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tatsumaru

My mom is super depressed and I don't know what to do

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I've realized that my Mom's always had a serious psychological problem but has always found ways to mask it or avoid it up until recently. And now it's surfacing and manifesting big time.
What I am talking about is that throughout her whole life she's had serious self-worth and self-hate issues and her philosophy about dealing with them has always been to distract herself from her thoughts through extraverted activities and work. Now she's nearing retirement and also her second husband died ~6 years ago and so both of her crutches were taken away by life and the depression is hitting big time. This is important because her husband used to successfuly compensate and mask the self-worth issues through constant compliments and encouraging words. If you've read the book "The 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem" a situation between two partners is described in the beginning where one partner has self-esteem issues and because of that they need the other one to constantly fill that void they are creating through compliments and reassuring words. Something quite similar is happening here too. She doesn't have her job anymore to distract herself from her thoughts and her husband died so he's no longer here to constantly reassure her and she's getting more and more depressed.
This is how her usual day goes by - She wakes up at around 8 o'clock, she drinks coffee, she plays scrabble by herself for 8 hours, watches a tv show and goes to bed. She's not doing anything with her life and whenever I ask her what are her plans for the rest of her life she says something along the lines of "It's too late for plans", "I'm old now, it doesn't matter" etc. She's 60 btw. So she could easily live another 20-30 years. So the reality is not that it's too late, but that she's lost the will to live.
I tried giving her Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, but she didn't even read it. She's not interested in doing anything. I don't know how to reach her to be honest. I talk to her about awareness, meditation, psychoanalysis, emotional intelligence, but the only thing she's interested in is drinking alcohol with her loser friends, eating junk food, hating herself and watching tv. 6 years have passed and she still can't let go her husband's death, keeps a big picture of him in her room and lives in the past imagining that those were better times when in reality she was the same back then, but had him to give her emotional drugs all the time.

In my experience there's always something you can say or do to help another person get out of their rut and understand why they are stuck, because there's always some underlying belief or identity that manifests as these so called psychological problems. However most of the times it's not clear at all what that thing is. I would be really happy if I could do something for her so she can spend the rest of her life in a meaningful and productive way rather than self-wallowing, drinking and waiting to die.

What should I do?
Thank you.

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