Long distance relationships are difficult, no matter how much you love your partner. So, you may find yourself thinking, “my long distance relationship is making me depressed.”
It may feel entirely worth it and, yet, you can’t escape the depression that you get from the physical separation from your partner.
It’s okay and you’re not alone if you find yourself in that position. These 18 exercises and tips will give you the tools you need to work through your depression and empowered to take action.
This post is all about how to respond to the thought, “My long distance relationship is making me depressed.”
LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP DEPRESSION:
1. Rely on loved ones for emotional support
We often underestimate how much the people in our lives want to help us feel better. It can be scary to rely on someone else for help, especially if you think that they are going to demand something in return.
But, we have so much love in our lives that we rarely access because we are afraid. So when you are in a long-distance relationship, and you are experiencing depression as a result of that, think of the people around you who can help you.
Think of the people who are not long distance, but who live in the same ZIP Code as you. As scary as it might be to ask for help, you might be surprised at how meaningful your interactions with other people will be once you ask for help.
As important as it is to talk to your partner about how you’re feeling, it’s also important to rely on other relationships to help you feel a little better. This is a great opportunity for you to go out to eat with a friend or call a family member on the phone.
The more in-person experiences you can have the other people, the better. You already interact with someone really important to you solely on your phone.
So, it’s a great idea to actually go out and spend time with someone in person who cares about you and who is in the same place as you.
2. Always look for signs of emotional abuse
As painful as it is to think of emotional abuse in your relationship, you need to take this step. It’s possible that you feel the strain of a lack of intimacy in your romantic relationship with your partner, and your depression is representing that on a different level.
However, it’s also possible that you are experiencing covert abuse in your relationship and your depression is a representation of that instead. It’s not uncommon for survivors of abuse to only realize they have experienced abuse long after it ends.
So much of the time we are told to accept the way that we are treated, and, if there is no physical abuse, we don’t recognize our register that there is abuse still happening.
The goal with this step, as it is with any situation involving possible abuse, is that you identify no signs of abuse. We hope you can rule this out as a cause of your depression.
However, you need to take it seriously if any signs point to abuse, even if that makes you uncomfortable and challenges the state of your relationship.
3. Lean into your feeling of sadness and identify the root of it
Depression is a clinical diagnosis. So, when you are experiencing depression, we are not asking you to lean into that feeling. Instead, we want to lean into some of the thoughts that you are experiencing as a result of that depression, or that are worsening depression.
For example, maybe you miss your partner and you think about the last time that you saw each other, which makes you sad. Instead of letting this thought take you into a spiral of negative thoughts, try asking where this thought is coming from and challenging it if possible.
In the case of the example that we have brought up, what you could ask yourself is, what would make me feel better in the situation?
It’s unlikely that you can see your partner in the same room with you, but you may be able to call them at that moment or text them that you really missed them. Maybe you can also combat that sad feeling with a happy memory that makes you smile when you think of it.
This is not to say that depression can be outwitted, or that you can heal yourself. You are dealing with something difficult and painful, so think of this as a tool instead of a solution.
You can train your brain to think more positively when possible. So, when you’re feeling truly depressed, it doesn’t hurt to try.
4. Remember that you two lead separate lives
In every relationship, you and the other person should always understand that you lead different lives. No matter how intertwined your lives become, there should be some completely separate aspects. There is no exception to this.
Maybe it’s work, old, friends, hobbies, or something else. Regardless, you should feel empowered to lead a life separate from your partner. This means that you can have a perfectly healthy relationship that involves them and a life that involves them.
But, you need something for yourself too. You need to have a piece of your life that does not involve them because your identity is unique to you.
In other words, the more that your life becomes intertwined with theirs, the more likely you are to become codependent in your relationship. This can easily contribute to depression when you’re in a long-distance relationship.
Codependent relationships, as the name suggests, depend on each person being in near-constant communication for validation and caretaking. We won’t get in-depth on codependence.
But, we can say that long-distance relationships require some level of separateness that everyone is comfortable with even if it’s painful. In a codependent relationship, that is not possible.
So, do your best to find ways of living a life separate from your partner with unique goals that are authentic to you.
