Coping with Mental Health and Adult Children

Over the last 6 months, Amber, Christen, and I have shared quite a bit about our personal lives, our struggles with depression, ADHD, OCD, dementia, and familial tendencies toward mental illness. We’ve each had various experiences that have affected us deeply. I think that’s why mental illness is such an important topic here at Modern Musings, and why we’re talking about it this week. I know the topic is certainly at the top of my list, having lived with my own struggles for many years. However, mental illness takes on a whole new level of complexity when a parent is dealing with their child’s issues of mental illness, and while we can exert a bit of control over our youngsters, we are pretty much helpless as we watch the suffering of our adult children. It’s painful in ways that dim our own challenges, and it stabs at the core of our competence as a parent. But, what can we do?

I have often blamed myself for the struggles of my children. Did I pass on that gene? Was it something I did, or some failing of mine as a parent? Was there something I could have done to prevent it? Did I miss the signs? These are but a few of the questions a parent asks when their child is dealing with ADHD, depression, addiction, or any number of other mental health diagnoses. And we never stop asking those questions.

The other big question we ask is, “What can I do to help?” The answer is not as simple as one might think. Once your child is an adult, you don’t have much input into their treatment, and unless your child consents to release medical information, you are, by law, excluded from getting any information from their doctors. This is why maintaining a good relationship and open communication with your child is extremely important. Constantly checking in and checking up on our children can feel like smothering. The advice can feel like demands or even disappointment. You might need to adjust your thinking, too. Your dreams and expectations for your child may need to change in light of a mental health diagnosis. The brilliant student bound for college might take longer to reach that goal or may change plans altogether. The key is to show your adult child that you love them, accept them, and support them while acknowledging that they are an adult and it’s up to them to get the help they need.

I think one of the hardest things I’ve ever done is to sit back and watch my children suffer through many of the same mental health issues that have plagued me my whole life. It’s excruciatingly painful to know that I am powerless to fix it. But I think the part that is hardest to accept is when that child doesn’t get the help they need. It’s almost like watching them bleed out from a severed arm but you’re not allowed to stop the bleeding. Like any parent, I am full of all kinds of advice, and I want to do everything I can to make my family happy, well, and whole. If it was okay to do so, I would load them up in the car and drive them to the doctor myself! I’ve seen too many families torn apart by homelessness, abuse, addiction, and suicide. I can’t bear the thought of that happening to my children. So, you can bet that if I think they are going to hurt themselves or someone else, I will not hesitate to step in and do just that!

According to the National Alliance on Mental Health:

• 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experiences mental illness in a given year.

• Annually, 1 in 25 adults in the U.S. experiences a serious mental illness that substantially interferes with or limits major life activities.

• 50% of mental illness begins by age 14, and three-quarters begins by age 24.

• The average delay between symptom onset and treatment is 11 years

• 18% of U.S. adults with mental illness also have a substance use disorder

• 21% of people experiencing homelessness also have a serious mental illness

• 46% of people who die by suicide have a diagnosed mental health condition

• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for people ages 10-34

• Only 41% of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year.

Here are some tips for dealing with your adult child with a mental health diagnosis:

• Early intervention can help reduce the severity of an illness.

• Use “I” statements so you don’t alienate them: “When I hear you talking about how unhappy you are, I feel worried. I think talking to someone about how you are feeling would be very helpful.”

• Stop the power struggles:  Listen, really listen, without judgment or correction

• Let them know you are there for them

• Remove the stigma of mental health issues

• Be willing to share your own issues – it helps them to know they aren’t alone

• Set boundaries: Neither of you should tolerate physical or verbal abuse. No cursing, hitting, or threats

• Encourage them to get help

• Find support for yourself

• Develop a crisis plan in case of emergency: Collect contact information for:

• The nearest hospital

• The crisis hotlines

• The nearest police department

• Family and friends

• Any treatment providers

• Have your child sign a medical release form so you can be involved if they suffer a significant episode.

  
  

If your child’s behavior is unsafe, or if they talk about wanting to hurt themselves or someone else – do not hesitate to intervene! You might just save a life!

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/warning-signs-of-mental-illness

Today, as I got dressed for work, I contemplated my choices. I put on a company t-shirt, and pajama bottoms. This is my business attire for the day. I have one on one meetings with my team today so I need to look decent. “They won't see my pants” I tell myself, assuring myself that my choice is validated. Make-up? What is that? I hardly ever wear it anymore. 

