I received five phone calls from my Grandma yesterday. She was having a very bad day.
She has recently moved house and downsized to a small retirement unit. She decided yesterday that all of her things had been stolen and she had been lied to. She was adamant about seeking legal advice. She even threatened to try to kill herself again if she couldn’t get her beautiful possessions back.
Receiving five phone calls a day from my Grandma is typical. I have no problem at all chatting to her each day when she’s well – even five times each day when she asks me the same questions over and over again. I’m a patient person and am willing to make all the time in the world for her. But on the bad days it gets hard. On these days she is completely irrational, hysterical and abusive. She screams negative and destructive things down the phone at me and sobs that she doesn’t want to live.
It’s not so hard to figure out what I should say to her, the answer is very clear. Nothing. She didn’t ring me for help; she rang to yell and scream, vent her emotions at me and hopefully feel better. There’s no real point in speaking, she can’t even hear me when she’s like this. I believe she is totally oblivious that there is even another human being on the other end of the phone line. On the rare occasions that I try to respond and inject a small amount of reason into her tirade of pessimism and negativity – slam – the phone goes dead. She’s hung up on me more times than I can count.
This is where my patience falters, I feel abused. I stop short of being rude but find myself asking her, “What do you want me to do about it? What are you asking of me?”
These words cause me a lot of guilt later one when I feel calmer. I love her dearly and I would never want her to suffer alone. I would love to be able to be there for her but the abusive behavior takes its toll. Some night’s, after Grandma has had a bad day, I find it difficult to sleep. When I do manage to sleep I have nightmares. I spend sometimes all day in a strange head space, not feeling at all like myself.
Generally (like most people I suspect) when I feel this way I talk to my mum. She always has the right answers, and she never fails to make me feel at ease. She’s wonderful and talking to her makes me feel balanced again, like me again. She has a much harder run of it then I do. She tells me it is her job to be listening to these phone calls and not mine. That I am not responsible for her and she shouldn’t be ringing her grand-daughter like this. Mum wants to limit the ‘fall out zone’ that surrounds mental illness and limit the impact on my sister and I, and my little nieces.
Then comes the awkwardness of Mum ringing Grandma to tell her that no matter how bad she is feeling she can’t be ringing the kids like this. “You will not be hanging up on them. K is still young and she doesn’t need your pessimism and negativity in her day. If you need to talk to someone, you ring me. It’s absolutely okay to ring me at any time”.
While I must admit I am grateful that it works for a little while, the downside is that when I speak to my Grandma - even on her good days - she treats me like a small child. She treats me as though I am fragile and she shouldn’t say anything that might upset me for fear I’ll run and tell my mum.
What it comes down to in the end is that I would like a real relationship with my Grandma, without the abusive content. It seems an unrealistic goal. I want her to be comfortable enough to be who she is and say what she wants to say but I don’t want to fill my head with somebody else’s destructive thinking.
So, I need to learn to set effective boundaries. I can be kind a loving to my Grandmother and still withdraw from situations that I am uncomfortable with, before becoming distressed myself. This is a life skill that I am generally pretty good at but it gets incredibly hard in the case of mental illness. Next time my Grandma calls me threatening suicide I will tell her that I am unable to talk to her while she’s in this state. If she needs immediate help, she should contact her case worker but for now I am unable to help until she is in a calmer state.
I need to realize that I am neither the cause nor the solution for her situation. I love her and will be there for her when I can help, but not when she’s out of control.
I’d like to know how have other people in the same situation have managed this?
K
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Self-Medicating
Through working on the Inspired Recovery project and reading widely about mental health, I have began the long education process of learning about mental illness. It appears that there are still many facets of this complex issue that are still to be explored in their entirety.
Many people I have spoken to have admitted a tendency to turn to substance abuse or “self-medicating” in an attempt to ease their considerable suffering.
Maree: “ I had a greater love/trust relationship with drugs than I had ever experienced with my family.”
Joe: “The hardest thing to do in my life was to stop drinking.”
Julie: “I began to abuse alcohol regularly and developed a serious drinking problem that lasted for some years.”
This is by no means a factor in everyone’s experience with a mental illness but the quoted contributors from Inspired Recovery are not alone. In fact, over 50% of people with a severe mental illness also use illicit drugs and/or alcohol*.
