Relationships
When you are depressed, a lot is happening in your brain. Your central nervous system and your psyche will be affected by the depression.
As the brain also passes on intimacy and sexual impulses, you may experience many physical and psychological problems in your relationship with your partner when you are depressed. Depression means that you may have difficulty
- feeling desire
- flirting
- receiving positive attention
- giving positive attention
- showing interest
- persuading people
- making demands
- setting limits
- getting out of an unpleasant situation
Professional treatment
The problems that you are experiencing in your relationship with your partner will be taken into account when you receive professional psychotherapeutic treatment for your depression. Your relationship with your partner would benefit if you could learn to use cognitive principles to distinguish between symptoms and actual "catastrophes" and problems in the relationship.
If you are depressed, you will often withdraw from your partner. This is because you may lack the ability to accept intimacy and love. You may also lack the ability to believe that your partner will be nice to you. You therefore feel no desire. But a relationship is demanding, particularly when one party is affected by depression. You will find that there will be
- problems that you must resolve
- an imbalance that you must repair
- misunderstandings that you must resolve
The love in your relationship must be maintained, and during the depression the partner may have low self-esteem and perhaps try to show that he or she is worthless.
Negative thoughts in a relationship
The relationship therefore activates many negative thoughts. You could easily hurt the person you love and you could misunderstand something that happens because you are strongly emotionally involved.
Being imbalanced because of depression can easily lead to
- negative thoughts about yourself
- negative thoughts about others
- lack of self-confidence
- low self-esteem
- failing confidence in those who mean the most to you
- anger and aggressiveness (atypical symptoms)
When you are depressed, you may have a tendency to activate your anger and hostility. This can easily lead to conflicts. Violent episodes can even arise in your relationship because you or your partner is depressed.
Treatment is important
It can therefore be extremely important to receive treatment for the problems you are experiencing in your relationship.
Couple therapy can help you and your partner to identify and solve your problems.
These problems could be
- lack of self-confidence
- sadness
- sexual problems
- communication problems and misunderstandings
Couple therapy will prevent the problems from destroying your relationship.
Individual therapy or group therapy can also help to resolve your relationship problems. With individual therapy or group therapy, you will work on problem-solving.
Getting close with and avoiding your partner
Love and intimacy in your relationship require skills. In order to feel love and intimacy, you must be able to strike a balance between getting close to and avoiding your partner:
- You must be able to get close and look for contact when you need it
- You should also have the confidence to seek contact, even though you run the risk of being rejected
- You should also be able to remove yourself from a situation if you do not want the contact or need to spend some time alone
You have many needs and wishes that need to be met concerning intimacy, both physically and mentally.