5. Go on a virtual date or two
When you are experiencing depression, there are always going to be Band-Aid fixes and tools that will help you cope. Going on a date, or spending time with your partner, is not going to fix the root of the problem or go much deeper than bringing you happiness in the moment.
But, it’s still worth mentioning, especially when you involve your partner. The more that you tell your partner about your symptoms of depression, the more they will want to help in whatever ways possible.
Since they can not be your therapist, whether they have the training for that or not, they can’t help you in the ways that would be most beneficial for you. They can sometimes help you alleviate symptoms of depression and stave off feelings of depression while they’re with you.
When they can’t help you through your clinical depression, especially if it’s long-distance relationship depression, it’ll be hard for them.
All of this is to say that you should go on dates and spend time with each other. However, it should not be expected to solve everything and it may not improve your depressive symptoms. Remind your partner that there is no quick fix but that going on dates certainly can help.
6. Identify an end date to the physical distance if possible
The best way to work through depression caused by a distant relationship is to identify an end to that distance. This is not going to change the symptoms of a depressed person or significantly remove the issues that are causing that person’s depression.
But, some end goal will help them cope. Whether you give an estimate of two years before the distance permanently ends or you get to focus on seeing each other in a month for holidays, you’ll be surprised at how much an end date helps.
You get to focus on touching your partner for the first time in a long time. Plus, you have somewhere to put your nervous and stressed-out energy. Be aware that depression is depression.
As we talked about with virtual dates, there is no easy to end the cycle of depression that keeps sucking you in. It’s not a good idea to look forward to this end date with such energy that you end up hurting yourself in the long run.
You have to understand that depression is not going to go away because your partner is physically in front of you. Plus, things happen. An end date might change.
Think of this date as a reason to think more positively when your thoughts are spiraling. Avoid letting this date fool you into believing that depression is easily curable with the possibility of a better future
7. Set boundaries with social media
We have all done it. Your depression may be worsened by social media. You may start scrolling on social media and see a friend with their partner. Then, you get sad because you can’t take that same picture that they took.
We all know that social media is the highlight reel, and we cannot rely on it for our understanding of other people. That does not change the fact that we are still using it to compare ourselves to other people. We’re human.
It’s normal to compare yourself to someone else. But, this awareness is something that you can work with. If you’re struggling with social media, and you think it might contribute to your depressive symptoms, set boundaries with it. It’s not realistic to not use social media all at once.
It’s pretty difficult to remove it from our lives when are used to it every single day. So, what you can do instead, is decide that you will limit your social media usage to certain hours of the day or cap it at a certain amount of time.
The thing about boundaries, though, is that they can be really hard upkeep if we are only accountable to ourselves. So, maybe you involve your partner.
Maybe you tell them that you’re interested in this new boundary system with social media and you want them to help you stay true to it. Not only does it become a way of bonding between you two, but it’s a healthy way of bonding and increasing your emotional intimacy.
8. Engage in daily activities that don’t involve your partner
Along the same lines, as leading your separate life from them, find activities that you enjoy daily. These activities can be anything. Think of hobbies, including reading, writing, biking, and exercising. They can be going out with friends or attending a group class in your city.
Naturally, most of your activities will not involve your partner because they don’t live with you. But, it’s entirely different when you take time to plan something outside of the time you spend with your long-distance partner.
Make a plan to spend time with other people, or to immerse yourself in a different environment, that does not relate to your partner at all. This will give you something to look forward to at the moment, no matter how far away that end date is. Start off with reasonable daily activities.
Plan things that interest you once a week. Start small, so you can reach bigger goals once you fulfill the smaller goals. You can even work with your partner to create a plan that makes sense for you.
The more that you involve your partner in your planning and your improved mental health, the more connected you will feel in your relationship and the less your depression will be able to lie to you about your relationship.
9. Take a deep breath whenever you’re overwhelmed
It may sound simple or over-simplistic even, but taking a breath is powerful. It helps you to connect your mind to your body.
When your body is moving slowly, and your mind is moving much faster, you can use this disconnection to align your mind with your body and slow, both of them down at the same time. To slow down your breathing, you can try different techniques, including box breathing.
