To tell or not to tell? Level of openness regarding your mental illness

[BK13]

I have been an unofficial member of the M.I. club (sounds much cooler like that huh....) since I was a teenager so basically half my life, officially diagnosed with depression and anxiety just over 2 years ago, commenced treatment 5 weeks ago (been on meds just over 4 weeks and have had 1 session with a psych so far).  Just wanted to make sure everyone knew my back story before I ask my question!

I just wanted to gauge how open others have been regarding their mental illness?  Thus far I have only told my partner, my best friend, 1 trusted friend, and my brother-in law and his wife.

I just feel like I'm keeping this big secret from everyone else and wonder if it might improve my relationships if I tell them.  I don't live in the same country as my family so it's very easy just to omit details, to not mention when I am feeling all sorts of bad.  I generally get around this by not calling them unless I'm feeling half stable.  At times this means weeks or months on end without speaking to my parents.  I haven't seen my mum in years. 

I am however visiting them in a few weeks so I'm mulling over if I should tell them or not, and if so how detailed I want to be.  I also am not sure if I should/could/want to tell them about my partners recent suicide attempt.  I just wonder if part of this weight on my shoulders is relating to not letting my loved ones in on the 'true' me.  They know only a filtered version of myself and my life! IE they view my life as if through Instagram 🙂  and I'm sure most of you have seen those 'life in instagram VS life in reality' posts... that's what I feel like, a bit of a fraud.

I know none of you can tell me what to do and what worked for you won't necessarily work for me - but I just wanted to know what your own experiences had been regarding telling family, friends, bosses, colleagues etc.  Did you feel better?  Did it improve your relationships?  Did you feel they understood better and helped them understand why you act certain ways?  Or did it completely backfire and they treated you differently in a bad way!

Did you go out of your way to tell people?  Or did you just tell them when they asked?  Or is/was this a private battle to be fought only with your chosen few let in on the full story?

Share away please I am all ears! 🙂  I also intend on discussing this train of thought with my psych next week but thoughts from you guys would be much appreciated.

BK

[LP_FIFO]

Hi BK, thanks for the post, you ask an interesting question and I feel its relevant to me as im only just facing this ..thing..myself for the first time. What I am finding out early is that its different for everybody - these forums are great to read peoples experiences, and I think sharing your experience with your partner with select family and friends would be a good idea - burden is a terrible thing. as for the question of to tell or not - my opinion would be to trust who your speaking to at the time - trust in the sense that are you going to get a constructive response  - by telling your reaching out ( I guess) and if the right answer is not there, ...well..

thanks for your post, I wish you well- ive recently spoken to friends of mine and I was surprised that  when I mentioned I may be depressed, just how many of them had similar experiences and that the network of support is amazingly strong in true friends and family

[sarez]

Hello!

Opening up to certain people can be challenging. I am only in high school and I struggle to decide whether to tell people about my depression/ anxiety or not. 

Currently, I am recovering quite well and it is easier for me to open up to people i am not as close with. 

When my mental illness was pretty bad however, I only told people who were close to me. My Dad knew, my close circle of friends, the school counselor and my Grandparents. Personally, However, some others I did open up to if they were facing the same thing as me. 

I think telling your parents would be a good thing. They did raise you after all and they will be there for support. However if it was me, I would segway into the conversation instead of diving in head first. When I told my best friend about my mental illness, I started a deep and meaningful conversation (at school we call them D&Ms) Which just started when we were talking about life. This is especially the case if you do want to mention your suicide attempt to the as they will be in the emotional zone and it will be shocking but however they might be a bit more understanding if you get what I mean. 

After telling people, I have never had anyone treat me badly. At first, some people were a bit cautious, but they got used to the concept fairly quickly. 

Once these things got off of my chest, I felt a lot better. 🙂 

Hope this helped! 🙂 

[White_Rose]

Hello BK

It's a perennial question, to tell or not to tell. I think you have touched on some the pros and cons. And it is indeed a difficult choice because once you have told there's no going back.

