Comments on: The Friend Manual: Part III

By: AnyBeth

AnyBeth — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:11:51 +0000

I have some trouble with 14, but I suspect that’s because I’m not so much a friend to a person with mental illness, but a partner of one. I think I deserve to know when things are starting to go badly and to have a some updates once in a while if things are going bad. (Mind you, I don’t press for details, not beyond asking about suicide and self-harm.)
And mental illness is not an excuse to hide relationship-things. Boyfriend tends to do that, sometimes with terrible consequences for both of us. (Aside from damage to the relationship, he gets more anxious the longer he hides things, which makes him feel worse and want to hide things even more.)

I think in such an intimate relationship, there are some things one deserves to know, one needs to know. You need to know how your partner is doing (at least in broad strokes) because their condition affects the relationship (and it may come to the point where you need to get them help yourself) and you need as much openness about the relationship as you’ve always had–no hiding things.

FWIW, boyfriend agrees with me when he’s doing ok. We’re trying really hard to be open. (The last bad time got really bad.) Occasionally, I say something about how important this kind of talking is and I do tend to gush when he brings up something he’d rather not talk about but thinks I should know. He’s even ok with me checking in on him if something’s starting to go badly, even to the extent that, if we discuss it at the beginning, he says he’s ok with me telling him to call the doctor and such, understanding that he may not realize when things get bad. (“He says”; things haven’t gotten bad enough since we’ve been doing like that, so I can’t really be sure.)

Maybe that’s a difference between friends and more-than-friends: what you deserve to know.

By: The Friend Manual, Part IV | Ashley Miller

The Friend Manual, Part IV | Ashley Miller — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:10:11 +0000

[…] one is all from you–from the brilliant comments on Part I, Part II, and Part III of the Friend Manual series. You made me think of new things, put into words things that had been […]

By: Subtract Hominem

Subtract Hominem — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:08:53 +0000

If you’re going to be a friend to a PWMI, please remember that their main problem is medical and not a problem with work/school/handling finances/whatever. The dollar figures and report cards and other benchmarks are important too, but without a healthy, stable, functional person behind them, those successes can be pretty hollow. Please try to take care of the person first.

By: SallyStrange: Elite Femi-Fascist Genius

SallyStrange: Elite Femi-Fascist Genius — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:59:47 +0000

Thanks, this is excellent advice in general. I don’t currently know that I’m friends with anyone with a serious mental illness but who knows–perhaps they just haven’t told me. Either way, I’ll take this to heart.

By: Hunt

Hunt — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:30:21 +0000

I’m waiting for the series on how to be a mental health professional. The very worst interactions I’ve ever experienced were either from urgent care doctors, who really should have had a modicum of experience dealing with…like, urgent mental health problems (?) and actual mental health professionals. Not so much therapists, but the psychiatrists…Whew! The stories I could tell.

By: Ashley F. Miller

Ashley F. Miller — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:45:02 +0000

This really goes for anyone with any condition, but please don’t tell me what kind of medicine is good/bad, what kind of therapy is good/bad, and how I should cope with things UNLESS I ask you for that advice. If I complain of depression, a headache, an allergic reaction, a panic attack, or PTSD, the correct response is not “Why aren’t you taking [MEDICINE]?” or “Why haven’t you dealt with that yet?” or any other attempts at help that read like you think you know more about my life and conditions than I do.

By: wolseybradley

wolseybradley — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:20:22 +0000

The fixing one is amazingly spot on for me. When I lose it, I have loved ones that go into a flurry of trying to fix things, and I don’t need anything fixed, I just have to ride the waves, so to speak, until it recedes. I’m still working out my meds, so that makes things tricky, too. There is always a weird period with meds and adjusting where things go haywire a bit, or at least risk going haywire.