The Importance of Care for Caregivers

Mental illness is hard.

It’s damn hard – most forms of mental illness hinge on the unfortunate fact that you’re essentially trapped within yourself, trapped within a mind that does not do as you want it to, trapped within a mind that has a hard time following reason and logic and sometimes even warps and twists reality in scary and unpredictable ways.

First, you lose trust in yourself, then you lose trust in others, and when the world becomes an untrusting place, it can be hard to find the motivation to do anything. Why do anything at all, you begin to ask. And as the days pass, it gets harder to come up with an answer you want to believe in.

For people struggling with mental illness, their diagnosis is a unique and characteristic version of hell. From minor symptoms to severe mental illness, any level of moderate to extreme severity can drastically alter and differentiate a life from that of any “normal” person. Life is already hard as it is, struggling with things like debts, bills, job dissatisfaction and relationship issues. Add mental health problems to the list, and everything is exponentially harder.

But while we seek to treat and offer as much help as possible to people suffering from depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia and a number of personality disorders, it’s also important at times to stand back and realize that the caregivers in cases of mental illness need to care for themselves, too.

If you know someone with mental illness, or if you’re personally taking care of a child, spouse, parent, family member or friend with a mental health issue, it’s so incredibly easy to put aside your own needs. As humans, we’re naturally altruistic towards the people we care most about. It’s a feature in our ability to love unconditionally, and our deep loyalty towards our family and loved ones is an intrinsic part of our survival and social instincts.

In other words, most people will put the needs of their mentally ill loved ones before themselves, simply because they’re easily reminded that, once they relativize their struggles with those of the people they’re taking care of, it’s hard to prioritize their own health. But the fact is that they must at some point. You can’t help others if you aren’t taking care of yourself as well – and that begins by acknowledging that you have vital and valid needs.

The Importance of Caregiving

First and foremost, it’s very important to stress that in the case of any mental illness or impairment of any type of severity, offering both emotional and physical support is essential. As human beings, we’re already very social creatures that thrive on the support of others to survive – first, we rely on our mother primarily, and our parents in general, and as we age we rely on our family, our peers, our loved ones and our friends as sources of support and companionship.

In mental health, the struggle against pathological thinking and worsening symptoms means having an encouraging voice to help us through the tougher times in the treatment phase is instrumental to success. Overcoming depression, anxiety or any other issue alone is real, hard. But getting help works for about 80 percent of people.

It’s important for us to lend a hand and find out how we can help our loved ones come and improve their mental health. That includes speaking with therapists, educating ourselves, and taking on the role of emotional and physical caregiving in cases where it’s valid, such as in severe schizophrenia where a certain danger of self-harm exists.

There’s also the reality that a mentally ill person’s immediate circle of friends and family are typically the primary therapists throughout long-term treatment. Therapy is expensive, medication is usually avoided, and mental health issues can begin as rather benign or barely noticeable symptoms, before snowballing out of proportion.

As such, it’s equally important for people to recognize that taking care of someone mentally ill, or lending a hand to someone with issues like anxiety, depression or phobias, is never a walk in the park and is something to be prepared for.

Caring for the Mentally Ill Can Take A Toll

Let’s keep it simple. If you don’t take care of yourself while you’re taking care of others, the stress will eat away at you. It’s easy to see yourself as a bulwark when looking at the mental issues of your loved one – while they’re dealing with social anxiety and crippling insecurity, your own problems suddenly become minuscule, and it seems like your ability to cope with life puts you in a position where you become their shield, and it’s your responsibility to keep them safe and give them what they need to further their treatment.

You’re not a bulwark. You’re a human being, and your ability to cope with your won issues in life doesn’t suddenly multiply because you’re taking care of someone else. Getting a new perspective on your own problems helps quite a lot, though, as you can relativize and belittle them. But that doesn’t give you cause to ignore them.

If you act as an emotional punching bag without a care in the world for your own feelings, you’ll begin to suffer at work, lose interest in certain hobbies and activities, and find reasons not to go out with friends. When loving someone with depression, there can be days where you’ll feel unwanted, and unloved.

You aren’t, of course – when someone is depressed there may be times when they want to be alone, and your presence might just be too much for them. That can really hurt, especially early on in a relationship when the trust between you two hasn’t fully established. And while you know rationally that you aren’t being shunned, and that this is just a part of the depression, the gesture itself can hurt.

