Other People's Mental Health
How do you deal with other people's mental health when your own is challenging enough?
I don't mean strangers.
I mean friends and family, especially family members who depend on you.
I have a really hard time juggling the mental health of my mum, my brother, my three kids, my partner, and now even some of his family.
The hardest for me is when people are suicidal, or if they have meltdowns and lash out emotionally / verbally. I tend to let it happen because I'm scared to set boundaries and upset anyone further. I try to be way too accommodating and I end up feeling resentment that everyone else gets to have breakdowns but I can't.
I'm so empathetic it wounds me irreparably, but I'm also mute to the extent I don't know how to counsel anyone. I end up tiptoeing between everyone else's drama, too afraid to make waves or get help for myself.
_________________
I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
I limit contact and distance myself.
Learning that other people's mental health is not my responsibility made my (and their!) life better.
Especially with closest adults, like my mum and my husband - learning that it's her/his problem not mine was the crucial part of long-term improvement.
It's something very similar to avoiding codependency.
_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.
<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>
How do you deal with it regarding your kids?
Do they have meltdowns or anxiety / depression?
I do distance myself and I don't try to get involved. They certainly don't ask me to. It's just that it's in my face since I live with them, and I'm so empathetic / intuitive I pick it up like a sponge even from afar. My son's MH gets so bad he talks about suicide and then of course I have to be involved.
_________________
I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
Do they have meltdowns or anxiety / depression?
I do distance myself and I don't try to get involved. They certainly don't ask me to. It's just that it's in my face since I live with them, and I'm so empathetic / intuitive I pick it up like a sponge even from afar. My son's MH gets so bad he talks about suicide and then of course I have to be involved.
Right now I'm in hurry but the idea is: I've learned the hard way that if I don't care for myself first, I won't be able to help my children.
_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.
<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>
For some weird reason, I'd choose not to let it personally affect me.
Unfortunately, my own (stupid programmed) emotions and ego doesn't let me choose.
If I truly, truly have a choice, I'd go in and no judgment. All neutral and stable, no validation or invalidation just hearing another story...
At the same time, I won't be exploited by any other way or form.
I can do just that except...
I explode sooner than that happens no thanks for emotional dysregulation. I'm more afraid of hurting THEM than them hurting me.
And...
No. I think I'd rather deal with someone else's mental health issues than dealing with my own. I'd rather wish I don't have this nuisance, whatever this is, since age 6.
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Do they have meltdowns or anxiety / depression?
I do distance myself and I don't try to get involved. They certainly don't ask me to. It's just that it's in my face since I live with them, and I'm so empathetic / intuitive I pick it up like a sponge even from afar. My son's MH gets so bad he talks about suicide and then of course I have to be involved.
I try to find and guide help from others.
Untangle things one by one - first get myself to functional level, then try to identify the problem and best course of action, co-operating with specialists and trying to guide them.
We so far didn't have suicidal thoughts in my children, so I can't tell what I would do then. The hardest moment was when the Aspie daughter got nearly nonverbal for several months because of her situation at school - and I worked on changing the situation at school first.
My superpower is getting logical and task oriented, but I need to maintain myself on the level enabling it first.
_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.
<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>
Update since I got major internal changes this year; I got rid of the internal nuisance.
Most of it anyways.
My main problems now whenever I try to support someone are related to my physical health (yep, instead of mental health) boundaries, and my own personal biases and moments when my ego is somehow high, with prone to commit projections and false ideas onto someone...
Yeah; a good portion of it is to have the space to support someone by being supported myself, affording the personal issues enough or not needing said support that requires or end up creating tendencies that refocuses on me (i.e. not being dysregulated in the first place).
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I'm not very good at this myself, but I think that the key is to be there as a support and a listener and someone they can turn to but without taking on their problems as our own. Someone who is struggling is not necessarily looking for solutions, they just want to know that someone is there for them. So just being present and being someone to lean on and talk to means a lot. You don't have to become the solution to their problems and their problems don't have to and shouldn't become your problems. It will only make you a less effective support if you get sucked in. It's easier said than done, I know.
FleaOfTheChill
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Ideally, I either don't deal with other people's mental health or limit it, if I'm in a rough spot. Boundaries are really important to me and so was learning to say no. I know that I'm useless for months if I push myself and overextend..get to slacking on self care and such. As much as it can suck when it's someone who matters to me, sometimes I do not have it in me to deal and that's reality, regardless of my thoughts on it. That said, sometimes I do push and overextend. I can plow through stuff when I feel it necessary, but I will crash and burn. Sometimes I do choose to do that if I find the person's situation takes priority over the backlash. Probably not a healthy thing to do. That was a wishy washy response. Guess I'm inconsistent with this stuff.
Thanks. I agree with you and that's what I try to do. The problem isn't that I don't know how to help or support the other person, though. The problem is that I get weighed down by the magnitude of my worry and my empathy, and it's hard to cope with that stress. In the case of family members, even if they don't tell me what's wrong, I pick up their energy and the vibe. Then I start imagining or catastophising what's wrong, or how the situation will turn out. I become a nervous wreck worrying about other people and there's no way to avoid it when I'm around those people a lot.
My former therapist used to say "Whose problem is it?", to remind me that I spent too much time worrying about other people's mental health instead of my own. It's not a choice though. I don't consciously put them ahead of me but I'm sensitive by nature and everyone in my family has serious depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD, OCD, ADHD, trauma, health problems, relationship problems, grief, etc. We're the most dysfunctional family unit you could imagine. Somehow everyone confides in me, saying they don't want to burden anyone else. I carry a lot of secrets between family members and that's hard too. No one really cares about my mental health because they see me as stoic. In reality it's that I'm shut down and mute. I'm too overwhelmed by other people's mental health to show any emotion. If I did, I'd implode.
_________________
I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
I don't know how to say no but I don't have a choice, since I'm referring to my mother and my kids. I can't just clock out and say that I don't want to support them. I'm my mother's caregiver and my kids' only parent. They're still dependent on me and may always be, because of their mental health / autism etc. Even if I take a break by going to my partner's, someone inevitably calls / texts with a catastrophic emergency. Quite often I've had to go home. If they don't call I worry the whole time that they will, and then I get slammed the moment I walk back through the door. I lay awake worrying about everyone all the time. That's the main reason I have insomnia. Their stuff affects my sleep more than my own PTSD.
My PTSD makes me feel tremendous guilt and shame even when it's not warranted, so I think that feeds into this. I feel guilty / responsible for other people like I've failed them or caused their distress somehow. I blame myself and try to carry their load even when they don't ask me to.
As much as it can suck when it's someone who matters to me, sometimes I do not have it in me to deal and that's reality, regardless of my thoughts on it. That said, sometimes I do push and overextend. I can plow through stuff when I feel it necessary, but I will crash and burn. Sometimes I do choose to do that if I find the person's situation takes priority over the backlash. Probably not a healthy thing to do. That was a wishy washy response. Guess I'm inconsistent with this stuff.
Not wishy-washy at all. That's me 100%. I overextend but then I crash and burn. In fact I'm always in crash and burn mode even when I'm trying to be supportive. I don't really have a choice. Everyone in my family talks about suicide and the fact that one suicide would cause a domino effect of everyone else doing it. I hear this all the time. How can I not get invested in that, or feel overwhelmed? My grandfather did it and it seems we're all cursed with the same personality style.
I'm afraid to tell my therapist how bad it gets because she'll start reporting people for care, which in itself would cause the domino effect to happen. No one would survive mental health inpatient care. No one will even talk to a therapist except for my daughter. It's a huge clusterf**k and I feel completely trapped by it all.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to start the dominoes myself.
_________________
I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
One person can't shoulder all this alone.
Hi April. I've missed you.
_________________
I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
One person can't shoulder all this alone.
Hi April. I've missed you.
Me too! Sending virtual hugs.
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