When Your Family Doesn?t Support You or Your Mental Illness

[David Baxter PhD]

When Your Family Doesn?t Support You or Your Mental Illness
by Natasha Tracy
August 26, 2014

Recently a received a message from someone who was very distressed because her family wouldn?t accept her because of her mental illness. Her family hadn?t cut her out of their lives, necessarily, but they didn?t understand bipolar disorder and just waved her off telling her to ?take her meds.? They made no effort to support her dealing with her mental illness.

And to this woman, family was everything. She didn?t think she could live without the support of her family.

And while I know that family is critically important to some people, I?m here to tell you: you can live with a mental illness, with bipolar disorder, without the support of your family.

Family Support in Mental Illness
I?m the first one to say that support from loved ones is incredibly important when dealing with a mental illness like bipolar disorder. And yes, those loved ones typically include family. But here?s the thing ? it doesn?t have to. Yes, in an ideal world our families would embrace us, support our mental illness challenges and help us to get better, but our world is not ideal. If you have the support of your family through your mental illness consider yourself lucky, because, certainly, not everyone does.

Living with a Mental Illness without Family Support
I lived with a mental illness, bipolar disorder, without family support for a long time. It took years for my mother to come around and be what I would consider to be ?supportive.? But I survived all those years. Because while family may be something, family is not everything.

Supportive Loved Ones Come in All Shapes and Sizes
What matter is not blood relationships, what matters is that people care about you and want to support you through your mental illness. It doesn?t matter to me that my friends are not related to me by birth ? they are supportive and that?s what?s critical. And it doesn?t matter that some of the people who are related to me are not supportive of my bipolar disorder struggles. Because you can?t control who you?re related to and the relationships you were born with will not always work out.

Cherish Any Support in Mental Illness
In fact, those that care about you might be professionals ? your healthcare team. Certainly a therapist and psychiatrist are quite capable of caring for a mentally ill person?s welfare. Their support of your mental illness journey should be cherished as well as the support offered by your loved ones.

Because placing too much value on one person (or people)?s ability to support you is not a good idea. When you tie your reality to this ? you give that person control over your perspective and that?s not healthy. You control your perspective and survival irrespective of what some other person does.

Yes, it would be great if the people we cared about radically accepted us and supported us and our mental illnesses but that just doesn?t always happen. What you need to know is that you can survive, and thrive, anyway. You have it within yourself to stand because others (such as everyone else with bipolar disorder) will always be with you. No matter what.

 

[Cat Dancer]

I don't have anyone who supports me, but it is my fault. I don't feel it is anyone's responsibility to be there for me because most of my distress is self inflicted. I have to figure this out for myself somehow.

I mean I want other people to have support and they deserve support. I am not saying this about other people.

 

[Retired]

I don't have anyone who supports me, but it is my fault. I don't feel it is anyone's responsibility to be there for me because most of my distress is self inflicted.

Have you considered the reason for your self inflicted distress might be your misguided attempt to neutralize the pain and trauma inflicted on you by others....perhaps the same people on whom you would rely on for support in a normal relationship, but because they are in fact the perpetrators of your distress, you can hardly expect the perpetrators to be your source of support and comfort. That would be like asking Henry the Eighth to provide grief counseling to Anne Boleyn's family!

The result of this diabolical situation seems that your only recourse, in the absence of therapy which might help you see your situation for what it really is, is that you resort to harming yourself to try to seek a distorted form of emotional response in the form of pain inflicted on yourself.

As has been said so many times in the past by so many, unless you extricate yourself from your present circumstances, leave behind the people who have abused you and find another life, it's tragic to say, but little is likely to change for you unless you retake control of your life and make drastic changes.

 

[Cat Dancer]

That makes a lot of sense and is very true. I am in therapy, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do when he leaves the practice he is at and is 130 miles away. It's SO SO hard to find someone here.

 

[Jesse910]

CD:

When I was diagnosed, my mother could not deal with it at all. She knew that I needed assistance but she did not want to be a part of it. Friends cared for me in a non-judgmental manner. They helped me find stability within my life. While I have had medical personnel in my life, I do not rely upon them completely because situations do change. In a nutshell, we have to learn to cope with ourselves warts and all. As we get a handle on our lives and relax, we can stop feeling sorry for ourselves and learn to enjoy our lives as much as possible. Yes, I am bipolar but I have learned to deal with it and move on. Please note that I am not trying to belittle anyone who is having a rough time because I incur those times as well. Someone once said that it's how you choose to look at your situation that determines the outcome.