I've stopped expecting or even trying to help people understand my mental illness. If they haven't experienced it personally, they seem to have no clue what it's about or what it's like to be mentally ill. In my own experience, I've found that my family minimizes it, denies I have it, and never talks about it. They don't ask why I'm in therapy, what is bothering me, or how they could help. Even when I was hospitalized for feeling sui, nobody in my family ever acknowledged it. They have literally *never* even spoken about it.

As far as friends are concerned, when I fell very ill with clinical depression, I had 3 close friends. One of them I'd been very close to for 15 years. When I became very ill with clinical depression, she was not at all empathetic. She chalked it up to me just having a negative attitude and "wallowing in self-pity." Her remedy was to give me the tough love approach, telling me to basically "get with the program." All of her contacts with me were attempts to correct my thinking and get me to shape up. I finally had to ask her to stop contacting me altogether, because she was making me feel worse and worse. We didn't have any contact for 7 years, during which I experienced awful grief over the fact that somebody I loved and was so close to could misunderstand me so badly as to criticize and blame me at a time when all I could do was try to make it through each day.

Within the last 2 years, we have since resumed brief occasional contact by email, but she has never apologized and I never talk to her about my mental illness AT ALL. I know she doesn't "get it," and I don't expect her to anymore.

My second close friend attempted to help me with my depression, acting almost as a psuedo-therapist. She actually stuck by me for 5 years, listening to my problems and I got very attached to her. However, at some point, my problems became too messy and time-consuming for her. Also, in time, she became frustrated and angry with me for not taking her advice on how to solve my problems. She eventually gave me an ultimatum to solve my problems her way, or the friendship was over. Needless to say, it was over. More years of grief and loss. . .

My 3rd close friend probably handled it best. She was initially helpful in bringing me a comfort basket and listened a little bit to what was troubling me. But she lived a distance away and was very busy taking care of her little children. So she didn't really have time to keep in touch with me or offer any kind of extended help. Since she is really into herbal treatments and such, she would call me occasionally to try to sell me on this herbal remedy, or that one. But it sort of bothered me because she'd only call me maybe twice a year, and it seemed like the only time she called, she'd be trying to sell me something. I kept telling her that i was in therapy and on medication, and that I was happy with my current treatment. But I guess she thought she knew better what I needed.

Needless to say, NONE of my family or close friends truly had the capability to truly help me. They lacked knowledge about what mental illness is. They had no training in it, and most likely had never done research on it. So they each tried to help me the way that seemed best to them. Although well-meaning, their attempts were mostly damaging to me, in the case of friends #1 and #2, very damaging. And that damage has actually added to the time I've needed therapy because I've had to deal with the feelings of being misunderstood and rejected by people I loved dearly, and the loss of those relationships.

So I've learned the hard way NOT to talk about my mental illness to anybody other than my husband and therapist, and here on PC. It hurts like crazy not to have family and friends I can talk to who will understand and support me, but such is life. Because they don't have the insight to understand my situation, they can't communicate with me about it. Therefore, I have to deal with it the best way I can with the help I've got. That's why therapy for me is vital.