she has been placed on such an aggressive timeline. But the insecurity in your friend is there and is real. That is the next layer.

One further layer down, as we continue peeling this beautiful onion (since onions and garlic basically add positively to almost any food you can imagine except for maybe vanilla milkshakes), might be events that happened thirty years ago that began to trigger these insecurities.

And even a further layer down, the insecurities and shame might be triggered by events that happened 100 years ago to ancestors of your friend.

How are you going to solve these problems? How is your friend even going to do so? It is too difficult!

Neither of you can solve them. Therapists think they can by talking about the parents, perhaps, but the problems might even go deeper. The things making your friend sad are insurmountable if you try to tackle them directly.

What you can do is listen. That is all you do. Let your friend talk. Then she knows she has someone who will listen to her. That makes her happy. Makes her feel loved. Listen to and love your friend.

This way you can’t solve the problems but you can redirect.

Did she exercise today? That always releases hormones that counteract sadness. Is she sleeping okay? Is she eating okay? If she is feeling bloated and weighed down to the Earth she will be more sad than if she’s feels like she is flowing properly.

Then, I would slightly redirect in the direction of the Daily Practice http://bit.ly/fuiRS9– is she emotionally, mentally, and spiritually taking care of herself?

For each person that means different things. However, unless you have all four legs of that chair, all those areas of life in place, the chair will break and you will fall to the floor.

Is she feeling creative? (mental), is she practicing a sense of surrender and gratitude? (spiritual) and just by her being around you she is practicing the emotional muscle (since you are listening and being kind to her – so she clearly made the right choice in contacting you).

When the chair is built, and there is a nice cushion on it, she can sit again, and her mind and body will be able to relax. Thanks to you and thanks to her of course. The point is, this is perhaps the only way in which you can help, the real answers, the deep aha! Moments will only come from within her, all you can do is provide the .