My Support Forums - View Single Post - What NOT to Say When You're Depressed/Mentally Ill

Nammu · Jun 15, 2012, 03:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odee

We all know the Dos and Don'ts about speaking to someone with depression, but isn't it just as important for someone with mental illness to choose what they say in return?

For example, I never, ever mean to utter anything along these lines:
"You just don't understand"
"You will never have it this hard."
"There's nothing you can do."
"Leave me alone" -- along with any other form of rejection.

I think accusing someone who is trying to be understanding as not being able to understand is among the worst. We of all people should know how easily others overlook silent pain.

Anyone else have thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you for this, brings up a lot to think about.
I do believe it also depends on where a person is at in their recovery from mental illness. For me, in the beginning trying to deal with my family was hard, very hard. They had a lot of ignorance, anger and no willingness to educate themselves, they just wanted me to stop having a mental illness. Somehow my PTSD and depression made them look bad! I needed them! So in the beginning I did tell them a lot that they, "would never understand", "they would never have it as hard as I did", and the more they pressed me to deny that any thing was wrong the more I told them to just "leave me alone, they could never understand". As I gathered tools to deal with my illness and learned to cope I grew more understanding of them too.

As I struggled to find ways to just accept them as they were, they begin to look for answers too. They started going to classes and educating themselves. It is a two way street. But its hard for both sides at first. Theres still a lot of people out there that know very little or nothing true about mental illness. But a person who is at the start of their own journey with MI should not be expected to enlighten people or family because they are at a place where they need as much support as they can get from others. However later in our journey, I think you have a good point. Helping to demystify all those lies about MI would be easier if we watched how we replied to insensitive uninformed people and helped them learn a little bit just by being sensitive in chooseing our words with care.

You are right, no one knows pain better than those of us that have traveled down the path of a MI. It is often an lonely path in the worse of times so when times are not so bad and we've learned a few things, trying to share that could be a helpful tool for both sides.