At other times, you’ll struggle to introduce your date to your friends or family because of their anxiety, and that might get you in hot water with your folks or close friends.

There will come many times where you must decide whose interests to put first, and you’ll find yourself in a situation where you aren’t quite sure what constitutes as pressure and aggression, and what constitutes as enabling.

Like a little wound, the stress of caring for someone with a mental illness and figuring out how you best fit into their life and emotions can mount up and turn into real, unmanageable pressure – unless you find an outlet for it.

Methods of Stress Management

The very core of a good relationship between you and someone suffering from a mental illness or impairment is good stress management. Without the ability to unload, unwind, self-reflect and meditate in your own personal way, the stress will get to you – and it will manifest itself in ugly ways. And the result? You’ll both be unhappy, struggling with negativity and the urge to blame each other for a continuously toxic relationship.

Stress can be managed in many ways. Some choose a creative outlet. Let your worries and anger flow in words through pen and paper, devise fictional tales and create cathartic pieces of writing that express how you feel, in whatever way you deem appropriate. Turn your own little hobby into a therapeutic exercise, and let art be your redemption from stress-related illnesses like hypertension, depression and more.

Another very effective way to combat stress is through sports and competition. You can compete against yourself, pushing your own limits in fitness and athleticism, or join a local club and train in football, basketball, soccer, martial arts or whatever other sport you prefer. Dancing is another great way to relieve stress.

These methods of stress management are meant to be personal endeavors – moments spent away from the role of caring for your loved one, moments where you instead focus on what you want, with your goals and your ambitions and hobbies taking priority for just a little while. However, you can ask your loved one to join you – stress management is a great way to combat mental illness, especially symptoms of depressive or anxiety disorders. Through exercise, art, or some other cathartic process, you can relieve tension and forge a much stronger bond together.

It’s Not About Choosing Between You or Your Loved One

The one thing you must immediately get out of your head is that this is about choosing between you or your loved one, and whom you should be taking care of first. It needs to be a harmonious process. You both matter, and you both need to take the time to care for each other alone – and time to work on each other, together. No matter whether your lovers, a family, or just friends, there are therapy tools and treatment options to help work through issues like schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, OCD, personality disorders and more as not just individuals, but as a group or pair.

Couples therapy, group therapy or family therapy can be an effective way to tackle certain illnesses. It’s not a given, though – some prefer to keep their family/friends and the professional therapy aspects of their life separate, engaging only in group therapy with other patients – instead, a good way to support your loved one is to help encourage their hobbies and get active together, tackle a joint goal (like losing weight or getting better at a certain skill), or go on an adventure together, like a little road trip.

It’s important to stay flexible and spontaneous. Don’t overthink or plan too far ahead – this can create overt expectations and introduce unwanted pressure. Always keep things light and focus on the immediate future and present – staying focused on the present is a great way to subvert worries and eliminate needlessly negative reminiscence. Just like mindfulness, staying “on the ball” can be far more conducive to getting better than thinking too far ahead.

Of course, it’s important to emphasize the individual struggle as well. You must learn to deal with your issues on your time, and give them the space to deal with their struggle.

Their Struggle May Be Greater

But it isn’t yours.

You can’t fight this fight for them – you can’t stand by them and help them overcome their demons or walk the path of treatment for them. You can’t make them understand their lessons, comprehend their therapy, or apply what they’re learning. You can’t convince them of anything, and you shouldn’t try to.

Mental illness is a personal journey. It’s one where people often grasp out and hold onto others for emotional support, and to know they’re not alone, but ultimately mental illness is one person’s struggle with their own mind, and the issues they’re facing mentally.

You can learn all there is to learn about depression, research day and night to understand how it works and even gain insight through your loved one’s therapist into their specific case of depressive symptoms – but at the end of the day, that won’t bring them any closer to overcoming the illness. They must do that on their own, with their own treatment and through their own perspective.

What you can do, if not focus on their struggle, is focus on your own. Be there for them, but don’t neglect the battles you must fight in your own life. Remember to strive to achieve your goals, remember to live. Struggle on in your own way, with your own issues, instead of trying to compare your struggle to theirs, or help them face their struggles head on. To struggle, in this specific sense, isn’t to falter or fail. It’s simply to have a hard time. Hard times can be good – it’s the hard times that teach us best. And struggling is the fastest path to strength.

Perhaps one day, you’ll both be able to look back on when things were tougher and be glad it’s all over. Until then, struggle on.