The vital question we should be asking is: how can we help these people cope, without having to resort to excessive use of medication that endangers their lives.
Mary Dodds, author of Schizophrenia: A Happier and Healthier Life, explains that people with a serious mental illness who self-medicate with either illicit drugs or alcohol are simply trying to find something to make them feel better, to end their pain. People with a mental illness suffer a great deal emotionally and psychologically and for this reason tend to seek solace to end their suffering, if only for a short while.
However, there is ample evidence to suggest that self-medicating is not the answer. As Dodds warns, this will only make the symptoms worse. Substance misuse increases the odds of suicide, incarceration, hepatitis, HIV, homelessness and aggression. In short, self-medicating is dangerous and detrimental to one’s health and research suggests it is counter-productive.
The solutions to this problem are by no means simple but perhaps there is something the rest of us could be doing. Let’s Talk About It! Raising awareness many not, in itself, provide the entire answer but the more first-hand information on how to get well, stay well and live well the higher the chances for successful recovery.
Let’s Talk About It! Tell us about your experience.
K
*Cleary M, Hunt GE, Matheson SL, Siegfried N, Walter G. Psychosocial interventions for people with both severe mental illness and substance misuse. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD001088. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001088.pub2.
Many people I have spoken to have admitted a tendency to turn to substance abuse or “self-medicating” in an attempt to ease their considerable suffering.
Maree: “ I had a greater love/trust relationship with drugs than I had ever experienced with my family.”
Joe: “The hardest thing to do in my life was to stop drinking.”
Julie: “I began to abuse alcohol regularly and developed a serious drinking problem that lasted for some years.”
This is by no means a factor in everyone’s experience with a mental illness but the quoted contributors from Inspired Recovery are not alone. In fact, over 50% of people with a severe mental illness also use illicit drugs and/or alcohol*.
The vital question we should be asking is: how can we help these people cope, without having to resort to excessive use of medication that endangers their lives.
Mary Dodds, author of Schizophrenia: A Happier and Healthier Life, explains that people with a serious mental illness who self-medicate with either illicit drugs or alcohol are simply trying to find something to make them feel better, to end their pain. People with a mental illness suffer a great deal emotionally and psychologically and for this reason tend to seek solace to end their suffering, if only for a short while.
However, there is ample evidence to suggest that self-medicating is not the answer. As Dodds warns, this will only make the symptoms worse. Substance misuse increases the odds of suicide, incarceration, hepatitis, HIV, homelessness and aggression. In short, self-medicating is dangerous and detrimental to one’s health and research suggests it is counter-productive.
The solutions to this problem are by no means simple but perhaps there is something the rest of us could be doing. Let’s Talk About It! Raising awareness many not, in itself, provide the entire answer but the more first-hand information on how to get well, stay well and live well the higher the chances for successful recovery.
Let’s Talk About It! Tell us about your experience.
K
*Cleary M, Hunt GE, Matheson SL, Siegfried N, Walter G. Psychosocial interventions for people with both severe mental illness and substance misuse. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD001088. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001088.pub2.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Living with the Diagnosis
Lisa Mora, a contributor to Inspired Recovery (www.inspiredrecovery.com) and author of I am Lisa; I am not Bipolar shares what I believe to be a truly amazing insight:
“I understand what living with the diagnosis means. Note that I say “living with the diagnosis,” not “living with Bipolar disorder,” says Lisa “Believe me, there is a difference.”
“One implies living in a permanent state of disease, the other highlights a whole other set of problems that can arise from the stigma of being diagnosed mentally ill. And that stigma, that label of defective, the feeling of being branded and excluded, cuts so much deeper and hurts so much more than the classified symptoms of the actual disorder.
Manic episodes come and go. Depression lingers then passes. All states of emotional being are transient and fleeting but being bipolar becomes a permanent label. People look at you differently when they know. Getting upset over something that would annoy anyone can then be seen as a sign of your instability.”
I believe that sharing this often unheard, first-hand perspective has the greatest potential to increase awareness and understanding of mental illness as well as provide a potential guideline to wellness for other sufferers.
Lisa’s raw and honest distinction between “living with an illness” and “living with a diagnosis” is a concept that is rarely explored, but one that highlights an unfortunate trend in our society: the promotion and reinforcement of fear.
