Relationship issues
This page supports the Relationships section of the SHIFT-Depression®Inventory which you can complete online here.
Once you've completed the Inventory and have your score for the Relationships area you will have an idea how much these issues matter for you. If you have a high score in the Relationships area, then it's possible that there are few, or no, safe, trustworthy people in your life.
You may find it hard to reach out and make new friends or you may keep your relationships on a more superficial level for very good reasons, like avoiding being hurt again.
Women as carers of relationships
Generally speaking,women are more prone to be affected by difficulties in relationships. This is because women are expected by society to be the 'carers' of relationships with family and others, and they invest more energy and time in them.
Men, generally speaking, are more likely to spend more time focused outwards towards their achievements and their world of work. That doesn't mean that men aren't impacted by difficulties in relationships because they are.
According to the research though, and generally speaking, women are affected more, because having healthy relationships is usually central to their lives.
Past and present abuse, betrayal, neglect, bullying
Experiencing betrayal, neglect, abuse or bullying as a child can still impact in the present. If the very people whose responsibility it was as carers, abused their power and neglected their role as a carer, this could still impact today.
Experiencing bullying at work, or at home, or finding that other significant people are either emotionally unavailable, or intrusive and controlling, can trigger painful feelings from the past as well as having to deal with the present.
We all need at least one person in our life that we can trust. Yet isolation, something that was discussed on the Community support page, can make it hard to know who to talk things over with and work out what to do for the best.
Locating a health professional or a counsellor you feel safe with, who can listen and help you work out how to deal with what happened in the past, and make informed decisions about relationships in the present, may help.
Examine your relationships and consider making changes
You may be starting to wonder if some people in your life are not safe to be with. You may feel vulnerable, controlled, or lack confidence when you are with them. Maybe there is a pattern of them putting you down. It can help to start thinking about putting limits in place and other ways to become self-protective and a counsellor or psychologist could help you with this.
Sometimes we have to learn new skills to help us identify people who are trustworthy, emotionally available, and not intrusive or controlling.
The important thing is to recognise what is going on in current relationships and work out if there might be a pattern happening amongst other people who are or have been in your life. Nobody deserves to be betrayed, controlled, bullied, neglected or abused.
It is important to recognise that some people you meet are limited in their ability to relate to others positively. Yet it can be easy to get caught up in relationships that are unproductive, especially if this has happened to you beforehand. We can feel drawn to the familiar
Learning to recognise who the people with the limitations are, accepting their shortcomings rather than wishing they would change, and putting in boundaries to limit their impact, is a step in the right direction to having better control over the negative impacts abusive people perpetuate.
The only person we can change is ourselves.
When it comes to our relationships we are better off trying to find people who respect our rights and treat us well rather than putting energy into trying to change people who are disrespectful of us or emotionally unavailable.
This assumes you have a choice yet in some situations you may feel you don't have a choice and are dependent on someone who treats you badly.
Some women, unfortunately, may need to seek assistance from a domestic violence service to work out the safest way forward. Go to the links page for domestic violence services and someone you can call now.
There is a lot going on in the Relationships area and it naturally intersects with the Thoughts & Feelings area as well as the Community area. Also, there's a lot of research now focused on how we use food, alcohol, and prescribed/non prescribed drugs to regulate our emotions in relationships. For example, anger, sadness, loneliness, worry, anxiety, fear etc. Therefore, it's clearer now how much the Physical area can be involved as well.
In fact, all of the areas interact together to make up the combined map of what is connected to feelings of sadness or depression.
