Ways To Support Your Partner With Depression

Depression is common, and it can be confusing and painful to watch someone you love struggle without knowing how to help. The most supportive thing you can usually do for a partner with depression is not to fix it. It is to stay steady and present, take care of yourself so you do not burn out, and offer understanding instead of solutions. Here are four ways to do that well.

Take Care of Yourself

The metaphor of putting on your air mask in a crashing plane before trying to help others fits well here, too. It can be very discouraging to not know how to help your partner with depression. Often partners attempt to find something they have done that caused their partner’s depression. While this is a caring instinct, it is likely limiting the person’s ability to effectively care for themselves. Proper self-care (examples: hobbies you love, good sleep hygiene, healthy enough diet, friendships, exercise, etc…) is especially important when you are living with a partner who is suffering. The first step is to remind yourself as often as you need that your partner is not depressed because of you. You are separate people. Taking care of yourself ranks right at the top when thinking about how to help your partner. Hopefully, this will help free you up to give yourself the care you need during this difficult time.

Understand The Two Types of Depression

The most common type of depression, which clinicians call introjective, takes the form of deep self-criticism. This person believes that at their core they are bad. It goes beyond a typical level of guilt and extends into recurrent, often unconscious beliefs that they are inherently destructive. Their lust, greed, jealousy, and envy feel damaging to others and must be constantly monitored. Normal human emotions start to seem like something that has to be shielded from relationships in order to protect the other person and preserve the bond.

The less common type, called anaclitic, presents as feeling chronically inadequate, with a deep sense of loneliness. This person is less likely to be overwhelmed by guilt and more likely to feel shame at seeming ineffective in their attempts to help themselves. It is as if the chasm between them and the “good life” is impossible to cross, leaving them alone and unable to express themselves accurately.

Understanding this will not change your partner’s depression, but it can help you make sense of their experience. In fact, learning to understand them in a deep and compassionate way is one of the best things you can offer. For many people, that starts with admitting there is more to learn about their partner than they assumed.

Empathy Is Greater Than Solutions

I am confident this is not the first time you have heard this advice. It is common, yet why is it still so important? What a depressed person needs most is the experience of being loved: to feel accepted, respected, and met with compassion. The irony is that the “solution” to much of the pain is to experience a nonjudgmental, emotionally consistent, empathic relationship. The person with depression has a finely tuned sense for when another person is criticizing, and giving advice or solutions is often experienced as criticism.

Fixing a problem and offering advice usually feels caring to the person giving it. Some solutions seem so simple. One helpful move is to name your wish to help rather than acting on it. For example: “When you talked about that conflict at work just now, I wanted to give you something to say to your coworker so you could feel stronger in that moment.” The depressed person wants to know that you care, not that you can fix their problems. Lastly, if your advice is simply too good to overlook, ask them if they would like your advice. Then listen to see if they are trying to oblige you or if they would actually like your advice.

People with depression often believe that they are bad and that they are inherently destructive. It is common for them to have recurrent thoughts that their faults are too demanding on others and that they deserve rejection. This cycle perpetuates a belief that their inherent badness will mean that they will be rejected in the future. There is no solution you can offer that will win this argument they are having with themselves, but they can experience something different with you.

You Are Not Their Therapist, You Are Their Partner

It is a wonderful thing to be a partner and not a therapist. You share so much of your lives together, and you get to be many things to each other: best friend, lover, co-parent, the person beside them at the grocery store and at family visits. When something is hurting your partner, like depression, it is natural to try to help. But a therapy relationship has the luxury of a very limited scope. The therapist works only on what is directly related to the depression. They do not have to negotiate when to take a vacation, which preschool the kids attend, or what to buy for dinner. Your partner needs you to be a good enough partner, and they likely also need a separate relationship to process the emotions, thoughts, and experiences tied to their depression. That is often where individual therapy comes in. A good enough partner and a good enough therapist can both be deeply supportive for a person with depression, and part of their strength is that they are not the same thing.

When to reach for more support

Supporting your partner does not mean carrying their depression alone. It is worth encouraging professional help when low mood lasts more than two weeks, or when it starts to disrupt sleep, work, appetite, or the relationship itself. Sooner is fine too. You do not have to wait for a crisis to justify support.

If your partner talks about suicide or self-harm, treat it as urgent rather than something to manage privately. In the United States you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, and it is available to you as the supporting partner as well, not only to the person struggling.

How therapy can help

Supporting a partner through depression is easier when they have their own place to do the deeper work, and when you have support too. Coastal Therapy Group is a relational psychodynamic practice with offices in Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Vista, plus online throughout California, where every clinician holds a doctorate in psychology.

Individual therapy gives your partner a dedicated space to understand their depression rather than just manage it. When the depression is straining the relationship itself, couples therapy helps the two of you understand each other again instead of drifting into the roles of patient and caretaker. If you are not sure where to start, an Insight Session is a single consultation with no commitment.