Venting mental illness being ignored by parent

[Daxter777]

Do you all also get ignored when it comes to mental illness?

I get this specifically from my grandmother and my mother. I have GAD, Major depression and ADD.

I feel like my mom just pretends like it doesn't ecist or she will feign ignorance. if I say I don't want to do something out of fear that it might trigger an anxiety attack she will tell me that she also gets anxiety sometimes. but the thing is ot's not the same thing.

My anxiety doesn't switch off I can sit with the same anxiety attack for a whole week 24/7 but she pretends I just have normal anxiety that goes away in 10 min. and she is well aware of my disorder since i am diagnosed and had to go to a mental hospital for it.

This is something that has become verry tedious to witness because it feels like she is against me instead of standing with me.

 

[Jamesun]

Friend, you are not alone, I have felt perfectly the same, my parents know about it, they only tell me that everything is in my mind and that I only have to think about it, wish you luck in your life.

 

[Forever Sleep]

My Dad says people will only be sympathetic up to a point. After that, they get bored of it. He wouldn't like to admit it but, that does include him and lots of parents/ family members I suspect. People get tired of hearing problems and making allowances.

Especially if the problem someone has isn't visible and is difficult for them to guage. How do any of us really know how others experience the world? What makes one person anxious at a normal level and another, mentally ill? Is it when their level of anxiety becomes debhilitating? Some people will argue that they have fears and anxieties but they make themselves do the things regardless. They get annoyed when other people don't. It's very hard to judge the strength of a person's feelings and whether they are a normal reaction or, mental illness.

How is mental illness even diagnosed? Sometimes I wonder if everyone would end up getting diagnosed with something. Lots of people seem to have a certain thing they react disproportionately strongly to. Do all serious problems start out at a normal level but then- for whatever reason, they start to take over? Is it our lack of facing these problems when they first arise that lead to them becoming so ingrained?

I suspect they also feel that in order to overcome these fears- you have to face them- which I imagine is what they are pushing you to do. Sadly- they don't see it as the equivalent of forcing a crippled person in a wheelchair to try and walk. They likely just see the anxious person as someone who has been sheltered too much and too pandered to in terms of allowing them not to do things they don't want to do. It's probably not true but maybe they think it would help you to force yourself into uncomfortable situations.

I would say I feel anxious around people. I don't know if it's fair to say I have social anxiety though. I suspect, compared to other people, I can at least function- if awkwardly. Some people start vomiting and shut down. I'm not that bad but I'd say my fear of people has had a debhilitating affect on my life. That's mainly because I've let it though. It makes me uncomfortable to be around people- so, I've avoided it. Which has only increased the fear. Had I made myself do it- maybe I would have gotten better eventually. It's hard to know really.

Still- I expect some people believe that people have made themselves the way they are because they've been too lazy and too afraid to correct themselves. If that person has struggled themselves but managed to overcome it, I think they just don't have the patience with people that haven't. They have no way of guaging how bad the other person's feelings are. Just as we don't know how bad theirs were.

I guess I'm curious really. What do you think? Are we born with mental illness- or, at least a susceptibility to certain things? Do you feel like you know when and why your conditions arose? For me- I only once went to my GP and got a diagnosis of mild to moderate depression. The rest for me are self diagnoses- I would say I am prone to limerance, I would say I've had borderline eating disorders and I'd say I have mild social anxiety. I can probably make a guess as to why I have/ had each suspected thing. I don't think it's my fault I developed them but in many cases- I probably could have done more to try and stop them before they took a hold. How do you feel about yours? I hope I haven't come across as dismissive in this. That wasn't my intention. I do actually believe in the existence of debhilitating mental illness. I just find it so frustrating though as to how it is diagnosed and how difficult it is to guage.

 

[Daxter777]

My Dad says people will only be sympathetic up to a point. After that, they get bored of it. He wouldn't like to admit it but, that does include him and lots of parents/ family members I suspect. People get tired of hearing problems and making allowances.

Especially if the problem someone has isn't visible and is difficult for them to guage. How do any of us really know how others experience the world? What makes one person anxious at a normal level and another, mentally ill? Is it when their level of anxiety becomes debhilitating? Some people will argue that they have fears and anxieties but they make themselves do the things regardless. They get annoyed when other people don't. It's very hard to judge the strength of a person's feelings and whether they are a normal reaction or, mental illness.

How is mental illness even diagnosed? Sometimes I wonder if everyone would end up getting diagnosed with something. Lots of people seem to have a certain thing they react disproportionately strongly to. Do all serious problems start out at a normal level but then- for whatever reason, they start to take over? Is it our lack of facing these problems when they first arise that lead to them becoming so ingrained?

