Supporting a Loved One: Sharing Your Story

This will be my last post for a while in this series. You can read the other "Supporting a Loved One" posts as well as other posts about mental health with the following link:

• Mental Health

In the past few posts, I wrote about things not to say to loved ones dealing with mental health problems. Avoiding, “I know how you feel,” and suggesting or critiquing a loved one’s medication is not appreciated by most people with mental illness (and most people in general).

I’m going to cover a little ground I’ve already covered in previous posts, but I added some personal experiences I thought might be helpful.

While, “I know what you’re going through,” may not be helpful, I really like hearing, “That reminds me of a time when...” Several times, people have told me about a situation that was similar to mine. In one instance, a coworker told me about her husband who deals with anxiety. At the time, I had missed some work due to anxiety along with a depressive episode. She told me that her husband had also missed some work.

During the same week, my supervisor shared that her son dealt with mental illness. She was very understanding about me taking some time off and reducing my work hours.

In another instance, I missed some work due to a hypomanic episode with anxiety, and a coworker shared a story with me. He had incredible anxiety working at a phone company call center. Eventually his anxiety got so bad he had to quit. He told me his story when I was feeling like a failure as a teacher. Some days I would park my car outside the school and sit in it for several minutes while working up the nerve to go inside. “The same thing happened to me,” he said. 

A friend from one of my hospital stays shared a “do not” situation at work. She had a panic attack, and her supervisor told her a variety of things that weren’t helpful like, “I understand. I had anxiety when I was a kid,” and, “leave it at the door.”

Yikes. Luckily, she realized that he was trying to be supportive, so his faux pas didn't add to her anxiety. If someone told me to, “leave it at the door,” if I had a panic attack at work, I would feel pretty rotten and have a hard time going to work for a few weeks.

Medication is another touchy subject, but I do enjoy commiserating about side effects (not everyone enjoys this). Dry mouth, lucid dreams, increased anxiety and depression have all been unfortunate side effects I’ve experienced, and I’m not alone.

Psychiatric medications are not the only medications with side effects. Plenty of other medications (diabetes, cholesterol, etc.) can also cause frustrating side effects. When there's a give and take while talking about medications, it’s nice to be able to vent with another person. Then, it doesn't feel like complaining.

Do you have an experience with mental health that would be helpful to share? I’d love to hear about it. Comment, message me, or email me at leckbann@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.