What happened? I used to get all snazzy for work everyday. I loved having my cute work outfits, and I was starting to see drastic changes due to my weightloss surgery. My life was starting to fall into place before the pandemic. I had met the man of my dreams, became a Stepmom, had plans for a wedding, and my career was going great. Suddenly, life got altered and put on hold. Due to social distancing and sheltering-in-place during the initial outbreak of COVID-19, I started working from home. Now, I have different levels of pajamas:  sleepwear, house cleaning pajamas, and work pajamas. 

This break in routine has led to many days of not feeling “myself”.  Honestly I have survived, and I don’t have much room to complain; my life was minimally impacted, with no loss of life in my immediate family (unlike so many), and we were also very lucky to still have our jobs. We have been fortunate! So why am I so down in the dumps and feel so “off”?.  I truly believe that the change in routine, over and over again, is a huge factor.

It has been noted from many sources that getting dressed will significantly increase a person’s mood, especially if they are struggling with depression. I have always struggled with seasonal depression, and the added stress of all the changes in my routine did not help me. That’s what I feel has been going on with me since COVID-19 hit. I am aware of my struggle and working hard to take care of myself to my best abilities. 

One of the things that I have been doing without realizing during this time, is undervaluing myself. I have constantly made certain little choices and my justification of them has been chiseling away at my self esteem, bit by bit. I will tell myself things like “I don't need to put on fresh clothes, I have not done anything today.” We have all said something along those lines, and it seems harmless, but when I dissected it and looked deeper at the long term effect I discovered that I was basically telling myself that I did not earn clean clothes, as if I did not deserve to have clean clothes on. Another one that struck me hard upon realization was “I don't need to take a shower, I’m not going anywhere important.” No, taking care of my household and working from home is important even if it's just a few steps away versus a commute in a car ride. This is something going on every day, and multiples times throughout the day. At times, I would feel so down on myself. I would say things like “I’m so gross” or “I’m filthy.” It broke my heart to hear myself and to realize what I was saying in my head. I was beating myself up about being unclean, and then turning around and gaslighting myself for not doing anything around the house – convincing myself that I did not deserve to take a bath. It was a full on assault from all ends.
As I have mentioned several times in previous blogs, my word of the year is RISE and I have been trying to incorporate it into all aspects of my life, work, home, family, mental and physical health, and even in my hobbies. I consider my self-care and physical appearance as part of the mental and physical health category. One of my objectives is to elevate my personal care including my attire. My personal care encompasses hygiene, grooming, and primping as well as getting back into a fitness routine, getting my beauty sleep, and much deeper internal growth, like my daily narrative, and self esteem. 

My realization had come after speaking it aloud – it hit me. I don’t have to accomplish some major goal in order to get a decent shower! Being able to bathe and clothe myself is a human necessity and according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a base necessity for me to thrive. When those basic needs are not met, we shutdown. We cannot fulfill a higher purpose if we do not have shelter, security, clothing etc. I deserve a shower, anytime I want it, I don't have to earn it. I am not required to produce some laborious sweat, or toil with some object or check off an action item, in order to pass this non-existent gauntlet I have created for myself.
 
Coincidently, my boss at work had a fun little survey to kick off our weekly virtual team meeting. She asked how many people wore the same shirt two days in a row. I was shocked to hear how many of my co-workers admit that they were wearing the same outfit that they had on the day prior. It was almost every single one of our fifty-plus meeting attendees. Openly admitting that they were sporting yesterday’s dirty laundry. Many of them justified this by saying, “I’m not going anywhere,” or “I’m just sitting here pushing buttons on a keyboard.” The whole conversation was enlightening to say the least. I was baffled at how many people were willing to admit their dirty little secret, amused, as well as re-assured that it was not just me. But with that reassurance, came validation for my whole concern. My coworker also undervalued himself! He doesn’t just type on a keyboard – he is an integral part of our team and a valuable member of our company. We are all struggling.

I am here, with you, trying to make sense of what my life is now -- who I am and what I need deep down inside, like so many others, still picking up the pieces and trying to carry on with our lives after (technically, still during) the pandemic.

I really like this article, A Guide to Getting Dressed When You are Depressed, by Emily Torres on The Good Trade. It really made me feel good reading it. She speaks to me. Her first tip is to put on clean underwear! That just seems silly to some folks I am sure. But to anyone who has suffered from depression, then I am sure you can relate in some way. Just remember, you deserve clean underwear, even if all you do is get right back into bed - despite having bathed or not. 

