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

[Neil_1]

Hi BK13

Thank you for your latest response – and hey, absolutely no worries on the when you came back to post;   just great to hear from you again.

Dreams are amazing things – sometimes they can have you wake up feeling, you know, quite good, in that it was a ripper;   but other times, you wake and you feel absolutely exhausted which then transfers its tiredness throughout your day, which kind of you know, it just sucks.  But nothing we can do about it.   The amount of times I’ve gone to bed ‘trying my best’ to put some kind of positive thought into my mind before I nod off, but it just doesn’t work.   I gave up long ago looking at photos of Jennifer Hawkins before bedtime!

Were the things that unravelled at work, a huge thing or just minor incidents?   I think either way, just if it’s possible, to look at the overall bigger picture and to think in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months time, will what happened “back then” be of consequence in the future?   If it’s not, then try as best as you can to move on and get past that.  It’s a very difficult concept to come to terms with and in my black and white few of the world, it makes sense.  It’s just that I can’t conjure up that black and white version as much as I’d like too.

How much longer before you set sail for sunnier climes?

Neil

[myvroses]

I didn't tell anyone how I was really feeling for about 7 years and it was only after I started seeing a counsellor did it become easier to tell other people. It was so extremely difficult though because suffering from depression was the biggest secret and lie of my life and telling someone about it felt like I was completely naked and vulnerable. Since then I've spoken to my brothers and my best friend about it. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever be able to freely talk about it with my parents. I might not be okay with that, but I accept that.

I recently told two acquaintances about it because they asked and I now feel like I'm at the point where I feel strong enough to talk about it. It's still painful to talk about it, but it helps me connect with people. All I really want now is to be able to share my experiences with people who are willing to listen and help support them. 

I don't tend to talk about it in too much detail though (e.g. specific events) unless I think the situation warrants it.