Fear of being infected with depression

Depression is a condition that can be easily spread from one person to another. It penetrates families, employees of enterprises, etc.

What happens when someone communicates a person undergoing depression? Of course, each case is individual but there are some common features. Most people who communicate with depressed relatives or friends experience uncertainty. They feel that they are unable to get to them. Others say that they feel devastated and whacked after such talks.

Such moments of devastation are difficult to express in words. The fear to appear in this emptiness and feel the same emotions often makes relatives to plunge into purely domestic activities related to physical comfort, expressing thus their care to the depressed family member, to avoid close association with him/her, and, thereby, dooming him/her to loneliness.

Even professionals, who work with people suffering from depression, often tend to limit the depth of contact with such persons, keeping them at a distance, fearing to start to experience the same feelings.

What causes this feeling of emptiness arising within the interlocutor of a depressed person?

First of all, everyone has a subconscious fear of depression. This feeling is familiar to the majority of people in a varying degree and they are afraid to return to it.

Some people claim that depression is absolutely unfamiliar to them. This only means that they have even greater fear before it. They simply try to avoid this state because they are unable even to think about it. If a person claims that he/she is always in a cheerful mood and is always full of power, if he/she says that gloom is not inherent in him/her, you can confidently conclude that this person plunges into different activities just as many relatives escape from their depressed family members, treat them as ill persons and take care only about material aspects of their lives.

However, not all people are easily "infected" with depression and acquire a sense of devastation. This is due to the ability to differentiate their feelings, and a special attitude to a depressed person. This is a natural gift and such people occur very rarely.

A person escaping from his own depression will not be able to sympathise with a depressed person, protecting his/own weak self and may accuse his friend or relative of laziness, hypochondria and even timeserving.