I often hear a blanket statement: “family support is super important”. The context in which it gets floated around could be meetings or webinars on topics related to serious mental illness. People are quick to judge other families on the basis of this sentence.
I wholeheartedly agree with the statement, most of the people I have come across who are managing their serious mental illnesses well have some amazing support system, like family or friends who are non-judgmental, stand by them like a rock in their tough times, guide them and ensure access to professional help.
But I do not think that it’s right for any family to take up the blame for their family member’s condition and get upset that they missed out on providing the family support OR to feel that they should just sacrifice their own lives in order to support the family member with mental illness. We need to make sure that we clearly communicate what support means, because without definition, it could mean different things for different people, leading to family members getting offended by each other for not doing what they think it means.
Let me present a realistic family situation as an example:
A daughter gets diagnosed with schizophrenia and her single mother decides to forget all her own life goals, passions, hobbies, happinesses; instead, devote all her time in helping out the daughter. You know, be the support her daughter needs.
Sounds very noble and to an extent even normal- after all she’s a mother, right?
Let me paint a more detailed picture of their lives:
Assume the daughter prefers to wake up late in the mornings, medications make her sleep during the day too, has a lot of ambitions but the voices she hears often distract her and she can’t focus on what she wants to do, say, study for college, etc. There are many more challenges, especially due to schizophrenia that she faces on a regular basis, including loss of ability to think clearly at times.
The mother is more disciplined, believes in the mantra ‘early to bed and early to rise’. Wants to tell her daughter that she should keep the room tidy and clean. Believes that clean surroundings bring a positivity in the environment and without that her daughter would continue to feel so sensitive to light, sound, voices, etc. The mother is so invested in her daughter that she doesn’t stop at suggesting what the daughter should do and encouraging her to find why for herself, rather she wants to tell her how to do things, and has strong beliefs about what’s a good daily routine vs what’s not. In her mind, she’s trying to support her daughter by guiding her towards right things!
By intention, it’s pure love and care of the mother. Her intentions are genuinely in the direction of helping her daughter. But her ways of supporting her daughter are more micromanaging in nature.
How does this affect both of them?
For the daughter:
- She is always feeling angry, repulsive, unhappy, discontent, may or may not feel low confidence (depending on her own personality), because her actions are constantly criticised and she’s constantly told that she shouldn’t do whatever she does. So while the mother wants to setup a positive environment, the daughter just feels judged by her and might even go to the extent of keeping her room dirtier than she likes just to prove her mother wrong!
- The result of her mother’s micromanagement and barging into the how of her actions are counter-productive for the daughter.
For the mother:
- As she has dedicated her whole life to support her daughter, she is sub-consciously trying to impose her own beliefs and ways on her daughter. Whatever she thinks is right, could not be applied on her own self because she has given up on having any other life goal other than helping out the daughter. So all that she believes in, goes as lectures for the daughter. And her daughter not paying attention to those lectures, brings her disappointment.
- On top of that, she doesn’t feel valued for all the effort she’s putting in to help her daughter. In order to support the daughter, she gave up her job, stopped spending time with friends or any other socialising activities because she believes that her adult daughter needs her! All the sacrifices she’s making are responded with no sense of gratitude by her daughter.
- She’s clearly already unhappy and when her daughter’s mental health goes worse or when she’s experiencing episodes of psychosis, which is part of her mental illness, the mother feels even more exhausted, overwhelmed, clueless, and depressed.
- The result is that the mother develops depression, anxiety and some mental illness herself.
This example is a proof to why it’s important to define what do we really mean by support, because this example shows many things that the phrase family support doesn’t mean!
This long article I’ve written could be explained by some simple, short phrases like setting up boundaries. But I won’t do that either. As much as I love the phrase, I’ve noticed that in certain cultures, people take it literally and think this would mean closing the door when the loved one needs something. It’s a shame that we are often quick to judge and make assumptions instead of trying to understand what a phrase really means!
So, let me share what I believe family support is all about. It means:
- Developing a better understanding of the mental illness so that you can empathise with your loved one living with it.
- Encouraging your loved one to seek professional help (from medication to therapy, whatever is needed depending on the case). There’s no need to become therapist yourself, find professionals and let them help!
- Not judging: Understanding and acknowledging that every human is different, we all can have different opinions, different perspectives, different methods of doing the same things and different world views! Stop forcing or imposing our own beliefs and ways on others, especially on a loved one going through mental illnesses.
- You don’t become someone’s guide just by being a blood relative. Just because you’re a parent or an elder sibling, you’re not automatically entitled to be a mentor or guide to your adult child or younger sibling. It takes time and effort to reach there. So if you want to support someone, put in that effort! Give space to your loved one, build a non-judging relationship with them over time, learn who they are inside out, only then you might be able to give suggestions that make sense to your loved one. And even then, better to give suggestions without imposing your solutions to their problems.
- Encouraging your loved one’s interests and nudging them to take baby steps in the direction of those interests… again, without imposing your own ideas on what those baby steps should be. Make suggestions instead of giving solutions and don’t expect the other person to follow your suggestions. Treat an adult as adult and let them make their own life choice: e.g. they can be night owls, you be the early bird or vice versa!
- Ensuring that you have your own life goals apart from supporting this loved one- so that you are not making your loved one a single point of failure in your life. Have your own independent sources of happiness too! Find time for yourself, and nurture your interests. Every human being needs to feel valued, happy and content. No matter what your family is going through, you need to have your own independent source of happiness – it could be your hobbies or professional interests. Making money out of it is not the most important part, drawing your own happiness from it is the important part, and it’s the bare minimum every human needs!
Yes, it’ll be great if this support is available in families where someone is going through mental illness. Heck, it’d be great for everyone to have such a supportive family whether there is a mental illness or not! But well, that’s the dream.
We can all wish to move in this direction as a society, or as human race, starting from our individual selves. But we can’t expect our families to change tomorrow. And until then, “family support is super important” is a very subjective sentence that no family should blindly follow without clearly understanding what such support means.
