So my wife (together 6 years, married 2) has been depressed for a number of years. It waxes and wanes and she's mostly able to handle it. Additionally, she loves to write and for the first time she completed a full draft of a novel. She had my support and the support of her writing friends, and when she talked about it on social media, other people were very supportive too. She was easily at her happiest when she was writing the draft, as she was fully immersed in the project and felt purposeful.
She wrote this draft for something called nanowrimo, so she finished a few days ago in november. It's only been about a week, but she's already lost and feels like she has nothing else to occupy the mental energy. She's also worried about quite a few things. She doesn't know how to revise the draft because she's never gotten this far before, the draft is too short to be a publishable novel and she doesn't know where to expand certain ideas, plus she's just generally afraid that it sucks, it'll always suck, and all the work was for nothing.
She's also getting some stress from family members who want to read it, but she knows the content may upset them.
Mostly, she's just kind of milling about the house, crying a bit, sort of how she acts whenever her depression is at a worse point. It's like the day after christmas feeling, everything's deflated. She doesn't know how to direct her energy now that there's no longer a support system behind her and outside motivation.
How can I best help her out? It always hurts me when she's at a low point and I want to help.
Tl;dr: My wife just completed a large project that put her depression on hold, but now that it's done, the depression is back with a vengeance.
Submitted December 02, 2018 at 07:47AM by losttothiss https://ift.tt/2QAw9k0
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