A group of women meet at my home once a fortnight and on one occasion the talk got around to suicide. As you can imagine it's an emotive subject. It was amazing to listen to the different points of view from people who I would generally  call compassionate.

One thing became immediately clear, that those who had no experience or knowledge of someone taking their own life  were the most adamant that it is wrong and selfish. So imagine the bombshell when I told them I tried to take my life years previously. Now this is a group that has been meeting for some years and who trust each other very much, I felt 'safe' to make my comment.

I was asked why I had done this which gave me the opportunity to talk about depression, the way it makes you feel, the thoughts and all the stuff of depression. I also told them how I believed my family and friends were better off without me, how I was convinced that the dark hole I lived in would never change etc. I expect you can fill in the rest.

This is a long explanation about one aspect of depression. It demonstrates the opportunities we sometimes get to spread the message both for ourselves and about depression generally. I doubt that I would have talked so freely and openly in a general discussion with people I did not know well and whom I did not trust.

Like you, I kept my depression a secret until I collapsed at work one day. Some colleagues were very good, others ignored the situation and my boss penalised me. I did not tell my children because I was ashamed of myself for feeling like this so the first they knew was when I tried suicide. Not the best way to find out.

My conclusion is you need to choose very carefully. It's not shameful but very much misunderstood and definitely scary for some. I'm guessing you live in Oz and your parents live abroad. BB has very good literature about depression and anxiety. Explore the tabs at the top of the page. BB will send you any of this material free of charge, or you can download it.

My suggestion is get the printed material, including the info for family and friends, and take it with you when you visit your family. Make up your mind when you get there and give them the info if you decide to tell them. It's a lot of knowledge to absorb in one hit so something to read would be helpful.

Mary

[Neil_1]

Hi there bk

Welcome to Beyond Blue and thanx for providing your post.

Firstly I’ll say that I believe there’s a number of similar styles of posts on this site – um, somewhere.  Maybe another poster might know where they are, but I think some of them relate a lot to their workplace, whether to divulge or not.  But yours is a bit of covering everything and more so asking of other people’s experiences.

You’ve done awesome so far with regard to who you’ve let know already – I’m assuming that the result from this divulging was all positive and well meaning towards you?

Personally, I kept mine to myself (oh except for my partner – I kind of let her know as soon as I found out) for a long time and just dealt with it, with all the usual mechanisms that one puts into place.

But after wearing the depression mask for so long, I decided it was really too exhaustive to continue with that, putting on a ‘face’ for the majority of the day gets very tiring.  I’ve had nothing but excellent responses from my work places which gives me a much rosier picture in the thought of whether to say or not say.  However, I have heard of a number of instances where people have experienced really bad situations, both at work or via family and friends in their announcing of it.

One thing I do think though is that my circle of friends has diminished a lot – due to my mental illnesses.  I’m not as social as I used to be and I now no longer have to think up excuses for going out somewhere as I simply am not asked out anymore.

The other thing I’m wary of with regard to friends/mates who’ve always said, yes you can unload on me – or the old, “how are you”, I’m wary cause it seems that I say to this one mate a lot, “Yeah, not travelling so good” and to me that gives me a picture in my mind to him that I’m a bit of a whinger.  It’s probably not that way at all, but that’s how my mind twists things around.

Not sure if this has been useful, but would love to hear back from you.

Kind regards

Neil

[psyciceman]

Hi BK,

This is an interesting question, when I first realized I had depression I kept it to myself, looking back on it I have no idea why, I guess I just didn't want to burden anyone. Today, however I am a lot more open about my mental illnesses, not freely open but a lot more than I was.

The point I'm getting at is that it is a personal decision. For me, keeping it repressed ended up making things worse, so I decided to start talking and it was like a weight had been lifted. If you think that talking about to your friends and family will help, then you should do so. And definitely don't feel like you wil be burdening them, if they care they'll be glad to try to help.

