You don't have to say much. For example, my wife will ask 'is there anything I can do?' when I'm having a particularly bad time, and while the answer is often just 'no,' her asking the question that way acknowledges the fact that I'm struggling without putting me under pressure to come up with an answer. For me the most important thing is knowing that someone is available without feeling that they're waiting on me.
Chronic depression is a bit like an old AM radio; you can mitigate the lousy signal with the tuning knob and moving the antenna around, but you can't fix it and call it done; the station that's clearly tuned in today might stay clear tomorrow or be mired in static. As a patient, one can learn to separate oneself from one's mood, so that feeling miserable doesn't have to be attributed to an objective exterior cause. But learning that takes time, and inability to distinguish between one's emotional and the quality of one's environment was a major problem for me when I was younger.
The most helpful thing you can do is be around to listen and allow the depressed person to vent without pushing them to identify an actionable solution, frustrating as that may be. Asking questions can also be helpful, to inform yourself about what the other person is experiencing. For example suppose you were talking to a blind person; you get the basic idea of being blind but you don't know what it's like, so it's quite reasonable to wonder, say, how the person chooses groceries or decides what clothes to put on in the morning. When depression is chronic one develops a variety of coping strategies (which work more or less well at different times), and articulating that sort of thing often helps me get out of a trough and recover my sense of agency.
One other thing that's very common for people with depression is muscle pain, because the inner tension is often mirrored by a physical tension. It's hard to describe, but the physical tension can even act as a focus for the bad feeling. A backrub or a neck rub can go a long way, if the depressed person is feeling up to it. Other times one may not want to be touched and is better off just going to bed or somesuch.
Thanks so much, this is very helpful. I'll remember that asking questions is usually okay; I'm often afraid that patients prefer not to think or talk about it, or that I'm the 30th person asking about it and they're tired of it, etc.
Chronic depression is a bit like an old AM radio; you can mitigate the lousy signal with the tuning knob and moving the antenna around, but you can't fix it and call it done; the station that's clearly tuned in today might stay clear tomorrow or be mired in static. As a patient, one can learn to separate oneself from one's mood, so that feeling miserable doesn't have to be attributed to an objective exterior cause. But learning that takes time, and inability to distinguish between one's emotional and the quality of one's environment was a major problem for me when I was younger.
The most helpful thing you can do is be around to listen and allow the depressed person to vent without pushing them to identify an actionable solution, frustrating as that may be. Asking questions can also be helpful, to inform yourself about what the other person is experiencing. For example suppose you were talking to a blind person; you get the basic idea of being blind but you don't know what it's like, so it's quite reasonable to wonder, say, how the person chooses groceries or decides what clothes to put on in the morning. When depression is chronic one develops a variety of coping strategies (which work more or less well at different times), and articulating that sort of thing often helps me get out of a trough and recover my sense of agency.
One other thing that's very common for people with depression is muscle pain, because the inner tension is often mirrored by a physical tension. It's hard to describe, but the physical tension can even act as a focus for the bad feeling. A backrub or a neck rub can go a long way, if the depressed person is feeling up to it. Other times one may not want to be touched and is better off just going to bed or somesuch.