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Living with (Someone Else's) Mental Illness
I have thought about writing about this for a while, but I haven't because reliving the past can be painful. For three years I lived with someone who suffers from mental illness problems. These three years were not only filled with pain (if they were, it would not have lasted so long), but there are many things I've learned from this situation.
When someone has serious trouble grasping reality, there is nothing you can do to rationally help this person see things as they are. The nature of many disorders is the inability of the person who suffers from the disorder to objectively look at their situation. By the end of the relationship, it was obvious to me that nothing I could say would give this person what she wanted. But further than that - no one can. When the dysfunctional thought patterns become inextricably linked to one's own identity and personality, there is no way to remove these patterns... it involves the complete destruction of one's own identity.
Being patient is a virture, as we've all heard, but there are clear limits we should all have with patience. First, we should never sacrifice clear boundaries for the sake of "being understanding"... this just leads one to believe that boundaries can be trampled on and quite often these boundaries will continue to get trampled on until you completely remove yourself from the situation. Second, patience is no cure for irrational beliefs about one's own identity, or beliefs about someone's motives and actions that aren't true. No one can spend considerable amounts of time trying to prove that something that didn't happen actually didn't happen. When the inner-workings of your mind and emotions are constantly on trial, you will be convicted anew each day just as in The Stranger when Mersault realized he was guilty not for his actual deed, but for the bad impression he had left on the jury. And it certainly feels as though you are on jury all of the time when nothing you say is taken at face value. If you know without a doubt that you aren't good enough for someone, you won't be good enough for that person... you will make it so.
Mental illness wrapped in identity problems can be cataclysmic for those involved in that person's life. It is too easy to latch onto others and blame your problems on them when you aren't clear about who you are. It is far too easy to spend all of your time arguing about what reality actually is before dealing with the core problems surrounding why one may have identity problems in the first place.
A year ago, I left the country and spent two weeks away from this relationship and was able to see it for what it truly was. I was being abused on a daily basis and it was being pitched to me as being something wrong with me. My self-esteem was suffering because I felt trapped - that nothing I was doing was good enough. I left the country, and had a beautiful experience falling in love with the simplicity of a life built on basic human needs and the warm emotional connections that can be made with people you can't even say more than a few words to. I came back knowing not only that my self-esteem problems were based on problems that weren't mine, but that I had good reasons to question the value of my relationship.
I was immediately attacked verbally when I came home at the end of that long 34 hour jet-lagged day. The boundaries I had set were ignored, and I knew after this amazing beautiful experience out of the country that I could not continue doing what I had been doing.
Compassion is often pitched in terms of self-sacrifice. I felt that I was being compassionate throughout my relationship. In retrospect, I was far too self-sacrificing. Compassion is built on the connection between understanding the problems one is facing and the receptiveness of who are you feeling compassionate toward. Compassion without any returns is stupidity, it allows for codependency.
In the past month I have visited and spoken with many people I have been close with over the years, and I can say with certainty that these people have saved me. Whether with serious talks, or having fun, or demonstrating clearly with words and actions that they value what I have to offer... I have some serious thanks to go around to so many people. You all know who you are and I love you all. Particularly, I'd like to say, that this week specifically I feel more rejuvenated than I have in years and it has everything to do with the people in my life. If only I could continue having weeks that are as fulfilling to the soul as this each week, I would an extremely blessed man.
When someone has serious trouble grasping reality, there is nothing you can do to rationally help this person see things as they are. The nature of many disorders is the inability of the person who suffers from the disorder to objectively look at their situation. By the end of the relationship, it was obvious to me that nothing I could say would give this person what she wanted. But further than that - no one can. When the dysfunctional thought patterns become inextricably linked to one's own identity and personality, there is no way to remove these patterns... it involves the complete destruction of one's own identity.
Being patient is a virture, as we've all heard, but there are clear limits we should all have with patience. First, we should never sacrifice clear boundaries for the sake of "being understanding"... this just leads one to believe that boundaries can be trampled on and quite often these boundaries will continue to get trampled on until you completely remove yourself from the situation. Second, patience is no cure for irrational beliefs about one's own identity, or beliefs about someone's motives and actions that aren't true. No one can spend considerable amounts of time trying to prove that something that didn't happen actually didn't happen. When the inner-workings of your mind and emotions are constantly on trial, you will be convicted anew each day just as in The Stranger when Mersault realized he was guilty not for his actual deed, but for the bad impression he had left on the jury. And it certainly feels as though you are on jury all of the time when nothing you say is taken at face value. If you know without a doubt that you aren't good enough for someone, you won't be good enough for that person... you will make it so.
Mental illness wrapped in identity problems can be cataclysmic for those involved in that person's life. It is too easy to latch onto others and blame your problems on them when you aren't clear about who you are. It is far too easy to spend all of your time arguing about what reality actually is before dealing with the core problems surrounding why one may have identity problems in the first place.
A year ago, I left the country and spent two weeks away from this relationship and was able to see it for what it truly was. I was being abused on a daily basis and it was being pitched to me as being something wrong with me. My self-esteem was suffering because I felt trapped - that nothing I was doing was good enough. I left the country, and had a beautiful experience falling in love with the simplicity of a life built on basic human needs and the warm emotional connections that can be made with people you can't even say more than a few words to. I came back knowing not only that my self-esteem problems were based on problems that weren't mine, but that I had good reasons to question the value of my relationship.
I was immediately attacked verbally when I came home at the end of that long 34 hour jet-lagged day. The boundaries I had set were ignored, and I knew after this amazing beautiful experience out of the country that I could not continue doing what I had been doing.
Compassion is often pitched in terms of self-sacrifice. I felt that I was being compassionate throughout my relationship. In retrospect, I was far too self-sacrificing. Compassion is built on the connection between understanding the problems one is facing and the receptiveness of who are you feeling compassionate toward. Compassion without any returns is stupidity, it allows for codependency.
In the past month I have visited and spoken with many people I have been close with over the years, and I can say with certainty that these people have saved me. Whether with serious talks, or having fun, or demonstrating clearly with words and actions that they value what I have to offer... I have some serious thanks to go around to so many people. You all know who you are and I love you all. Particularly, I'd like to say, that this week specifically I feel more rejuvenated than I have in years and it has everything to do with the people in my life. If only I could continue having weeks that are as fulfilling to the soul as this each week, I would an extremely blessed man.
posted by Will at 10:27 PM
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