Family Matters

Last week, at my Monday night Depression-Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) meeting, the facilitator made a joke as the group split up into supporters (friends, family, and partners) and consumers (those of us with mental illness). He said, "In there they cry and in here we laugh." It made me wonder why it is that those who come to support us are crying and bemoaning their misfortune at being related to or friends with a mentally ill person.

I'll be honest that I do find it frustrating, and even resent a bit, the 'why me' attitude of some supporters. Yes, they have chosen to live with our illness, to try to support us through our ups and downs as best they can, but they aren't experiencing those ups and downs firsthand. Yet as I try to learn more about my disease and treat it, I do have to accept that it's a lot of work to take care of another person. Even if you don't have to do everything for them, providing emotional support can be incredibly taxing on the psyche.

My family members found it horrifying to learn about the psyche of a person with bipolar when they read An Unquiet Mind by Dr. Kay Redfield Jameson. I read that book ten years ago, and I found it inspiring and amazing that someone with the same illness I had could do so much, not to mention learn how to manage her illness so well. So I was puzzled (and yes, a little hurt) when my mother read it and expressed shock and horror at the extremes of bipolar. My brother even described the thought processes Dr. Redfield Jameson detailed in the introduction as "completely alien."

After considering it and attending DBSA for the first time, I realized that the issue was that people with normal brain patterns think very differently from people with mental illnesses. While they might have an impulse to buy something they don't need, or to punch an obnoxious person in the mouth, my impulses include things like rolling in the grass with my dog or throwing my pooper-scooper bag into the face of an obnoxious neighbor. And those are the tamer ones.

The truth is that I can't understand a rational mind any more than a rational mind can fully understand mine. When I do and say things that make no sense to people around me, it frightens them. When I become so depressed that I can barely function, not only does it scare people, it makes the more empathic ones feel sad and depressive as well. So it actually makes perfect sense that the people who fall into the role of core support or even caretakers might feel distressed at the situation more often than not.

I wish I had good advice for family members, other than to attend DBSA (really, the group is incredibly helpful and there are chapters all over the United States) and learn all that they can about the illness of the ones they support. And of course, to keep up the good work of supporting family members and friends with mental illness. You may never know how much it means to us to have someone who cares, but I can tell you that from my own experience, it really can be all the difference in the world.