How long have I been dreaming ...

“How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need”

-Jackson Browne, “Late for the Sky”


I’m honestly not certain which is harder – being a person with a mental illness or being a person with close family members with mental illnesses.

One of the hardest things to deal with for me has been to watch my father blame himself for my sister’s failures in life.  To him, they are the result of some parenting failure.  Somehow he didn’t teach her the right things, didn’t instill the right drives and values.  And no amount of talking or explaining on my part seems to make a dent in this belief of his.  Yet I KNOW that it was not, is not, never will be my father’s fault for anything wrong with my sister.  I KNOW that her rather severe bi-polarism and her choices in how to deal with it are responsible for virtually all of the bad things in my sister’s life.  Here and there dumb, bad luck plays a part, but by-in-large there is no one to blame but God and her.  Period.

I know she is his child, and he will always try to claim some responsibility for how her life turns out.  I know that he, with very little personal experience with a mental illness, does not quite understand how to let go of the blame.  But oh, how I wish I could get him to understand, how I wish I could take that very heavy weight off his shoulders.  Stand-up, responsible, honest, hard-working, decent man that he is, he just doesn’t know how to separate himself from the blame a parent takes for a child.  He doesn’t know how to separate personal blame from the disaster my sister’s life became and somewhat still is.

This separation from blame and from an idea that someone might be able to fix a mentally ill person are essential.  Helping a mentally ill person is often like helping an addict – if they don’t want to be better, you can’t really help them all that much.  You might be able to help around the edges, and you can certainly cheer for them from the sidelines.  You cannot, however, fix them.  It is not your damage to fix; it’s theirs.  It is not your fight to win; it’s theirs.  And if they don’t want to fight their illness, if they don’t want to be better, you have absolutely no chance of doing anything except damaging yourself in the trying.

And damage yourself you will if you keep trying to fix the unwilling.  You will lose your self-esteem, your sense of self, and countless hours of sleep.  It will almost certainly cost you money, and possibly things like a job and friendships.  Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying you should wash your hands of a mentally ill person.  I am saying you need to keep things in perspective, keep proper context in life, and take care of yourself enough that you can still be around for the day when, hopefully, that mentally ill person takes responsibility for themselves and decides to try to be less broken.

You need to remember, a person with a serious mental illness is broken.  Unless they genuinely want help, and you happen to be a professional in the right field, you cannot actually fix them.  You can assist, you can be there for them, you can give them perspective and context for life from a more “normal” point-of-view.  You can listen, hold a hand, hug them, care about them.  You can forgive them for being broken.  You can praise them for efforts made, and cheer them on for victories won.  Many times having a mental illness means battling yourself and circumstances daily if not hourly.  Having someone appreciate that you both made it out of bed and took a shower without being screamed at can make all the difference in a person’s day.

But you must not think you can fix them.  You must not think you are to blame for their circumstances or their illness.  You must not let yourself be consumed by their illness and needs.  If you are, how will you ever be any further help?  And who will help you?