Living with Mental Illness: Part 1

I’m a Professor of Health and Illness and I teach my university’s course on Mental Illness, so I spend a lot of time researching, writing, teaching, and talking about mental health and illness. I also grew up in a home where mental illness abounded. My father suffered from clinical depression and bipolar. He was also addicted to heroin, cocaine, and crack. When he was well enough to be in our home (not on the streets seeking drugs or in rehab), from the time I came home until the time I went to sleep, I was cared for by a person who was mentally ill. This was my home reality. 

He himself also grew up in a home full of mental illness. His father was a veteran with severe untreated PTSD, and as he cycled through his own mental terrors, he abused my dad as if his tiny infant body were his enemy. My grandmother, who lived in fear of him, abused alcohol to cope. She herself had grown up in an alcoholic home, in fact, her father and sister both died young from alcohol abuse.

I share these stories with you because I want to acknowledge all the suffering out there. I see you. I feel you. I also want to acknowledge that we don’t always get to choose whom we love. My dad, who passed away a few years ago, was one of the most important people in my life—I loved him above all despite our hardships. My dad loved his mom and dad above all too. Our underlying love is what made each of us the beautiful human being that we were/are. My deepest humanity and my awareness in this life spring from the ways that I have loved suffered, and grown from and through these very relationships. And it springs from the fact that I continue to learn and grow from them today.

Healing at Home

I was lucky. My mom was a counterpoint to all the drama. She was upfront with me about my dad’s conditions and about her own love, suffering, and growth through her care for him, and so I learned from her how to cope healthfully. From living in a home sick with love and anguish, I learned how to choose differently so that I could heal and help my family to heal. It was a long process and it continues for me today as I put one foot in front of the other to make a better way for my kids.

It’s hard for me to drill down to the fundamentals of how I have coped healthfully. It’s also hard for me to succinctly summarize any one of them. So let me instead start a conversation by sharing a few parts of my process. 

First is that I see myself as me. I am me and I am different from my loved one. I learn from them and grow through our love, but I am not them.

Second is that I see them as human, and human means part love and part pain. Part growing and part grown. They are changing but they are also hurt, and so there will continue to be patterns that they enact that harm them and possibly me.

Third, I figure out what is working for them and what is perpetuating their suffering. I identify healthy behaviors and unhealthy behaviors. I reflect on whether I engage in these behaviors too.

Fourth, I determine what I can help with or change and what I can’t. I couldn’t make my dad not be depressed when he was. I couldn’t take him out of a bipolar episode. I couldn’t make him not be an addict. I could support him to get quality care and advocate for him when he didn’t.

Fifth, I decide which of the things I can help with and change I am willing to do. My dad needed a lot of hands-on help and also a lot of logistical help. I could have decided not to go to college and to instead live with him to monitor his actions and drive him to all his appointments. I could have become his personal case manager or therapist or home nurse. I opted to do some parts of the former myself and opted out of doing the latter. Those were difficult choices, but I believed they were healthy ones for the both of us.

The sixth part, and the crux of all these action-points, is that I find ways to respect my personhood and theirs in ways that will allow me to continue to love and care for them sustainably. I ensure that what I am doing won’t burn me out to the point that I can no longer care for either of us.