mental illness is _______

[Lexicon]

Mental illness is

...draining. For those struggling with it, & for those who love them.

And I feel like a horrible person for admitting the latter part, in the context of caring for my best friend with [diagnosed] major depressive disorder & anxiety, who refuses to seek any form of treatment. This has been going on for years. I go with her to her once a year PCP appts, to her public aid interviews/help with paperwork, otherwise she'd never go, & be far worse off. I'm the only one she comes to for emotional support, the only one she shares the darkest stuff with, the one she calls to help calm down. I talked w/her on the phone yesterday for almost 2hrs. It seemed to have helped, but it's just a band-aid. I'm happy it helped in the short-term, but overall, I felt exhausted after. That exhaustion is happening more often after these conversations. And I feel so guilty about that.

We're there for one another for a lot, but I'm not a therapist. This is well beyond me. She's been treading water for years, but she won't get help, & there's no one else. I get scared & tired, sometimes. I have the contact info saved to my phone of a really good counseling ctr less than a 10min walk from her place, that has great patient reviews & accepts her insurance, if she ever does decide she wants to try therapy. I can give her the info to call. I don't know what else to do, but I feel bad for getting burnt out. I don't tell her these things, as I know it'd make her isolate further, & that's the last thing I want.

It's a heavy, powerless feeling.

 

[FemMecha]

My personal experience of it is really trauma, the best description of it I ever heard was from a guy doing a The Moth talk and he said that it was like driving a car on ice, it skids out, you realize the barrier on the road is gone and you could plunge to your death, then you gain control only just in time to steer out of the skid, you're alive but you're not alright and that feeling can be repeated up to a dozen, more even, times a day depending on what your triggers are.

It can fade into regular anxiety, even generalized anxiety, which, if you're lucky, like I was, could abate a little over about twelve months into manageable less pronounced anxiety like the sort anyone could experience.

Pure trauma. Watching my mother get triggered with rage and grief, every horrible emotion at once and going on about bizarre, unreal things, being utterly unreachable. I sit in the room crying, watching her, and she can't even see me because she is so utterly lost inside herself. I keep saying, "I love you so much, mom." over and over, and she puts her hands on her hips and talks about someone in her imagination saying "I'm a great big man and I'm going to buy great big fancy clothes! and then he stood there and laughed and laughed at me just like the devil. Right there in the corner of the room all the way from the floor to the ceiling, it was the devil!". Then her shoulders droop, she supports her frail body against her bed and weeps in a state of complete bereftment not understanding "why would he do this to me? What have I done to deserve this", weeping uncontrollably, shaking unconsolably.

It is the emotionally empathic equivalent to holding your hand on a hot burner. It is pure emotional trauma first and foremost for the person experiencing the illness and secondarily for those who love but can only watch helplessly. If I could help save her from those moments I would do just about anything to give her a moment's peace.

 

[rav3n]

Lexicon's story reminded me of my BPD sister. As children, she would physically and verbally abuse all the siblings when we disagreed with her. Even so, I listened to her woes and soothed her through her delusions which was exhausting and somewhat stressful, to say the least, since if you said the unknown 'wrong' thing, she would flip her biscuits. When I got pregnant, my energy level wasn't at the level that could handle her. Worse yet, she had deteriorated after her b/f broke up with her. This b/f was the best friend of her ex-husband who she cheated with, to add some context to the tale. Anyways, since I wasn't there for her to emotionally drain, she flipped badly on me and demonized me to the degree of physically attacking me if we happened to attend the same family function, trashing me with lies to my friends and my husband of the time family members, calling where I worked, etc. She used to call in the middle of the night, to wake everyone up, in an attempt to destroy my sleep so I had to change my number. She often accused me of trying to kill our parents where one time, she even called someone unknown while emotionally abusing me, giving herself leave to do so to the other person by saying that it didn't happen often and people slip up.

