How Do You Live With A Loved One Who Has Mental Illness And Avoid Becoming Ill In Your Thinking?
The choice is truly yours to receive your loved ones mental illness as a beautiful gift or a ride on a never ending roller coaster. I have a daughter, who is now 13, and has been given at least 8 different mental disability labels and three different stays living in treatment facilities with various cocktail brews of medications up until 3 years ago. The kindest way people in social service fields could offer support was to tell me “she’s complex”
I learned to live with a few simple thoughts to keep some perspective in my life. If I didn’t she could wear me out to the point like I felt my brains have just been dumped out on the floor. I think being in a catatonic state of mind sounds a little less out there, huh?
See their in differences from ours as unique and treasured gifts!
My daughter was unique before she was even born to the outside world. Most the time her excessive line of questioning would send my head in a tail spin. If I couldn’t rapidly respond with an acceptable answer then off to the opera stage I went. It was more like screaming in fits of rage, but hey I managed to find a gift out of that, maybe an opera singer in the family?
Let go, let go, and I mean quickly let go and laugh!
When she use to ride the special ed bus one day she decided to unbuckle the seat belts of all the special ed children riding the bus. She told them to stand up on their seats because they were all free from restraints. Of course I took it serious but can you just imagine the poor bus driver. Try running this scenario as if it was a movie produced with Will Ferrell in the lead role or maybe a scene from the movie “Free Willy”.
Start everyday and sometimes every micro second as a renewed learning experience for both of you!
Many people would not be able to last a day with my daughters irrational behaviors be it verbal or physical and rapidly unpredictable mood swings. I would be in denial if I said it wasn’t challenging but I feel blessed. My daughter keeps me in the present to never forget what it truly means to be patient and forgive in an instant. Remembering to live humbly and what it means to really feel humility helped me see progress in her daily. It could be as simple as her saying she was sorry even though I may know the same scenario could happen again in an hour.
I finally took some time to write out a series of short books called “Because I Love You dear”. For two reasons, to help heal myself and for her to understand some of the choices I made to help her were because I loved her.
Please contact me at my email address if you are interested in the series of books at forfaithandhope@yahoo.com
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