Mental illness can happen to anyone. Conditions like bipolar disorder, depression, or severe anxiety don't discriminate. What can you do if it is your partner or spouse who is mentally ill? How can you support them and still keep yourself together?
Mental illness can have an overwhelming effect on a marriage or committed relationship. Whether or not the relationship can survive depends a great deal on how you deal with your partner's mental illness. This article will provide you with some ideas for ways to cope.
1. Educate yourself about the illness. Learn everything you can about what your partner is experiencing, along with treatments, triggers, and prognosis. Knowledge is power, at a time when you may be feeling completely helpless. Learning about the illness will help you know what to expect and enable you to be a member of your partner's treatment team.
2. Realize that you cannot fix your mentally ill partner's mental illness. You did not cause the illness, and you can't make it go away. Your partner is the only person who can make the decision to follow treatment. Encourage and support your partner's efforts, but it's important to accept that he or she must make and follow through with their own decisions.
3. Avoid blaming your spouse or partner. Just as you wouldn't express hostility or anger if your partner were struggling with a physical illness, people with mental illnesses don't choose to be that way. Symptoms of mental illness can appear to be laziness, avoidance, or lack of consistency. It's hard not to take those symptoms personally.
4. Feelings of frustration, sadness, and even anger are normal for you to experience. This may not be anything like the relationship you had hoped to have. Your mental health is important right now also. Finding a way to express your feelings safely, like to a trusted friend or a counselor, can help you validate and process what you are going through.
5. While taking care of your mental health, it's important to take care of yourself physically, as well. First, be sure you are sleeping, eating, seeing friends, and participating in your own activities as much as you can. Second, there are some mental illnesses which can cause the person to act out in verbally or even physically abusive ways when they are in the midst of a crisis. Keep yourself and your children safe from harm, above all.
6. Reach out to others who understand. There are groups for partners of people diagnosed with mental illness, both in person and on the internet. Sometimes just speaking with someone who has been there and understands what you are going through can be an enormous help. Don't let stigma or shame prevent you from seeking the support you need. Mental illness can be very difficult for couples and families to deal with. Remember that in most cases there is effective treatment available, and support for you as well.
In every committed relationship, couples face hurdles and this is a big one. At the same time, there is always hope that symptoms can be managed and the two of you can face this hurdle successfully, together. Not all couples are able to weather the storm of mental illness - it can tear families apart. But it's always worth a try, and you may find yourselves with a stronger bond when you make it to the other side.
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