It is my personal belief that we are created by society and in turn society is shaped by us. Human beings at large have consistently demonstrated a tendency to foster and reinforce misguided judgments towards an issue, person or group of people whether or not they have any factual knowledge at all. Behavior that goes against the main thrust of what it is to be ‘normal’ has always been a taboo subject.
Lisa’s experience that people look at her differently when they knew calls the enormous power of our belief system (who we are and who we tell others we are) into sharp focus.
This stigmatization and distinction that Lisa points out is not only unhelpful to those who suffer but is actively counter-productive. I believe that the media and entertainment industries don’t help matters when they portray those with a mental illness as violent, unpredictable, psychotic and dangerous. Without sufficient and reliable awareness of what it means to have a mental illness, our society is left with the pre-conceived notion that mental illness or sufferers of mental illness are to be feared and shunned.
I believe that the only way to alleviate ignorance is to shine a light on it. The more we open up the facts around mental illness and the more people read and hear the truth behind people’s experiences with mental illness the smaller the cycle of ignorance and fear gets.
K
“I understand what living with the diagnosis means. Note that I say “living with the diagnosis,” not “living with Bipolar disorder,” says Lisa “Believe me, there is a difference.”
“One implies living in a permanent state of disease, the other highlights a whole other set of problems that can arise from the stigma of being diagnosed mentally ill. And that stigma, that label of defective, the feeling of being branded and excluded, cuts so much deeper and hurts so much more than the classified symptoms of the actual disorder.
Manic episodes come and go. Depression lingers then passes. All states of emotional being are transient and fleeting but being bipolar becomes a permanent label. People look at you differently when they know. Getting upset over something that would annoy anyone can then be seen as a sign of your instability.”
I believe that sharing this often unheard, first-hand perspective has the greatest potential to increase awareness and understanding of mental illness as well as provide a potential guideline to wellness for other sufferers.
Lisa’s raw and honest distinction between “living with an illness” and “living with a diagnosis” is a concept that is rarely explored, but one that highlights an unfortunate trend in our society: the promotion and reinforcement of fear.
It is my personal belief that we are created by society and in turn society is shaped by us. Human beings at large have consistently demonstrated a tendency to foster and reinforce misguided judgments towards an issue, person or group of people whether or not they have any factual knowledge at all. Behavior that goes against the main thrust of what it is to be ‘normal’ has always been a taboo subject.
Lisa’s experience that people look at her differently when they knew calls the enormous power of our belief system (who we are and who we tell others we are) into sharp focus.
This stigmatization and distinction that Lisa points out is not only unhelpful to those who suffer but is actively counter-productive. I believe that the media and entertainment industries don’t help matters when they portray those with a mental illness as violent, unpredictable, psychotic and dangerous. Without sufficient and reliable awareness of what it means to have a mental illness, our society is left with the pre-conceived notion that mental illness or sufferers of mental illness are to be feared and shunned.
I believe that the only way to alleviate ignorance is to shine a light on it. The more we open up the facts around mental illness and the more people read and hear the truth behind people’s experiences with mental illness the smaller the cycle of ignorance and fear gets.
K
My Experience
My Grandma suffers from mental illness. She has schizo-effective disorder and border-line personality disorder.
During my childhood this did not factor into the relationship I had with my Grandma. We spent a lot of time together and she would read me story after story for hours on end. She made me cubby houses out of sheets which took up her entire living room and never once complained about the mess. We went walking together and she would spend her last few cents on sweets for me. Pretty standard Grandma behavior, I thought.
When I was small the other things were easy enough to accept or not really notice. The times when twittering birds outside her window drove her to tears, though I couldn't hear anything. She once had a 'noise competition' with the exhaust fan in the kitchen, telling me she was going to be the loudest. Sometimes I couldn't visit because Grandma wasn't well but soon she was back home and everything was okay again.
As I grew up I began to identify periods of wellness and un-wellness. By this stage, I understood that she was different but I didn't care. She was my Grandma and I loved her dearly.
The worst of her illness was kept from me when I was small but as I got older her condition began to fluctuate more rapidly.