Box breathing works by you, breathing slowly in, holding, releasing, slowly, and holding. You continued this, doing each for five seconds, until your mind matches the speed of your slowing heart rate.
This is especially useful when your thoughts start going too fast for you to catch up and you feel anxiety coming on.
In the context of depression, you can use this tool, either in the form of box breathing or one deep breath, to center yourself back in the moment. You can ground yourself and feel the physical space around you when your thoughts feel overwhelming and increase your depression.
10. Re-center your definition of a healthy relationship
When you’re in a long-distance relationship, it’s important to remind yourself of why you’re doing it. Part of that is asking yourself what this relationship works for you and what you think a healthy relationship looks like.
This exercise is not to make you break up with your partner or to challenge your commitment. Instead, it is a way of reevaluating your relationship in the context of what you need specifically.
Be open to this as a way of learning what you can ask from your partner that you haven’t already asked for before. Look around you at the loving relationships that you’re experiencing and what about them feel loving and fulfilling in the moment.
Feel free to refer to your relationship with your romantic partner to develop a strong definition of healthy. Physical separation is often not the reason a long-distance relationship dissolves.
So, look at this as a positive opportunity rather than a challenge to your happy relationship. You can define a healthy relationship in the context of your personal issues, including any trust issues, fears, and other common issues.
11. Identify personal issues that might contribute to your sadness
To do an inventory of your relationship, you also have to do an inventory of yourself. It’s possible that none of the reasons you are experiencing depression have to do with your relationship. It may have much more to do with stress from work, school, or family.
That doesn’t change the fact that you are dealing with depression while you are in a long-distance relationship, which is objectively difficult for both you and your partner.
But, it does mean that you can look at other factors, in addition to your relationship, to better understand your mental health condition. When you learn what might be contributing to your depression, you can learn useful coping mechanisms that make those factors less influential.
For example, if you have been experiencing stress at school or work, you can learn techniques that help you relieve that stress because you’ve pinpointed individual factors.
While being in a long-distance relationship likely makes your symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression worse, it’s likely not the only cause. So, while you can’t change the circumstances of your relationship in terms of physical separation, you can change other factors in your life.
12. Play online games with your partner
Play is important in every relationship. When you forget to play and have fun in your relationship, you lose the joyful spirit you once had. Most relationships begin with a playfulness.
This type of playfulness comes out in the early stages of a relationship when you’re starting to get to know each other and there’s still so much mystery about your relationship.
As you and your partner start solving that mystery more and more fully, the playfulness can fall away and you no longer get to experience the sudden spurts of joy and intrigue. The good news is that you can get it back by intentional actions.
Play is the act of doing something for the sole purpose of your joy. There is no need to worry about productivity or monetary gain. Instead, you’re focusing on having fun with your partner.
This is an important aspect of long-distance relationship work because it keeps the joy alive in your relationship even if you’re not face to face.
So, as long as you avoid using gaming as a distraction, virtual games with your partner can re-energize the playfulness in your relationship and bring the child-like quality you used to have when you first started dating.
13. Consider the positive impact of your relationship
When your mind is so focused on the pain you’ve experienced, it can be hard to choose to think of anything positive. Plus, it’s annoying when everyone repeatedly tells you to think more positively like that will fix everything.
Depression is a mental illness and that should always be made clear to anyone who tells you depression is your fault. However, it’s still possible to make tiny attempts here and there to shape the way your mind works over time.
Depression can indeed function as a negative cycle that feeds into itself until you are so deep into it that you don’t remember what happiness feels like. That’s why even a small amount of positivity can make such an impact.
When start to feel sad and depressed about your long-distance relationship, try to think of one positive impact your relationship has had on you in the past couple days. You can also think of the past month or past year.
The key is to identify how your relationship has improved your life on a deeper level. This may not make you feel less depressed, but, the more you do this on a regular basis, the more likely you are to make it into a habit.
Then, once it becomes a habit, you will slowly be training your brain to notice the positive aspects of your relationship first instead of focusing on the pain the physical distance has caused both you and your partner.
