It was interesting for me to hear my daughter’s take on the writing retreat I was getting ready to go to the following weekend.
You don’t have a mental illness.
There was a pause. Me, caught off-guard. Her, confused.
What is a mental illness?
Well… do you know how sometimes I get really sad? And how I have to take medicine to help my brain work better? A mental illness is when your brain doesn’t work quite the way it’s supposed to.
I guess there’s no reason she should suspect, for lack of a better word, that I have a mental illness, a mood disorder. She’s too young to really remember my suicide-watch birthday, or all the dark times preceding it. Even the boys are young enough that they didn’t understand what was going on. The oldest and I talked some about the depression part during our twenty-minute drives to and from the youth group at our old church. But, yes, I’ve been stable enough long enough that my daughter would be surprised to hear that I struggle with mental illness.
So, that’s a good thing.
Then again, she didn’t really know what mental illness is… which may seem strange for the daughter of a woman who encourages people to accept that they need help when struggling with mental illness. A woman about to go on a writing retreat for women who have been impacted by mental illness, and share a goal, with OC87 Recovery Diaries, to bust stigma. A woman with, and on medication for, a mood disorder.
My kids have never read my blog. Though I suppose my oldest may have checked out parts of it.
I’m not embarrassed by anything I share about my struggles. But there are things they don’t need to know yet, especially the youngest. In general, and about me specifically. I’m not ashamed to have my kids know me as I am, but at the same time some knowledge we’re not equipped to handle until we get a little older. There are hard things in life it’s reasonable to want to protect kids from for as long as possible. There are enough hard things they’ll have to deal with as they go through life. Enough ugly for endless lifetimes. Kids deserve a chance to be kids. My heart aches for kids who in various ways are forced to grow up to soon. Things like suicide and suicidal ideation, and a mom who self-medicated with men, are confusing. Kids deserve as much security as possible for as long as possible. Not that I believe in sheltering kids from reality, well, maybe I do a little bit. But what benefit could there ever be in telling a child first too young to even understand what sex is, and then too young to understand that it’s desirable and pleasurable, that their mom has struggled with using it to manage a mood disorder? Or that she first found out what it was when she was six.
My kids shouldn’t have to bear the weight of feeling like their mom thought it was more desirable to end her life then live it with them. Which, of course, is an oversimplification. The type a child would make.
At the same time I blog and head off to spend the weekend working and learning near and with others in an effort to bust stigma, it may seem I keep my kids ignorant of my reality… and therefore possibly perpetuating stigma in my own household.
But I don’t. I’m honest with my older son about the depression that almost killed me, as he finds his way to deal with the darkness he falls into.
I talk to my younger son about his stomach aches, and how he gets stressed by having to go places, both the act of going and the expected socializing. There’s power in giving something a name, and he knows it’s anxiety, and social anxiety. There’s nothing exceptional going on; it’s not uncommon. And there are ways to deal with it. Start by acknowledging the discomfort, and recognize it for what it is. Then move forward knowing that even if it’s hard, you can get through it. There’s a good chance you’ll even enjoy the thing the thought of is making you nervous, or enjoy at least parts of it.
An important thing, from the beginning, is helping kids accept their emotions, not be embarrassed by them or try to hide them, but at the same time not be controlled by them. Just like adults, kids need to understand that feelings, good and bad, are part of life; but they’re just that – feelings. Though our emotions are real and shouldn’t be ignored, we can’t allow them to define our reality. Although they can overwhelm a moment, feelings change. Choices shouldn’t be based just on what we feel.
Emotional self-regulation is an important skill.
Repressing emotions, not so great.
I would rather have someone pluck all the hairs out of my head, eyebrows, and nose one by one than have someone see me cry in public. I’ve had this deeply ingrained embarrassment since I was small, and I don’t remember for how long I didn’t cry at all after my mother died. At least a couple of years. Sometimes now I cry over just about every little sappy thing. When I’m alone. Things may move me when I’m with other people, but I clamp it down for all I’m worth. The threat of having someone see my tears, see what squeezes my heart, makes me feel weak and vulnerable. I feel I’ll be judged. Negatively. I’m sure my parents didn’t mean any harm all those years ago when they commented on my tears over Frosty’s melting. Although I knew he would magically come back together, I always cried. Until my vulnerability was laid bare in a spotlight and mocked, at least that’s how it felt. They didn’t outright ridicule, but their smirking comments to each other were enough. I felt patronized. And somehow deceived; I thought I was accepted as I was, but apparently that part of me was undesirable. I felt diminished, somehow less than when we’d sat down in the living room for one of our Christmas-time traditions. I always cried, until I realized it was safer to not give in to the weakness of tears.
As I think of scenes that make me tear up even if I find the context lame, it’s scenes of self-sacrifice that get to me. Frosty didn’t just melt. He melted trying to warm his friend.
Then there’s when the helpless and voiceless are rendered powerless, and exploited, trapped, threatened, and harmed. I mean, Monster Trucks is a cute enough movie, but the plight of imaginary CGI critters in a predictable plot shouldn’t knot up my insides. Especially when I know they’ll be fine in the end. Pete’s Dragon.
So many of the movies I see now are kids’ movies, family movies.
The How to Train Your Dragon movies… squeeze my insides.
I shove it down. It’s silly. I know enough of the psychology even of the facial structure of the characters, and elements of story-telling. It’s not even real, for crying out loud!
But I don’t want my kids to be uncomfortable with their grief or joy if a story moves them. I want them to be comfortable expressing those emotions. Even in silent tears I’m blessed my daughter can admit and talk to me about.
Feelings are real. They should be acknowledged. That’s another area where we need to bust stigma. The earlier we learn emotions are real and okay, but that we shouldn’t let them define us or make our choices, the less vulnerable we are to various types of brokenness and better equipped to deal with symptoms of mental illness.
Sometimes I’d get stuck in the messy, unwanted tense emotion raked up by characters’ plights. You know how sometimes you can randomly obsess about something stupid you said an unlimited amount of time ago? Yeah, kind of like that. That jagged detestation of the conflict in movies, without which you don’t have much of a story.
I want to help my kids learn to smash negative, unhelpful, rigid, unruly, self-disparaging, repetitive thought cycles before they start drowning in them.
Feel the emotion. Acknowledge it, and its source or reason. Own it. Show it who’s boss.
So, yeah, I guess I got a little off-topic.
But, hey, relative stability; that’s a good thing. As is being aware of how our coping mechanisms affect our kids and others around us.
It was a good weekend writing on the ocean in Cape May, New Jersey with OC87 Recovery Diaries. And who’d know without listening to the pieces of our deeper stories we shared with each other, that the majority of us struggle with mental illness?
You don’t have a mental illness.
What is a mental illness?
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