I encourage you to help me keep the conversation going. Have you been struggling with self care because of changes due to the pandemic or from working from home? Have you noticed this change with friends, family and colleagues?  Please join us on MMC chat, our Facebook chat group, or comment below.

How We Grieve and Why It's Different for Everyone

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and earlier this week, Amber opened a discussion on grief during the holidays. In our podcast, I shared a few things my family did to lessen the sadness of missing a loved-one during important family holidays, while Christen talked about working through a holiday, and Amber shared her personal experience with holiday grief on the blog. Dealing with grief is such an important topic that I wanted to dig a little deeper -- I want to continue the conversation about how people grieve and how we can help each other through the tough times.

Let us start by talking about what grief is, and how we experience it. Many people think that grief and mourning are the same thing, but they are not. Mourning is the outward actions that we take when we have a loss; grief is the internal thoughts and feelings we experience. Likewise, people often mistakenly attribute Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 5 Stages of Death and Dying to the stages of grief, but in fact, her research was about people dealing with their own deaths. According to psychologist and author Dr. J. William Worden, there really are no “stages” of grief because grief is not linear. His model is a set of “tasks” that a grieving person works through to find the way back to some level of function and normalcy. These tasks can occur in any order, or even concurrently. Sometimes, in the process of grieving, a person will go back to one or more tasks repeatedly. The tasks are:

The most important factor in this process is time, and there is no specific timeline for grief. Every person’s response to it is different and quite subjective. But the idea is to work our way back to a level of function as we move forward. Charles Jacob, a psychologist and teacher at Sacred Heart University, says, “Eventually, we just start trending back to normal.” He says that the real key is to get through the pain and then to derive meaning from all of it that “doesn’t leave us feeling completely hopeless.”

One of the best things, besides time, to help with grief is to share it. Experts agree that talking with friends and family, and telling stories about our loved ones is beneficial. It can even be helpful to talk to strangers, thus the growth of online grief support groups and the trend of pop-up “grief cafes,” where participants join a group of strangers over coffee, cake, and, of course, lots of talk about death.

WebMD’s “19 tips for coping with holiday stress and depression” includes tips like:

• Make realistic expectations for the holiday season.
• If you are lonely, try volunteering some time to help others.
• Limit your drinking, since excessive drinking will only increase your feelings of depression.
• Try something new. Celebrate the holidays in a new way.
• Spend time with supportive and caring people or contact a long-lost friend or relative and spread some holiday cheer.

One group that has an especially difficult time with death and grieving is children. Kids of different ages deal with grief differently, and it is often done in spurts because their brains simply cannot tolerate more. Moreover, children will continue to grieve in different ways as they age and mature, continuing into their 20’s when their brains are fully developed. Mila Ruiz Tecala, LICSW, Center of Loss and Grief in Washington, D. C., tells us that when “children are not helped to grieve at every stage of their development, they experience cumulative losses.” Unresolved grief has been shown to create a higher risk of depression, unemployment, smoking, over-eating, lack of appetite, and risky behavior, and has links to immune disorders, hypertension, cardiac events, and cancer.

No matter the age of the child, the experts agree that it is important to make sure they know that it is acceptable to show emotions and talk about the person who died, and that it is okay to be sad.

To help children during the holidays:

If you have more tips on dealing with grief, we’d love to hear about it. Please join us as we continue this conversation in the Facebook group.

Thanks for sharing!

For more information about grief cafes, please visit the following websites:

• https://deathcafe.com
• https://www.thegoodgrieftrust.org/need-know-info/from-us-to-you/pop-up-good-grief-cafes/
• https://www.thegoodgrieftrust.org

Four Christmases

Hey this is Amber Garvin with my first official blog post and I’m here to talk about grief during the holidays. The subject is hard for me because I don’t have a family in a traditional sense anymore. Both of my parents have recently passed away, and I am newly divorced. So, in a sense,

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” – Vicki Harrison.

The holidays are coming, and it is not my favorite time of the year. In the past, I looked forward to November and December. Not just because I am a teacher and I get some much-needed time off work but also because I got to spend time with my family. I come from a very traditional family. On Thanksgiving, we had turkey and dressing at my Maw Maw’s house sitting around my great grandmother’s table eating family style. My family always had at least four kinds of pie on Thanksgiving as well. After dinner, we would play board games with football playing in the background. My mom, cousin, and I also have November birthdays, so we usually celebrated our birthdays on Thanksgiving as well.

