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*Beth* · Jan 20, 2023, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skeezyks

Thanks for asking. As I think back over the years I believe I was struggling with mental health issues (that went unrecognized & untreated) from a very young age. However, I was taught "you don't wash your dirty laundry in public." (It's still that way to a large extent.) The lesson stuck. And, by the time I finally lost control of myself, all of the family members I had grown up with were deceased (including my parents.) So there was no one alive to care one way or the other except my spouse (who wants as little to do with it as possible.)

I recall one time (in a support group I was in while in a partial hospital program) saying: "You know how when celebrities receive awards they say they wish their mom and dad could have lived to see this? Well, I'm glad my mother and father didn't live to see this. They'd have better understood it if I had been sent to prison. They wouldn't have liked it. But they'd have better understood it than finding out I had been involuntarily committed to a psych ward! One of my father's favorite quips was: "What the hell's the matter with ya, Budd?! (He used to like to call me Budd.)

Is it a good thing I was in treatment for mental health? Well... I guess in the end I didn't have much say in the matter. I don't think what little bit of so-called treatment I received did help much because I'm still struggling (silently) with the same old issues. At this point, though, I'm old enough it no longer makes any difference. It all just was what it was.

Yes, you come from the same generation and way of thinking as my husband's parents. My husband (he'll be 76 this month) has battled OCD since he was a young teen. He clearly had ADHD as a child, and learning disabilities with mathematics. His entire family have university degrees; my husband, despite being very intelligent, couldn't make it through college because of his disabilities, so he was drafted into the infantry during Vietnam.

The message of "don't ask, don't tell" was strongly enforced in his family. Mental health problems didn't exist. When my husband was drafted at the age of 19 he dared to tell his mother, "Mom, I'm scared." The reply was, "Oh, Dave. Everything will be just fine." When he returned home from his 2 years in the army with a case of PTSD that would severely impact his life (and eventually mine), there was no discussion. No point, because everything was "just fine." Dave had survived and that was that. Don't ask, don't tell.

Skeezyks, you bring to me a question. Does treatment truly help or are the "demons" always just below the surface?

Perhaps treatment serves to civilize us more than we might otherwise be, i.e., instead of hitting our spouse over the head with a chair when we're angry we've learned to appropriately verbalize our anger. We meditate to train our minds so when we have the urge to pick up the chair we've learned to make a more civilized choice. Yet deep inside, would we still like to pick up the chair? Maybe yes, maybe no. But eventually nature has taken its course and we have simply become too aged to lift the chair. Then what? What's next? Something is.