False Friends and True

[There are two posts today. Next week, with G-d's help, I will be moving house, so next week's designated essay is being posted today.]

If my experience is any guide, your family will be the only “carry-over” people upon whom you can count if you have had bouts of severe mental illness. It is only the friends you make during the course of your recovery whom (speaking for myself,) I have been able to count on to be enduring—and this may be true for you as well. 

My best friend I met through work with NAMI, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (of the United States.) She is a family member of three diagnosed people. No matter how close prior friends had been to me, they all fell to the wayside as being “false” during the course of my recovery. My “true” friends outside my family never had to put up with the acutely-ill me. Thanks be to the Good L-rd, I have found a number of them.....

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." Few people other than those doing religious charity or professional clinical work will be there for you in acute illness as will be your family, and the latter will be true to you on-going.

What If You “Can’t Stand” a Member of Your Family?

I’ve been there myself. No matter what the cause with a blood relative, make up your antipathy and reconcile, before the next month’s calendar page turns. Death can intercede at any time; your ability to change the situation will thereby cease. 

You can never replace your family member. Moreover, he or she may love you very much indeed, and no one else can give you that individual’s particular perception of you.

We are defined by the attributes that others reflect to us. As William Butler Yeats wrote in “For Anne Gregory,”

“…only God, my dear/Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.”

Apologize "Insincerely!"

There are two sides to every issue. Apologize when a family member thinks that you are in the wrong. You may think that you are being “insincere.” Apologize anyway. Once you are past the heat of the moment, you may determine that you should have been sincere!

Your family members in the past may have “humored” you as a way of dealing with ideas of yours that they thought—perhaps reasonably—weren’t sane. Use this tactic yourself now as a tool to bring harmony to family relationships. Say that you are sorry for what they say that you did. You can be as hypocritical in your own mind as you like; you may even think that you are lying outright. Just do it. The outcome will be greater comfort in your home. A boon indeed.

In the Interests of Family Peace and Harmony, Show an Interest!

Now that you’ve said that you appreciate what your family had been doing for you during all those years of your challenging behaviors, what can you do to improve your relationship in the long term?

Make friends with each of your family members, each one in his or her own right and turn.

Show that you want to know details about their:

·         interests,

·         hobbies,

·         doings,

·         activities, and

·         problems.

What if they, or one of them, withdraws and will not give you any details about their lives? Just blithely go on expressing interest! “Once burned, twice shy,” they may feel. They don’t want to be vulnerable to your crushing their hearts again. Eventually, they may come around. Meanwhile, you can feel satisfied that you are doing all that you can.