I agree with sarez, you should tell your parents, they are the people who will care for they have raised you.

Hope I've provided some insight,

psyciceman

[BK13]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your responses.

LP FIFO - yes you are very right, it is a huge burden to carry.  I am glad I have told a few people at least, the partners suicide attempt was the final straw and made it perfectly clear I a) couldn't cope with this on my own and b) needed to finally seek proper treatment.  His whole family knows about the suicide attempt, however only his brother and his wife know I too are affected by mental illness.  I have kept it from the rest of his family because I don't want to place additional burden on THEM!  They were rocked to the core when he confessed to them - made all the more painful because it was only 18 months ago a young person in his family took his own life, the wounds from that are still very raw.  They were looking to me for support and reassurance and information, to check that their son/brother was okay.  Which in itself was a lot for me to deal with (again prompting the trip to my GP).  I felt I had to step up and be a rock for them, despite my own fragile state.

I do think I owe it to my parents to be honest with them.  I'm just not used to being honest about the bad parts of my life.  I'm used to downplaying the negative and putting on that mask of 'everythings ok' and 'I am fine'.  I'm sure it's a mask many of you have worn.  I like the idea of printing out some information for them.

I've never really thought about this before but to be really honest with you, I feel it's actually quite likely that they themselves have experienced mental illness at some stage.  ALthough the term didn't really exist back then I believe Mum had PND, coupled with a difficult marriage.  We just don't have the type of relationship where we talk about these things, but maybe by offering up my story, they will also open up.  Maybe it will bring us closer.  It would be nice to be able to call my Mum in the good times AND bad.  To be able to say 'I've had a tough week' rather than telling her how great things are.

Neil - 100% about the whinging to friends worry. My mind very much works that way too.  You don't want to be the negative nancy all the time.  Often I'm not asked as often as I'd like, how I truly am by these people. I of course think that this is because they don't want to hear my sob stories. As you say it's probably not like this at all.  My confidence and level of self worth have really taken a battering and it's hard to believe sometimes that people actually like me or truly care how I am.

My self confidence is definitely something that I'm going to have to work on and build up.  The AD medication has actually decreased my confidence, as I'm still having some trouble following conversations or being able to think of anything to say, I just get complete mind blanks.  I tend at the moment to just not say anything for fear of saying something stupid or completely off topic!  THank goodness fo these forums because they allow me to collect my thoughts, however my mind is still all over the show so it's also hard at times to express myself how I'd like here.  Your support and comments are so appreciated and it's nice to feel like no one is going to judge me.

Back to the telling people thing.  I am always sharing beyondblue posts or other posts to do with mental illness online, urging people to speak out, to get help, to break down the stigma, this is what depression is, this is what anxiety is, etc etc.

I just feel like I am perpetuating the stigma in a sense, if I don't speak out and become more open about my own situation.  Doesn't that make me part of the problem?  SHouldn't I give my workplace the opportunity to be a mentally friendly employer, for my colleagues to treat their workmates with respect and understanding when they 'come out' as having a mental illness.  There is still such a shroud of secrecy over mental illness.  I can only count on one hand workmates who have experienced mental illness, two were my staff members at the time, and the other 3 I only know about because they took a long absence of work.  And this is after almost a decade at this large workplace.  It's interesting that my own staff trusted me enough to tell me about their mental illness, however I don't trust my own boss to do the same.  Maybe they sensed that I was 'one of them'?

My best friend and the trusted friend, actually do work for the same company but in a different section and location.  Their advice was not to disclose it at work as they knew how gossipy and judgemental people here can be and they didn't trust that I wouldn't be treated differently.  How sad is that?  I can't help but agree with them.  Being open about having anxiety and depression at work requires a level of braveness that I'm just not sure I have right now.  Maybe later, I guess no rush huh?  It's not like I'm going to stop having it in a hurry.