My adult experience of having a mentally ill Grandmother includes being woken up by phone calls at midnight, listening to my Grandma sobbing. Being told the same thing over and over, repetitively, manically for hours on end. Trying to calm her when she becomes hysterical, irrational and abusive. Placating her paranoid conspiracy theories. Enduring the fear of her repeated suicide attempts and, sometimes unbearably, watching the most wonderful, loving woman suffer in total agony.
It's been hard at times. I've sometimes struggled to be patient through her episodes of mania and paranoia and my courage and endurance has been tested in periods of depression. I have really fought to remain calm at times, through the roller coaster of mental illness, but the depth of love we share has never changed. Never even fluctuated.
We have always had a close relationship. We share a love of books and reading, a passion for old-fashioned movies and other such things. I would not change a single moment because I adore my Grandma and I love and accept who she is.
These experiences, both good and bad, are the source of my greatest learning and I have my Grandma to thank for such precious gifts.
K
During my childhood this did not factor into the relationship I had with my Grandma. We spent a lot of time together and she would read me story after story for hours on end. She made me cubby houses out of sheets which took up her entire living room and never once complained about the mess. We went walking together and she would spend her last few cents on sweets for me. Pretty standard Grandma behavior, I thought.
When I was small the other things were easy enough to accept or not really notice. The times when twittering birds outside her window drove her to tears, though I couldn't hear anything. She once had a 'noise competition' with the exhaust fan in the kitchen, telling me she was going to be the loudest. Sometimes I couldn't visit because Grandma wasn't well but soon she was back home and everything was okay again.
As I grew up I began to identify periods of wellness and un-wellness. By this stage, I understood that she was different but I didn't care. She was my Grandma and I loved her dearly.
The worst of her illness was kept from me when I was small but as I got older her condition began to fluctuate more rapidly.
My adult experience of having a mentally ill Grandmother includes being woken up by phone calls at midnight, listening to my Grandma sobbing. Being told the same thing over and over, repetitively, manically for hours on end. Trying to calm her when she becomes hysterical, irrational and abusive. Placating her paranoid conspiracy theories. Enduring the fear of her repeated suicide attempts and, sometimes unbearably, watching the most wonderful, loving woman suffer in total agony.
It's been hard at times. I've sometimes struggled to be patient through her episodes of mania and paranoia and my courage and endurance has been tested in periods of depression. I have really fought to remain calm at times, through the roller coaster of mental illness, but the depth of love we share has never changed. Never even fluctuated.
We have always had a close relationship. We share a love of books and reading, a passion for old-fashioned movies and other such things. I would not change a single moment because I adore my Grandma and I love and accept who she is.
These experiences, both good and bad, are the source of my greatest learning and I have my Grandma to thank for such precious gifts.
K
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Project
Hi all,
My name is K and I work as a writing assistant on a book project called Inspired Recovery.
Working on this book and hearing the life stories of these truly magnificent people and their struggle with mental illness has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. I have really begun to believe that mental illness is not the end of the world - there is a chance. You just have to be willing to work at it. Not that it's as easy as all that! It's a constant fight and a fierce struggle just to maintain a balance that those without mental illness take for granted.
The hardships some of these people have gone through, not just in conjunction with mental illness but within their everyday lives as well, have really helped to put things into perspective for me. Thinking about those facing alcohol and drug abuse, dysfunctional relationships, assault, low self-esteem, depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia makes my concern about the weekly budget just disappear.
The opportunity to work on this book, is an opportunity for deep personal growth and understanding that I am truly thankful for.
K
My name is K and I work as a writing assistant on a book project called Inspired Recovery.
Working on this book and hearing the life stories of these truly magnificent people and their struggle with mental illness has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. I have really begun to believe that mental illness is not the end of the world - there is a chance. You just have to be willing to work at it. Not that it's as easy as all that! It's a constant fight and a fierce struggle just to maintain a balance that those without mental illness take for granted.
The hardships some of these people have gone through, not just in conjunction with mental illness but within their everyday lives as well, have really helped to put things into perspective for me. Thinking about those facing alcohol and drug abuse, dysfunctional relationships, assault, low self-esteem, depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia makes my concern about the weekly budget just disappear.
The opportunity to work on this book, is an opportunity for deep personal growth and understanding that I am truly thankful for.
K
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