I suspect they also feel that in order to overcome these fears- you have to face them- which I imagine is what they are pushing you to do. Sadly- they don't see it as the equivalent of forcing a crippled person in a wheelchair to try and walk. They likely just see the anxious person as someone who has been sheltered too much and too pandered to in terms of allowing them not to do things they don't want to do. It's probably not true but maybe they think it would help you to force yourself into uncomfortable situations.

I would say I feel anxious around people. I don't know if it's fair to say I have social anxiety though. I suspect, compared to other people, I can at least function- if awkwardly. Some people start vomiting and shut down. I'm not that bad but I'd say my fear of people has had a debhilitating affect on my life. That's mainly because I've let it though. It makes me uncomfortable to be around people- so, I've avoided it. Which has only increased the fear. Had I made myself do it- maybe I would have gotten better eventually. It's hard to know really.

Still- I expect some people believe that people have made themselves the way they are because they've been too lazy and too afraid to correct themselves. If that person has struggled themselves but managed to overcome it, I think they just don't have the patience with people that haven't. They have no way of guaging how bad the other person's feelings are. Just as we don't know how bad theirs were.

I guess I'm curious really. What do you think? Are we born with mental illness- or, at least a susceptibility to certain things? Do you feel like you know when and why your conditions arose? For me- I only once went to my GP and got a diagnosis of mild to moderate depression. The rest for me are self diagnoses- I would say I am prone to limerance, I would say I've had borderline eating disorders and I'd say I have mild social anxiety. I can probably make a guess as to why I have/ had each suspected thing. I don't think it's my fault I developed them but in many cases- I probably could have done more to try and stop them before they took a hold. How do you feel about yours? I hope I haven't come across as dismissive in this. That wasn't my intention. I do actually believe in the existence of debhilitating mental illness. I just find it so frustrating though as to how it is diagnosed and how difficult it is to guage.

Honestly what you say makes a lot of sense and I agree people usually judge these type of things based on their own experiences because that is all they know and also there is some stigma around mental illness especially in the older generations.

I think the only scope is in the severity that we can gauge how bad a person has it or not and also how said disordor affects them their life and maybe even their world view. by that it is gauged but in the end you can only take a person's word for it unless there is some for of physical manifestation of the mental disordor

in my case I go white as a sheet if I get a very severe anciety attack I eill shake uncontrolibly and also start to shiver with that in mind you can judge how severe it is and diagnose accordingly.

are there cases where it's something little that grows over time and becomes a monster because we didn't take a hold soon enough? I will say yes there are those cases but that just shows we most likely didn t habe to tools to address it at the time or even knew what we where going through.

in my case I didn't know what my anxiety was all I knew was I was suffering greatly because of a traumatic event. I didn't know it was an anciety attack so I couldn't get a grasp on it at that time.

 

[silentcicada]

it feels like she is against me instead of standing with me.

I feel you. This isn't something we can just turn off whenever we please. My family is still somehow under the impression that I'm just lazy and I have so many opportunities blah blah.

 

[Immensevoid]

Unfortunately it often happens that people who have not experienced (fortunately for them) our serious diseases invalidate or try to belittle the problem which I personally find annoying.
Sometimes they come out with a type of toxic positivity because they probably haven't understood what it means to live with certain problems every day and they don't have enough awareness of these disorders.
Another theory is that some family members might think that by "playing down" the problem, we feel as if we have something less serious and easier to manage but in most cases this behavior has the opposite effect…

 

[MatrixPrisoner]

I think one factor is that parents don't really undestand all of the added complexities of life there is now compared to when they were young. Life was much more simple back then.

 

[hopeisdead]

Do you all also get ignored when it comes to mental illness?

I get this specifically from my grandmother and my mother. I have GAD, Major depression and ADD.

I feel like my mom just pretends like it doesn't ecist or she will feign ignorance. if I say I don't want to do something out of fear that it might trigger an anxiety attack she will tell me that she also gets anxiety sometimes. but the thing is ot's not the same thing.

My anxiety doesn't switch off I can sit with the same anxiety attack for a whole week 24/7 but she pretends I just have normal anxiety that goes away in 10 min. and she is well aware of my disorder since i am diagnosed and had to go to a mental hospital for it.

This is something that has become verry tedious to witness because it feels like she is against me instead of standing with me.

Same same same!!! I've been staying with my mom recently for some shred of comfort...I cannot function at all anymore and my mom acts like it's just another day in paradise and like as long as I'm going to work I'm fine, meanwhile every day I want to jump off the bridge I take to work...she never asks me how I'm doing or feeling. She has her head in the sand. Like "if I ignore her mental illness it will go away" wtf???