So my workplace can wait - maybe I will start small with just my parents. My sister will be there too and I do want her to know. She's the person I am closest to in the family. I think I can segway into it rather than sitting them all down for a serious talk!

Plenty more time to think about it but I think letting my family in, even though they can't help me per se, will be a relief that I don't have to hide from them anymore.

[Neil_1]

Hi there BK13

Thanx heaps for your latest responses.  And good to get a more detailed response about your situation.

With regard to your work, I would definitely not announce it.  I say this because of a couple of things – you say that you don’t trust your own boss (that’s a biggie and that’s good that you’ve recognised this) and also because of your best friend saying not to as well.

Yes yes, advising in the workplace can and is a great thing IF you are going to be supported.  But if you’re not and I’ve heard and read of situations that went horribly bad for the person who announced the fact – and in turn, all that does is to drag your mental illness/health down even further – certainly not what any of us need.

I agree with you 100% about your comment when you say that your staff members felt comfortable (or able) to approach you as they may have twigged that you were, if not a fellow sufferer, someone who is considerate, caring and approachable.   I believe firmly that so many people who are affected with mental illness have these traits – it’s actually a huge pity that more people in the world aren’t instilled with these valuable traits.

Lastly, with regard to parents and sis – I would definitely go to your sister first and give her a rundown.  Let her know all of the mechanisms you’ve put into place to begin to get your own help (which is all fantastic by the way), the gp, the AD’s you’re on, etc.

Just on the AD’s, if you feel they’re not quite right or working for you, it might be worthwhile going back to your Doc to let them know and to get a possible review about them.  In regard to your mind being a bit slower and not able to think so quickly – man, you’re not on your own there.  And likewise, that’s why I prefer computer to communicate rather than phone or in person.  So don’t feel as though you’re on your own there and just the meds aren’t causing you to feel that way with responsiveness and communication – maybe that’s the illness.   Just a thought.

Would be great to hear back from you.

Neil

[Peutetre8]

If people judge you for speaking the truth they should be condemned not you

[BK13]

Hi Neil,

Only took me a month to reply!  The time for me to head overseas is drawing near.  My psych agreed telling my sister first would be a good approach.

The ADs had been working fairly well for me up until a few days ago.  I was able to cope with situations better and it certainly seems to have calmed some of my social anxiety, which at times was paralysing.  The side effects have all but gone.  I have started having very intense dreams though, which I can never remember much of when I wake up.  At times they seem to go all night and can be quite exhausting.  I find I am visiting a lot of places I have dreamed of in previous dreams, some many years ago.  I also sometimes have an awareness that I am dreaming while I dream.  Not lucid in the sense that I haven't been able to control the dream.

A few days ago I realised I couldn't 'FEEL' negative emotions, or cry.  I could identify with the emotion of sadness, but I didn't FEEL it.  This started making me really anxious that I couldn't.  It was upsetting because I felt I couldn't feel truly happy unless I could feel sad sometimes too!  Feeling sad all the time definitely wasn't working for me, but feeling sad once in a while, I think thats normal and okay.  I had to do some breathing exercises and work my way out of the panic I felt at not being able to do something as natural as feeling sad.  I hope this makes sense...

The past few days I've just felt really flat and a bit hopeless, not really wanting to get out of bed.  There have been a lot of extra stresses in my life the last week or two (coupled with the impending time apart from my mentally unstable partner who still won't get help).  I was feeling truly happy for the first time in a LONG time a couple of weeks ago when I got moved into a different job I love.  I could say I was happy and mean it.  But now that things are unravelling there and a few other things have gone wrong, I'm not sure if the medication is cutting it.  I am due to go back to my GP for a second follow up in 3 weeks, and have my next psych appt the day after I get home.  So I will discuss all this on my return, and do a debrief on what happened with my sister (and parents if I end up telling them).

Will post again when I get back.

BK