Living with mental illness
Mental illnesses come in an abundance of different forms. Very serious mental illnesses can include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and major depressive disorder. Some are very obvious whilst others may be physically and visually non-existent. Unfortunately, there are a lot of non-diagnosed and misdiagnosed cases. Our attitudes towards our loved ones or ourselves who suffer from any mental illness can be based on good and bad reactions, justifying different bad behaviors, and the fact that we love them so much.
Whether you are someone who suffers from a minute or heavy form, or you live with someone who does, it’s never easy to be fully sure about the impact it has on a person or how much of their identity is consumed by this disease.
This blog post is by no means like a self-help book for people suffering from mental illness, nor is it a guide of what to do if you think you or a loved one has it. Rather it is a personal response as being someone who has experienced many situations being faced with the illness and what I’ve learned and how I’ve coped, of course with the help from trusted professionals.
Living with mental illness
It can be very difficult when a loved one develops the illness. You are the one who is gradually seeing their mental decline, their actions, the sudden change in moods, the swift overreactions, and the silent treatment to name a few. Sometimes reprimanding them on the spot only decreases your chance of being let in to understanding their condition. More often than not, this lack of caring about how we care for them leads to breakdowns in communication, pushing away and resentment.
We learn over time that in helping those that we love, we may need to hand it over to a professional to save our relationship with that person and to give that person the proper means of improving their mental health.
Friendship or guidance counseling?
With friends it can be incredibly hard to decipher between what role you play in the friendship, especially if your friend is suffering from a mental illness. The friendship can turn toxic and your role suddenly becomes the listener and the adviser and maybe the one to blame when things don’t go the way you said they would. It’s one of the hardest things about friendships today, balancing and reciprocating that love between two people who are close. However, it can become a bigger issue when your friend can only talk to you about things that upset her or make her feel down. It can also be difficult when the bulk of the time that you both dedicate to the friendship is about her. After a while, you get bored and the friendship in your eyes seems to fizzle out, when really the hardest thing to do can be the best for the friendship. Being honest about how you feel in the friendship, but if she’s not able or ready for that, maybe guiding her in the way of professional help. If she doesn’t get this help, your friendship won’t last because she’ll ‘need’ you every time something goes wrong. Whereas a professional will guide her out of that and has the authority to do that, bringing her out of herself and in on herself as she needs in a healthy manner.
Trust Issues
One of the hardest things about loving someone with a mental illness of any type is that with it comes a lot of trust issues. The person themselves may feel as though they can no longer trust you for many different reasons such as paranoia and overthinking. You yourself may find it extremely hard to trust that person and that can be disheartening for your moral support system. Trusting in their goodness before they became sick is not the answer but can definitely help. There are many moments I have had knowing I couldn’t rely on that person because of their actions and words shortly after their diagnosis. Our relationship changed, our conversations changed, sometimes being completely all about them. This person had little regard for the fact that I needed them too, just like before all of this. They gradually lost respect for my choices and turned quite bitter towards me. My initial reaction was (and I’ll be completely honest) awful. I was starting to distance myself from them.
I could have taken one of three roads here. The road of distance, the road of justification, and the road of support. Unfortunately, I took the road of justification which meant that I was justifying their actions using their mental illness as the excuse “they don’t know what they’re doing or how they’re making me feel” when in reality they needed me to direct them towards the support that would change that.
Contagion
It’s quite common when surrounded by negative energies or modes of behavior to develop your own version of it. You may recognise in yourself little changes where you start comparing yourself to these people. You may also develop depression or anxiety from having to deal with the backlash of what the diseases do to the ones you love. It’s highly recommended that in the face of depression, or any mental illness for that matter, you take care of yourself first. You cannot help anyone that you love with their problems if you have them yourself. It can be quite normal now for those that suffer, to help each other and not necessarily need the extra help, just someone to understand. Unfortunately that’s not going to help them to improve or give them a chance at getting better and loving themselves, all it’s going to do is help them to cope with being depressed or anxious etcetera. I’m not bashing support groups as I think they are a brilliant form of not feeling alone however, any cognitive behavioral therapist will tell you that support groups are led by those who want to get better, not those who just want to cope with what they’ve got. So you not caring for yourself is an outlet for this danger to occur.
It’s not an easy world out there and we really do need to love each other and look out for each other. It does start with me and my choices in doing the best thing for myself and for others who suffer from mental illnesses.
Some great websites for more information are: