Written by Jeff Schadt and Heston Glenn
Despite all our love, care and concern, parents with depressed kids often tell us that everything they try to do seems to backfire – often frustrating or discouraging their kids. If this is where you find yourself, you’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. Unless someone has personally struggled with depression and overcome it, it’s unrealistic to expect them to understand how to help their kid.
In fact, the ways to help kids overcome depression are often the exact opposite of our natural instincts.
A recent CDC study found that 2 out of 3 adolescent girls and 2 out of 5 adolescent boys struggled with deep sadness/depression. Having faced clinical depression myself, I am intimately familiar with what it takes to overcome it.
When kids are depressed our tendency is to remind, nag or encourage by saying just get up and do something, go outside or exercise and there is research that supports that these things may help. The challenge is that they need to make these decisions for themselves and often our relationship as parents with our kids has been based upon expectations and performance so they do not take these things from us the way we desire them to.
Why is this the case? Because myself, along with the depressed kids we have helped escape depression, know they used to be able to do their homework, enjoy life and want to do things but that desire is now gone and they do not understand why. Unfortunately this confusion makes them pressure themselves and when it does not work it confirms the negative things we are saying to them. This is the reason they resist or get frustrated or angry when we tell them to try things that we think might help them. They perceive this as more expectations and pressure. Which given where they are feels like more lack of performance and failure.
You see, being depressed is like being out of all emotional fuel. It’s amazing how much emotion ties to our motivation, desire to succeed and to simply do the simple things of life – like shower. When one is depressed and out of gas everything becomes immensely harder. Simple tasks seem huge and virtually impossible to accomplish.
This is why the simplest of tasks feel like they are being asked to move a 2-ton boulder. When I Was depressed I noticed something. If I could overcome the hesitation, lack of emotional energy and sense of doom and failure that chased me everywhere and actually touched a task I was dreading, it became doable. Thai is the reason when your kid begins a task they’ll often find it is not as overwhelming as it seemed. Ironically, this can drive their depression even deeper as they then feel bad for making such a big deal out of “nothing.”
This may have you saying, “ This is why I need to pressure them, remind them and nag them!” But as you have likely already experienced, it does not work. The true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results.
After a critical business failure in which I lost $6 million dollars of other people’s money, I was absolutely convinced everything I touched turned to mud. It seemed there was no way to escape. Getting out of bed was hard and driving to work exhausting. Some days I would just sit in my chair wanting to get things done but unable to in spite of being married and having two kids at that time.
To combat depression it’s important to understand its root psychological cause, outside of the serotonin imbalance in the brain, is a feeling of deep unhappiness or anger towards oneself. Thus anything that leads to more feelings of not measuring up , being good enough or failure makes things worse which is why parents’ pressure and nagging can have the opposite effect they desire.
Parents may hear this deep internalized anger or unhappiness in phrases like;
- I’m so stupid
- Nothing I do works
- I’m a failure
- Nobody likes me
- I hate myself
And other similar phrases. You may also hear things that blame their shortfall in school or at home on others or things like, “I turned it in but the teacher didn’t get it.”
Hearing such phrases from your child builds concern and breaks your heart. The natural tendency is to want to push back and tell them they’re not stupid or for them to take responsibility for the homework not getting in. While true it is counter-productive. This will drive the depression deeper and cause your child to begin to feel like “nobody understands me” or “there’s something wrong with me” or even more like a failure.
One of the key principles we must first understand as parents to help our children overcome their depression is this:
Only 5% of our child’s thoughts and emotions are conscious.
This means 95% of what is causing your child’s depression is unconscious, and that whenever we address the 5% of what we can see on the surface we’re missing 95% of the solution.
It often feels counter intuitive, but often the first step to helping your child with depression is simply stopping and listening. When they say something negative, tell them it must be hard to feel that way, listen to their reason and comfort them.
For a kid who has a hard time getting up, instead of reminding and pressuring, ask if they are having a hard morning and agree ahead of time on what you will do in such cases. One mom we helped to discuss this with her depressed daughter was given the thought of getting a cup of hot chocolate and a positive note about who she was. Why does this work? Because most kids, and especially kids suffering from depression have negative core beliefs that tell them they are bad, uncared for, not good enough, a failure and more. Saying Things that pressure or touch these beliefs trigger them, leading to defensiveness and retreat.
Because of these beliefs the kids get hard on themselves until they give up. The answer is found in helping them like themselves again, believe in themselves again and in being kind to themselves when they struggle rather than getting down on themselves making them even more negative.
After you’ve had kind interactions with them about why they feel like they are not good enough or around other comments that slip from their mouth and positive ways to help them get moving are in place you can take the next step in the conversation. “So you shared that you feel like a failure. Why?” “Do you feel heard? Good, I love you and am here for you.” You can ask a follow up question like, “Have you ever succeeded?” Or ask them to self evaluate if they truly are bad and a failure at everything. Let them know you feel like they are due to depression but to really think about the things they have done before depression.
The more you can get them to articulate their reasoning behind their negativity the better. When they begin to question these conclusions due to our asking open ended ,non-threatening questions the sooner they will begin to gradually climb out of depression.
Addressing core beliefs that reside in the 95% of thoughts and emotions psychology has found are unconscious is vital. As parents we have not been trained to target the things underneath our kids’ struggles and bad behavior. If you want to learn more visit ReviveFamily.com’s temporary landing page that for a limited time is giving my eye-opening book Is Real Healing and Change Even Possible? For free.
If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here with Jeff Schadt
