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here today · Sep 23, 2013, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elliemay

Again, I offer only the following for your consideration.

My mother has bipolar disorder. I was raised in a violent, chaotic, abusive environment.

I have depression, anxiety, with a hearty splash of PTSD thrown in.

Now. I can extend to my mother a remarkable amount of understanding for her condition, but I do not excuse her behavior. I suffered because of it. I think it didn't have to happen.

It did, however, and left indelible marks on me and my entire family.

So. How do we handle this? Where does one draw the line between understanding and being hurt.

Don't we, as adults, get to chose those with whom we associate and those we don't? Who is responsible for what?

One mentally unstable person can disrupt an entire work environment. What do we do then?

Mental illness cuts both ways and healthy dose of understanding needs to flow both ways. I just don't think it's fair to expect allowances for oneself without providing the same for others.

I’m late to this discussion, but I’d like to comment.

I’ve been in and out of therapy for 50 years, much of which did little good and some may have done harm. I tried my best to be a good parent and knew that I might have challenges because I had come from a dysfunctional family.

For the last 3 ½ years I’ve been seeing a specialist in trauma and dissociation. She diagnosed me with DDNOS (now called C-PTSD, I think) and PDNOS. My feelings of hurt were dissociated and I had “protector” parts that did not care about other people. I knew that there were actions or action tendencies of mine that were “bad”, but did not know why – my regular consciousness just didn’t feel “hurt”, as I do now that the emotions associated with the trauma incidents have been remembered (and also re-membered, as in put back as part of me). Mostly those parts “acted in” and beat up on me, psychologically, but sometimes they lashed out, too.

My children were undoubtedly hurt by not having a better mother. I could not have done any better, with the personality I had at the time and the help (or unhelp) that I was receiving. I can choose better ways of handling things now, but I could not then.

One of the unfortunate (and ultimately painful) things about mental illness is that we sometimes DO impact people in our environment adversely and we can not help it – at least at the time. Happens with physical illness and disorders, too.