Ross’s Story

That night, we had just won a basketball game, and afterwards I went to Friendly’s with all my friends to celebrate, just like we always did. I had already been wrestling with thoughts of death and suicide for about three months, but for some reason, it was on that ride home that I decided to finally end my pain and do it. I stared out the window in the backseat and looked at the crisp winter ground. The farmlands that were so familiar to me as a child seemed so distant, lit by the moonlight. I thanked the guys who drove me home and opened the door for what I thought would be the last time.

I went upstairs to my bedroom. In one last attempt to stop myself, I lay paralyzed by my bedroom phone. The anguish of depression tightened every muscle in my body until I was in a fetal position, barely able to call a friend. And when I finally did call, I had no words. My throat was choked off by the agony of my thoughts. I hung up. I walked across the hallway to my bathroom to end it. But before anything too major happened my dad walked by. He wasn’t supposed to be home. But he was, and he stopped and asked me what I was doing.

I froze. I shook. My family had never talked about emotion. My oldest brother had left the family when I was 16, and I didn’t get along with my middle brother at all. So I had no idea how to tell my dad what I was thinking in that moment. He asked me to come downstairs to talk to him. I walked into the kitchen, and told him that if he didn’t take me to the hospital, I was going to kill myself. Just then, the phone rang. It turns out that the call I had made earlier wasn’t entirely audible, but the person on the other end had heard something, and suspected that something bad may have happened. My parents panicked. Of course they didn’t want to believe I really wanted to die. Then they made a phone call. I just didn’t want to be there at all anymore.

My parents cried all the way to the hospital. In the curtained area of the waiting room, I was briefly left alone and ended up hurting myself. The nurses and doctors wrestled with me, then gave me a tranquilizer so they could admit me to the psychiatric ward. After I was admitted, my parents came to visit every chance they could. My brother Vance came too.

I went on to graduate from high school and attend American University. The adjustment didn’t go well for me, though. I ultimately had a major relapse with bipolar disorder. One day, I threw a guy onto the floor at the pharmacy where I was waiting for my new meds. The next day, I pushed someone down an escalator. It was on that day that I called my dad to come get me, and I took a medical leave of absence from school.

I was hospitalized again. When I got out of the hospital I weighed 230 pounds, which was about 60 pounds more than I weighed when I’d started college. I felt hopeless—like I had nothing to live for. But my parents helped me get a job. They asked me to enroll in community college and tried to get me to function a little bit. I returned to American University four years after I started, and when I finally graduated, my parents were there to watch me walk across the stage in my cap and gown.

The support I received from my parents was a huge help. They let me live at their house the entire time I wasn’t in Washington, DC. They didn’t always know what to do or say, but they were there. They loved me and my two brothers as much or even more than any parents ever could, but they really didn’t know exactly what to do. My mom was raised in a home where issues like this were just swept under the rug. You didn’t talk about them. My dad grew up with an alcoholic father who never touched him, never hugged him, never said “I love you.” He couldn’t have friends over because he never knew what state his dad would be in when he came home. We have depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and anxiety on both sides of my family, but no one ever really talked openly about it.

I can honestly say that my parents raised me the best way they knew how, but again—I needed more help than they could give me in order to deal with these issues. I had birthday parties, new clothe , rides to every practice imaginable, but I never had the words or any sense of comfort when I would try to talk about emotion or bipolar disorder. And for that reason, my parents became the enemy for a time. They were the ones I would want to blame and the ones I would take everything out on. Our house was filled with anger and rage, especially unfairly toward my mom. I don’t know if it was because I expected them to take away my pain, or that the disorder just had me so much on edge that I snapped. I can’t stress enough how much my parents cared, but they didn’t always know what to do. And for the longest time, caring just didn’t cut it.

Families and Mental Health

From the moment you open your eyes, whether you’re adopted or not, your family is yours for life. There are no exchanges or returns—at least not in the formative years. Families are like living organisms. They take on a life of their own, and regardless of how we may feel about it, we’re bound to them until the day we die. They define us, shape our identity, and determine how we feel about ourselves in the world. Families can be your greatest source of inspiration, or the main cause of your most unthinkable pain. Or sometimes, they represent a little of both.

As a young adult, you may have tried to distance yourself from your family in order to establish an identity all your own. Not to bore you with developmental psychology, but this is a normal part of growing up. Everyone does this in his or her own way, and some more than others. But no matter how far you stray, your family can help you regress back to that infant state, the feeling of your most simple and basic self.

Obviously, mental disorders will complicate a family. They can cause a family to fall apart. They can cause generations of unresolved pain, suffering, confusion, and dysfunction, leading to extreme cases of insecurity, lack of trust, and fear of commitment. Conversely, the discovery of a mental disorder can also heal a family that was once splintered. Love can heal trauma. Its powers are profound. If given the opportunity, it can even bring someone back from the brink.

If you’re reading this and have a mental disorder, you know how complicated it can make things for your family. And the flip side is true also—if your family member has a disorder, you can’t escape dealing with it yourself. Let’s look at what can happen to a family when one of its members has a mental disorder.

When Parents Don’t Know What To Do

Parents deal with mental disorders in a variety of ways. Some parents are supportive and do everything they can to help their children. Others become ultra protective and fearful of any changes or problems. Some never address the issue – not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know where to begin. They feel utterly powerless and ineffective, like they might end up causing even more problems for their kids. Can you imagine what this must feel like? You love someone more than you can even describe in words. They’re a part of you. Yet you can’t reach that person emotionally or help him or her get better. It would suck to be a parent in this situation. And being a kid dealing with a frustrated parent is no picnic. Let’s face it; it’s tough for everyone involved.