 

[FemMecha]

Mental illness is...

in need of funding, research, and resources for the people who suffer from its effects.

 

[Mind Maverick]

I dont think this thread is helping me much
I feel like a burden as it is

Mental illness is just fucking shitty for everyone, just more reason to isolate and minimize my own needs

Friends get mad at me for acting like i dont matter but i dont
At all

Im not here in this world i dont exist
Im just a ghost
I dont even understand why people ever care.

 

[Lexicon]

I dont think this thread is helping me much
I feel like a burden as it is

Mental illness is just fucking shitty for everyone, just more reason to isolate and minimize my own needs

Friends get mad at me for acting like i dont matter but i dont
At all

Sorry if my post was triggering at all. And anyone sharing their experiences w/mental illness in their personal lives aren't talking about you, fwiw. Things like that manifest differently for everyone. And everyone has their own stuff going on & different thresholds for stress, regardless of its origin.

People who care about someone struggling w/mental illness or struggling with ANY kind of chronic health condition or pain will struggle themselves with exhaustion, worry, and powerlessness, sometimes. It doesn't mean the ill person necessarily did anything wrong. It's human to care about friends, etc. And with caring, sometimes we take on their pain as our own. That's the nature of empathy, after all. And I think it's okay to be able to vent those complicated feelings somewhere. Loved ones need a place to get support while supporting, too. If that makes sense. It doesn't mean they resent the ill person.

It doesn't mean you're a burden. Love always has some amount of weight to it. It's not always pretty, but we all do it, anyway, because the people are worth it.

 

[Yuurei]

Insidious.

Every fucking issue that I have was put upon me by abusive family members who refused to deal with their shit.

Not to say that everyone with a mental illnes is abusive-many have mental illness due to abuse- or can be fixed, but there is ( usually) help. The problem with everyone in my family is that they refused to get help. They really seemed to think that just taking it out on me was good enough.

 

[Mind Maverick]

Sorry if my post was triggering at all. And anyone sharing their experiences w/mental illness in their personal lives aren't talking about you, fwiw. Things like that manifest differently for everyone. And everyone has their own stuff going on & different thresholds for stress, regardless of its origin.

People who care about someone struggling w/mental illness or struggling with ANY kind of chronic health condition or pain will struggle themselves with exhaustion, worry, and powerlessness, sometimes. It doesn't mean the ill person necessarily did anything wrong. It's human to care about friends, etc. And with caring, sometimes we take on their pain as our own. That's the nature of empathy, after all. And I think it's okay to be able to vent those complicated feelings somewhere. Loved ones need a place to get support while supporting, too. If that makes sense. It doesn't mean they resent the ill person.

It doesn't mean you're a burden. Love always has some amount of weight to it. It's not always pretty, but we all do it, anyway, because the people are worth it.

Nah, you're fine, I'm just being stupid. Thanks anyways. I actually came here to delete my post since I overshared again, but it's fine. What you said makes perfect sense for how other people operate though. Sorry for the disturbance here, carry on.

 

[FemMecha]

Sorry if my post was triggering at all. And anyone sharing their experiences w/mental illness in their personal lives aren't talking about you, fwiw. Things like that manifest differently for everyone. And everyone has their own stuff going on & different thresholds for stress, regardless of its origin.

People who care about someone struggling w/mental illness or struggling with ANY kind of chronic health condition or pain will struggle themselves with exhaustion, worry, and powerlessness, sometimes. It doesn't mean the ill person necessarily did anything wrong. It's human to care about friends, etc. And with caring, sometimes we take on their pain as our own. That's the nature of empathy, after all. And I think it's okay to be able to vent those complicated feelings somewhere. Loved ones need a place to get support while supporting, too. If that makes sense. It doesn't mean they resent the ill person.

It doesn't mean you're a burden. Love always has some amount of weight to it. It's not always pretty, but we all do it, anyway, because the people are worth it.

This is a thoughtful post. I also would never want my posts to make anyone feel it held meaning for them in any negative way.

It's a really difficult and complex topic because it isn't one thing. It is a vast range of different illnesses and experiences - even one specific diagnoses has a huge range of behaviors and effects. I think it is important for people to be able to share their pain either experiencing it or being on the receiving end of it. There needs to be acceptance of all kinds of experiences of pain. One negative experience doesn't translate to define all people with mental illness or within a specific category of mental illness. There are also great artists who had mental illness, the expression of which became part of their art.

I think to the extent that it causes suffering it needs to be addressed medically and therapeutically to the best resources and research possible because the potential for suffering is great.

As a general thought about complex topics like mental illness (not an idea in response to any posts in this thread) it is important socially to focus on acceptance of all expressions of pain and to not dismiss some people's experience for any reason, but to let it be their experience and not necessarily hold meaning for another experience, but instead to listen to each with non-judgment.

 

[rav3n]

Nah, you're fine, I'm just being stupid. Thanks anyways. I actually came here to delete my post since I overshared again, but it's fine. What you said makes perfect sense for how other people operate though. Sorry for the disturbance here, carry on.

Some honesty. I do resent my sister since she's done everything she could to try to isolate me from my support network (and failed in a spectacular face planting manner) but she's not you. I don't transfer that type of negative perspective from one person to the next. People are gauged as individuals, with individual thoughts, feelings and dynamics.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

... confusing.
... humiliating.
... debilitating.
... secret.
... obvious.
... constant.
... sporadic.
... crushing.
... suffocating.
... isolating.
... terrifying.
... tragic.
... unfair.
... insidious.
... deafening.
... blinding.
... masquerading.
... traumatic.
... never-ending.
... ending.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Is for the most part a consequences of badly structured and toxic environment. The best counter against it is actually prevention and fixing causes.

 

[Norexan]

When brain cannot process or accept outside world. It is never problem in world. There is no "toxic" people. It is problem in you. There is information outside and your brain is blocking it.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

When brain cannot process or accept outside world. It is never problem in world. There is no "toxic" people. It is problem in you. There is information outside and your brain is blocking it.

My brain is blocking this bullshit you just spewed.

 

[FemMecha]

When brain cannot process or accept outside world. It is never problem in world. There is no "toxic" people. It is problem in you. There is information outside and your brain is blocking it.

Thinking there are no toxic people, thinking there is never anything wrong in the outside world is an example of having no access to perceiving the external world, and ironically becomes an example of its own accusation. Perhaps you play a game here.

 

[Mind Maverick]

Is for the most part a consequences of badly structured and toxic environment. The best counter against it is actually prevention and fixing causes.

Sometimes it's purely genetic as well.

 

[Norexan]

Thinking there are no toxic people, thinking there is never anything wrong in the outside world is an example of having no access to perceiving the external world, and ironically becomes an example of its own accusation. Perhaps you play a game here.

Еmotions comes from inside not from the outside. Nothing is toxic in people. Only mediocrity can etiquette some people as "toxic" .

 

[FemMecha]

Еmotions comes from inside not from the outside. Nothing is toxic in people.

So then emotions are also not toxic because they are inside people as you explain here. You have described here that nothing is toxic inside people we encounter in the external world, which logically means that there is nothing toxic inside our own selves, since the people we encounter externally and internally are equivalent biological beings. Your conclusion based on this logic must then be: nothing is toxic outside or inside.

 

[Norexan]

So then emotions are also not toxic because they are inside people as you explain here. You have described here that nothing is toxic inside people we encounter in the external world, which logically means that there is nothing toxic inside our own selves, since the people we encounter externally and internally are equivalent biological beings. Your conclusion based on this logic must then be: nothing is toxic outside or inside.

No. You control your emotions. You are the one who choose people and place where you feel good.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

No. You control your emotions. You are the one who choose people and place where you feel good.

That isn't even close to the original message you delivered.