#1

Share your Story #1

Although I’ve struggled with my personal mental health at many points in my life, I think I offer a distinct perspective on how to take care of your mental health when the mental state of others around you is unhealthy. In college, I had a boyfriend who suffered with severe suicidal thoughts, many of which he acted on often.

I think that taking care of someone and even supporting someone who’s experiencing distress and trauma can be extremely taxing to your physical and mental health. Dating someone who was suicidal was a real pivotal moment for me in which I learned a lot about anxiety, depression, trauma, our mental health system (or lack their of), and societal stigmas around mental illness.

I felt like I was doing what I could to be a good friend and girlfriend – talking to him about how he was feeling, helping him regulate his drinking, and making sure he felt happy and excited about life. There were times when it got dark- when I walked in on an attempted suicide, when I saw deep cuts on his arms, but I always tried to remain strong. But it was never easy. I started to completely give up my own well-being. I would stay up all night talking to him making sure he was okay in sacrifice of my school work and productivity the next day. I would go out to eat wherever made him happy or go to any event that he wanted to because I didn’t want to cause any unnecessary drama. I left school to visit him in a psychiatric hospital and skipped class when he would text me visibly drunk in the middle of the day.  I stopped realizing what mattered to me and gave up my whole life so that he could be stable.

I think my willingness to go to the end to help him stemmed from my lack of control when my sister and father were facing mental illness struggles when I was younger. I was too young to understand, too naive to help- and now that I finally did understand I felt like I had to do everything to solve it.

But what I ended up realizing is you can’t sacrifice yourself for anyone- not even when death is on the line. You can do what you can to support them, love them and tell them you are there for them. But mental illness can rip apart the people around it- it manifests in this truly unfair way. But at the end of the day, if you’re sacrificing your own health to save someone else’s are you really doing any good? Or just replacing someone else’s struggle with another?

-Anonymous