Mental Illness and Marital Mayhem
I don’t know if you have ever experienced a situation where parenting a mentally ill child begins to creep into your marriage and create conflict with the one person with whom you endeavored to make these humans in the first place. Maybe my problem is that I don’t trust that my spouse truly understands the breadth or depth of the illness or may appear shortsighted when it comes to picking up on cues and delivering the “correct clinical responses.” Whatever the explanation, it always eludes my mind to remember that we are on the same side. Because I was with my children day in and day out, homeschooling them, taxiing them, caring for them when they were sick, and talking to them when they were sad, I somehow felt entitled to be the end-all-be-all. Well, let me tell you, I was not. My husband has so many strengths that I do not possess. He is a thinker, not a reactor like I am, and has far more patience and melancholy to process a situation with clarity and wisdom.
Even though we have been married for nearly thirty years, somehow we still have conflicts from time to time, and a great source of that conflict comes from our children. Whether it is them playing us against each other or me mamma-bearing on their behalf instead of remembering that my husband and I are supposed to be on the same team, we’ve met all scenarios of conflict imaginable. When you have a child who deals with mental illness, and your spouse didn’t grow up with anyone in his household with a mental illness like you did, it can make you feel like you are the expert. You must be the wiser parent, right? I know this has been my thought process at times. My husband always assumes laziness is the reason for our child's misbehavior. In his household growing up, not doing what his father asked immediately was utterly unacceptable. My parents tried to do the same, however my brother’s longtime struggle with drugs made it easy for them to dismiss my minor offenses. Some of our differences are rooted in our disparate upbringings.
Parenting teens in general—the struggle is real! Parenting a child with a mental illness feels impossible! Typically you would establish ground rules and agree upon inevitable consequences for inappropriate actions committed by your children. But when your child struggles with a mood disorder or depression, anxiety, panic attacks, or auditory or visual hallucinations, it’s a complete game changer. It’s not always a simple answer like they’re defiant or lazy. Sometimes the person you were just talking to has suddenly disappeared, and you are now talking to someone with such a different mood that you must completely reassess your approach. That may involve waiting for quite some time. It is a regular occurrence for my husband and me to bring each other up to speed on which mood we are dealing with—anger, frustration, despair, or sadness. It allows us to not only warn each other about the current situation but also to be on the same page in how we move forward with our communications or actions with that child.
These steps have taken several years to develop, with lots of conflicts and struggle along the way. It didn’t happen overnight. We are both still learning how to encourage one another in dealing with our child, remembering that our child is always in need of our endless love and understanding. It is not easy, but working together as one team has always worked better than being at odds.
Are you a Christian parenting an individual with mental illness? Join the Eleventh Willow private Facebook support group to meet other parents who understand. Let’s help each other walk this path.
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