14. Avoid all types of substance abuse
In general, it’s a good rule to establish that you never use substances to escape something. Maybe that something is a fear, situation, or feeling. Regardless, you should always ask yourself why you’re using a substance, whether that’s coffee, alcohol, or drugs.
We can also widen our definition of substance abuse to anything that people use to numb their feelings. However, in this case, we’re strictly speaking about the ones that can send you down a dangerous path of relying on an external substance to dampen the feelings you want to avoid.
In other words, you start to rely on drugs or alcohol to take away the feelings of stress or anxiety, which doesn’t work in the long run. So, as a good rule of thumb, avoid substances when you notice yourself starting to choose them instead of feeling your feelings.
Your feelings are different from depression, but they are connected. And numbing your feelings will not take away your depression but worsen it over time.
Be vigilant of your substance use and notice the motivation behind your choice to have a glass of wine or take an edible the next time you do it.
15. Remember that professional help is always available
You never have to deal with depression on your own. Unfortunately, the people who care most are not the people to help you through it. Whether or not they have the training, your friends, family, and even partner can’t help you work through the causes of your depression.
They can help be part of the solution, but that’s as far as their role can go. For more in-depth, personalized help, see a therapist.
They can develop a personalized treatment plan with you, based on their expertise, and help you work through some causes of your depression as well as possible solutions. They’ll help you identify coping mechanisms to work through your depressive symptoms.
They will also help you to achieve long-term relief. Depression is difficult to manage on your own and there is no shame in reaching out for trained help to achieve that relief in a faster, more sustainable timeframe.
Since we, at Knockoff Therapy, recognize that therapy is not always accessible for a variety of reasons, we make resources like this blog available to you.
However, we do that with the goal of you eventually reaching out for therapy with a social worker, marriage and family therapist, or other type of psychotherapist trained in treating depressive disorders.
16. Start working on effective communication
Open, honest communication is the cornerstone of a healthy, happy relationship. Without it, you can struggle to learn about the other person’s needs, which can make it impossible to fulfill them.
Communication allows you to discover your needs as a couple and individuals so that you can come together and figure out where the relationship feels good and where it doesn’t. At their core, needs are all about what feels good to us.
Most of us grow up without ever seeing people openly talk about needs. So, when we are asked questions like, “What do you need?” we don’t know how to answer. It’s understandable and it more than makes sense.
But, take this opportunity to work with your partner and within yourself to better understand your needs. When you are depressed, it can be difficult to think about anything. Everything feels like it takes energy that you don’t have to give to even the most important aspects of your life.
And that’s why communication is so important. Relationships need communication to function so that relationships can meet the needs of everyone involved.
So, while talking about needs feels like the hardest thing to do, it’s also one of the most basic things to do because it’s so central to the health of your relationships.
17. Go through the reasons why you’re long-distance
If it feels like your long-distance relationship is the reason behind your depression, you may want to address the reasons why your relationship is long-distance. All long-distance couples have different reasons for maintaining a relationship despite the lack of physical intimacy.
Maybe it has to do with schooling, job availability, or another commitment that keeps you separate from your partner for a worthy reason. Whether you still appreciate those reasons or not, at one point, those reasons made you believe that long-distance was the right thing to do.
If it meant choosing between not having your partner in your life or not having them in the same city, it was an easy choice. Your goal, with this exercise, is to re-evaluate and revisit those reasons with an open mind.
It’s reasonable to revisit the reasons you’re long-distance without even considering an end to the relationship.
But, what is not reasonable is to completely ignore those reasons like they don’t contribute to your long distance relationship depression. So, bring this conversation into your healing process to fully address all causes of your depression.
18. Schedule video calls with your partner
Talk to your partner. Reach out and communicate with them. Not every video chat has to address your depression, but you do need to address it with them.
They deserve to have a complete view of your life, which means the good, the bad, and the ugly regardless of the distance between you two. However, you can still have fun with them.
You can still talk to them about the fun, superficial stuff that reminds each of you why you love each other. Enjoy the time you spend with your partner and spend meaningful time with them. Remember that you can experience joy and enjoy a normal life while you battle depression.