MARC
Marc describes a depressive episode that struck when he was 23.
I finally made the phone call to my parents, articulating to them in my angst-ridden state that due to my depression I had been rendered helpless. I told them about the previous several weeks and how I had no desire to even leave my bed. My father suggested that he travel to DC to accompany me back home to Los Angeles. With his help, I wouldn’t have to think. Like most children, I have a vivid image of being taken to college by one of my parents, left to start a new chapter of my life. Once again, one of my parents would be present on another journey, this time on a voyage no one really wanted to take. My father was now taking me home…because I could not get there on my own.

There are a lot of homes where the parents may care, but yet they don’t know how to talk about feelings. Maybe they don’t know how to deal with mental health issues. In that case, you can be the one to open that communication. Let parents know what you need and what they can do to help you.

Or maybe you’ve tried communicating, and it doesn’t work. In that case, you may need to accept that your parents are probably never going to change. They may be the same for as long as you live, simply because that it’s the way they were raised. As hard as this can be to understand, it may be the reality you are facing. And let’s be honest: it’s frustrating to never really be known or understood emotionally. But on a lot of levels, it’s better than having parents who don’t care at all. Even if all your parents can offer you is a roof over your head, it’s still better than having to live on the street. That may be terrible to hear, but it’s true. And because your parents do care, know that there is room for change—if not now, perhaps in the future.

Empowering Vs. Enabling

When a family member is trying to help someone with a disorder, there’s a fine line between empowerment and enabling. When someone gets out of the hospital, has to leave school, or is diagnosed with a disorder, it can be a natural reaction to try do everything for that person and greatly limit her responsibility. In some cases, this may be necessary, at least temporarily. However, at some point it is important to help the person focus on things she is capable of and empower her to work on finding ways to cope with life. Not everyone may be capable of this, and there are different timetables for each person, but empowerment is a step in the right direction. When people with disorders have everything done for them, it just enables their dependency and lack of ability, making it hard for them to change. The best way to work on walking this line is to consult with a mental health professional.

When you’re living at home, some parents are torn between pushing you to get out, and coddling you to make sure nothing bad ever happens. Should they take care of everything for you, so you don’t have to worry? Should they pressure you to do things that you don’t want to do—find a job, go back to school? Talking to a professional is sometimes the best way for them to figure out how best to help you. Mental disorders are complicated. You won’t just wake up one morning and find your disorder is gone. But by learning more about it and trying to do as many things as you can to improve—even on the worst days, you can make progress—and your parents can help you. The more they know about the disorder themselves, the better they’ll know what to do.

The best thing for parents to do is to offer you support, but without trying to protect you from everything. One of the most important things that Ross’s parents did for him, which may not even have been intentional, is to help empower him to see that he was more than just his disorder. They worked hard to help him find a job and go back to school. They encouraged him to work on getting better.

Ross’ relationship with his parents changed when he was able to start verbalizing what he needed from them. And because they cared, they tried their best to make certain changes. No one wanted every interaction to be filled with anger, so they all worked on their communication. It took them several years to figure that out, and even when they were communicating better, his oldest brother Thad still hadn’t spoken to anyone in the family for nearly seven years.

With all that the family had been through together, Ross felt a deep need to reconnect with Thad, so he tracked him down on the Internet and emailed him. He wasn’t sure if Thad would even answer, but within a few hours, Ross received a response. Ross cried when he saw his brother’s name appear on his computer screen. It had been seven years since they’d communicated at all. Thad admitted to missing the family. Ross and his middle brother, Vance, reconnected with their brother slowly, catching up on those missing years. A couple of months after the first contact, they all met up in New York City.

ROSS
I think it takes a family to bring a family back together. Sure, I reached out to Thad, but he was willing to admit what points he needed to deal with and my parents were also willing to change, within their limits. Today, my brothers and I talk to each other about our emotions, but I still rarely talk about that with my parents. They are parents. When I do talk about emotion, they tend to want to try to fix it.

I know who I can go to when I have problems with my disorder. I never went to my parents with my emotions before and I don’t really do it now. I have people in my life who can offer that sort of help. However, I know I have my parents’ support—I know they will be there for me—no matter what. When Thad decided to move from Florida to California, it was my parents who flew down to pack him up and drive him across country. And it is our parents who will always be there to welcome us home. Without these disorders, I don’t know if my family would have become so disjointed, but I also don’t know if we would have been able to come back together, either.

Ross was lucky. Really lucky. In the end, his whole family was committed to working out their differences. Every family has to be willing to admit faults, know when to listen, when to shut up, and what to do to work things out. It isn’t easy, and there’s no quick fix. And sometimes, it’s anything but fun. But it can work.

If you know that your parents love and care about you but don’t know what to say or do, there are a number of things you can try. You can try to educate them as much as you can about your disorder and communicate what you like and don’t like, or what you need and don’t need from them. Communication is absolutely vital. If you don’t tell them how you feel, then they won’t be able to truly understand you. Talking with a mental health professional will also help you learn ways to express yourself when dealing with your parents. If you don’t think they will respond to you, it can also help to have a friend of the family—or someone they trust—approach them instead. But be careful with that one, because these issues can be embarrassing. You don’t want to make it more uncomfortable by bringing in someone they don’t know.

Back to Chapter Excerpts

Share, Bookmark and Help Educate Others: