Although it is fearful and confusing to face the reality of an adult child’s bipolar, avoidance is not the answer. The only way to get them the proper help is to create a plan to get them into treatment.
I’ve worked as a coach for parents who have a child with bipolar disorder as well as co-occuring disorders such as psychosis and anxiety, often with substance use, for over a decade now.
The situation is often out of control and parents start to lead double lives. They go to work and still try to act as though life is ok, while the home is a pressure cooker all due to the illness of one child. Siblings are deeply affected, as are grandparents and other relatives. I call this the hijacked house.
Ending the hold an illness has on your child, and ultimately on your home, is possible. I teach a path that is probably very different than what you expect. I want to teach you that it’s only when you decide that enough is enough that life changes. No, this doesn’t mean kicking out a child. It doesn’t mean your child becomes homeless. It means you get honest with yourself and find peace in yourself so that you can change your situation.
Are you ready for a painful read? It’s ok if you get angry by reading this article. My goal is simple: I want us to be honest about the truly terrible symptoms that untreated bipolar disorder and psychosis can unleash on a family home.
Are you avoiding the reality of a child’s mental illness and if so, what can be done?
Avoidance
Avoidance means putting off taking action on something that is causing stress in the moment. Even if the problem will build and build and create far more problems in the future, the current feelings created when you think of making a change are so powerfully upsetting and painful, you will avoid the current pain at the detriment to an entire future.
When I work with parents, there’s a great tendency to avoid taking action in the moment due to the incredible fear, confusion and pain that comes up when the parent finally faces the reality of a serious mental illness in a child. The parent mind goes straight to armageddon.
He will be on the streets! She will leave the house and never come back.
These are powerful and scary thoughts. This reaction to having a child in the house who is not healthy is normal. It’s human. There is a part of our brain called the amygdala. It’s the self preservation part of the brain. It’s the fight, fight or freeze. It’s our animal nature. Sometimes it creates a slow motion sensation. Sometimes it creates a fear rush of adrenaline in the mouth that is so strong you taste metal. When parents face a crisis, the amygdala often takes over and they freeze. This creates an avoidance to reality and allows a situation to fester within the home.
While in this freeze state, the fontal lobes then minimize the situation.
I could go on and on here as I have been on both sides. There is no judgement in what I write. I have lived it!
Facing a true crisis in a child doesn’t always bring out reasonable behavior in parents.
Parents will minimize to protect the child. This is a natural behavior that well meaning parents use to protect children. Parents will refuse outside help in order to present the facade that everything is ok. (We can handle it ourselves! It’s not as bad as I thought. We are not that kind of family!) Parents will overly focus on the ill child and not be there for the child that is able to take care of herself!
I have been there. So please know I write this with compassion, not judgement.
My story
In 1994, when my partner was manic and psychotic, I took him home with me from the hospital because I missed him so much. His team said he needed a state hospital. I simply couldn’t do it! A STATE HOSPITAL! He is not that kind of person! So when they said he could no longer stay in the private hospital, I TOOK HIM HOME.
He was so sick.
My brother who was his legal guardian and I put him on a 24 hour watch. He could not be alone ever.
While all of this was happening, I refused to see that he was too sick to function. I minimized the seriousness of our crisis. I thought I could handle his bipolar at home.
The day he slipped away from my brother was the day that I woke up and I have stayed WOKEN UP ever since.
I put him in a car and rushed him back to the hospital. When I got him back into a psych bed, I physically collapsed in the hall. The adrenaline left my body in a rush once he was safe.
I was in avoidance of the reality of how sick he was. I was in fight and freeze mode for months.
I share this story to let you know that I have NO judgment if you are trying to take care of a really sick person at home. No judgement at all. Our brain tries to save us from reality. It freezes us into a state of avoidance. It’s as though we become blind to what is happening all around us. I wrote Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder: Understanding and Helping Your Partner ten years after going through this terrible experience. He survived. We survived and there is hope.
The only way to get a child help is to wake up from this brain freeze of avoidance and create a plan to get a child into treatment. It’s the only answer. I was able to help my partner when I faced the seriousness of his bipolar disorder. Before that, I was all love and emotions and believe me, that is never enough.
I want to encourage you to do what I finally did all of those years ago and what I now teach to all of my clients and audience members when I speak in public:
- Face facts. If a person can’t function on their own, they are too sick to be at home.
- If someone could hurt themselves or others, they can’t be in your home.
- Bipolar and psychotic disorders don’t go away on their own. EVER.
- Nothing gets better through avoiding the situation.
Action is the only thing that works if you are in a crisis. Not therapy. Not asking for 10 different options. Not wishing or hoping things will get better. We never do this if someone has a heart attack and we simply can’t do this if someone is seriously mentally ill. I want to stress that blaming yourself for bad parenting or for being blind is fine for a few days, but then you have to let this go as well. It doesn’t serve anyone.
Please hear me when I say that avoidance never works. You WILL be confronted with the same problem over and over again. The problem will get bigger and bigger. Avoidance creates more and more illness. It breaks down loving families.
I want you to override the amygdala, focus on the future and make a decision in the present that saves lives.
You can create a different future. Mental illness is treatable. There is a path out of your current situation. It starts when avoidance ends.
Wake up now and face the current situation in your home and your life. Open yourself to change. Know that it’s going to be scary for awhile as you get help, but know that it ALWAYS gets better when reality is faced and the person who is ill finds treatment.
Taking care of the problem now creates peace in your future.
You can do this!
Julie
Originally posted August 8, 2018