Christmas was a big deal in my family also. Every year, we picked out a real Christmas tree from the local tree farm and we decorated it together as a family. I’m an only child so it was just my mom, dad, and me. Every year my mom and I also made Christmas cookies and candy together to wrap and deliver to extended family and friends. Christmas was my mom’s absolute favorite time of the year, and she went out of her way to make it special for everyone throughout the years. Her favorite thing to do (and she did this well into my adult life) was play the role of Santa for my dad, Maw Maw, and me. In the early hours of Christmas morning, she would fill the family stockings with various knickknacks and would place bigger presents under the Christmas tree. I remember the Christmas after I became a teacher, “Santa” surprised me with office supplies for my classroom. Around noon on Christmas Day, my whole family would gather at my Maw Maw’s house, and we would have a family gift exchange. These gifts were usually handmade, or food related of some kind. Food gifts were also a huge tradition in my family. Every year, my mom was always the one to pass out the gifts as well. The holidays were special.

My dad died in 2017 and in 2018 my mom died just a little over a year later. The Christmas after my mom died, I obsessively tried to fill her shoes as “Santa.” I went over the top with gifts and baking. In my grief, I tried to make it seem like there weren’t two giant holes in the holiday. In the year after my mom’s death, my ex-husband and I fell out with the rest of my family due to grief and differences of opinion. In 2019, I had decided to forgo the holidays and my then-husband, and I took my Maw Maw to a casual diner for a Christmas lunch. We didn’t exchange presents at all that year.

The last picture taken with both of my parents: Christmas of 2016

In 2020, amid the pandemic, I had a lot of time for clarity and self-reflection. I was finally able to deal with my grief over the loss of my parents. My ex-husband and I had also separated right before the holidays as well. 2020, was looking to be another year of holiday avoidance. At the same time, I didn’t want to avoid them. I was ready to take my grief head on and channel it into something more positive. The holidays are overwhelming as it is but adding grief to the mix can make them unbearable for most. In November of 2020, I began to make amends and my extended family was happy to welcome me back into the fold. Once I became open to trying new things, I realized that I wasn’t as alone as I thought.So, in 2020, I started new traditions with four Christmases. 

The key to coping with grief is to not completely abandon your old traditions. Last year, I decided to mix old traditions with new traditions to see where I would end up. The week before Christmas, I made around 200 Christmas cookies to wrap for family and friends, then on Christmas Eve, I began a three-day long trek across Texas to get my holiday groove back. 

I started in Carrollton with my Modern Musings family. Cindy and Christen have been inviting me to their family Christmas for years but this year I completely immersed myself into their traditions of gingerbread house building (my first one ever), Christmas caroling, and Christmas Eve pajamas. It was like we had been having Christmas together for years and I was grateful for the love that my Modern Musings family has shown me. Next, I went to my hometown of Vernon and spent Christmas morning with my childhood friend Stacy and her family. For dinner, I went to my cousin Stephanie’s house. I had not seen her and her family much after my mom’s death. Some of my extended family I was seeing for the first time in two years, but it was like I had never broken tradition. My family welcomed me back with open arms and open hearts. We had dinner, played board games, and exchanged food gifts. My cousin Steven even showed the family his new hobby of axe throwing, which may just become a new family get together tradition. Finally, I was invited to my extended cousin Lavonna’s house the day after Christmas for a family get-together that I have never attended. 

I went through many stages of grief in the years after my parents died and my marriage fell apart. For a long time, I was scared of new traditions and opted to avoid the holidays altogether. I realized that aside from hurting myself in avoiding the holidays, I was also hurting the extended family and friends that wanted to see me and experience their traditions with me. My takeaway is that it’s okay to start new traditions after tragedy. It’s okay to keep old traditions. It’s okay to combine traditions to whatever works for you. For the longest time I avoided the people that loved me because I was grieving, and I was being unfair to myself. I’m not sure what I will do this year for the holidays, but I take comfort in the fact that so many people have been there for me in the past year, and it makes me feel less alone and more hopeful for the future.

The holidays are hard when you’ve lost loved ones, but you are not alone. What are your favorite holiday traditions? Have you experienced the same things that I have? I want to know. Comment below or e-mail me at info@modernmusings.net.