[acting101]

My sister has depression and has recently started going to counselling and is figuring out which medication works best. I was really excited when she finally decided to get help, but it's been really hard because for the first while the medication she was on wasn't doing anything and seemed to make it worse. She got switched to something else recently and for the past week it's been going well, but she had a bad day today. And she can't tell if the new medication is working any better or if it's just naturally been a good week until now. She also says counselling doesn't seem to help much, but she has an appointment with a psychiatrist sometime... so maybe that's good?

I don't know how to make her feel better on her bad days... it's hard because she's always really grumpy, which I know isn't entirely her fault, but it makes me feel bad being around her. It seems like whenever I try to cheer her up I make it worse and it feels really awful. Her mood also causes her to be really short with me and often rude and it makes me angry.

My instinct is to avoid her when she's like this, but I know she's hurting so I want to try and be there but I'm just so frustrated and I don't know what to do. I just wish her medications would start working so that she doesn't have to feel like this anymore. We're extremely close and I love her very much and I hate seeing her this way, and I hate even more that it's making me angry because I know it's not her fault. I just want my sister back. Usually my go-to solution with stuff like this is communication, but I'm scared if I tell her these things it'll just upset her more, so I don't know what to do.