Friends and mental illness

[Raffles]

Hello! Anyone have tips on how to keep up friendships when you have a mental illness? I want to get in touch with a friend, but I can't predict when I'm going to have a good day and a bad day. Last time we went out to lunch, I lost energy about 15 minutes in and was really quiet and had a hard time maintaining eye contact. I'm sad because I want to see my friends, but I hate being a buzzkill and not actually being able to be a fun friend. Anyone have ways that have worked for them? I don't want to completely cut off contact, but I also don't want to force them to have lunch with me when it might be miserable and awkward.

[Carly]

Hi Raffles -- I'm a mentally ill person myself and I totally understand how you're feeling. I've been in so many situations where I committed to plans and shut down very shortly into them. I've apologized to my friends about it, but much to my surprise, I often end up finding out that my behavior was a lot less noticeable than I thought it was and my friends still had a nice time being around me. Have you or have you considered talking to your friend in a similar way?

Something else I have done is find other ways to keep in touch. Though I do ultimately prefer face-to-face interactions, sometimes I just don't have it in me. I've resorted to calling and texting my friends when I'm feeling this way because I can be home and in my own space and not worry about making eye contact or any other visible discomfort. Does this ever work for you?

[Raffles]

Hearing that your friends still had a nice time is comforting to me. I think I'll probably just go for it and make the plan. I don't mind texting and calling, but I really like to try to see them in person because it's rare (or has been rare) that I am in the same place at the same time.

[Heather]

Something else I want to suggest, Raffles, is that you treat mental illness the same way you'd (ideally) treat any illness or disability in a bunch of ways. Like:
• Letting the people close to you in on what your illness is and some basics about it. You can also just make a resource list you can text or email if that feels better/is easier for you, or when people want more information.
• Asking for accommodations or assistance you need. For example, when you know that your illness means that you sometimes will want or need to reschedule plans because plans landed on a bad day, you can just let friends know that when you make them. (My friend circle has always included a lot of us with disability, and this is something that's just considered a given for all of us.) You can let them know that sometimes you will need a little pause for yourself, or that you won't always make eye contact.
• Destigmatizing your illness for yourself. Bodies and their brains are unpredictable for everyone, and over a lifetime, more people than not will have ongoing illness or disability of some kind. That doesn't make those of us who do a buzzkill, it just makes us human, something any of our plans or communities should make room for, you know? If as friend or friend group -- or any other community -- need to learn to flex around this stuff, you're honestly doing everyone who is part of it a favor by helping that group learn to do that. Otherwise, it's usually much harder for more than one person in it to stay a part of it: in a lot of ways, these are access issues. Make sense?

[Raffles]

It makes sense, but definitely easier said than done for me. Letting people in and then asking for help on top of that is A Lot, but it does make sense as an access issue.

[Carly]

Hey again Raffles -- in regards to letting people in and asking for help, how open are you generally about your mental health with your friends? Based on your previous threads, it sounds like they're pretty open with you. When you say its easier said than done, what worries you the most? Are you worried what they will think, or perhaps worried about articulating what it feels like well? Walk us through what feels especially difficult for you.

[Raffles]

I don't really want to get in to it, but I can give a short summary. I don't talk about my anything with my friends due to poor past experiences (oversharing/undersharing, overreaction/underreaction). I worry that those will happen again. I also don't feel close enough to anyone (read: trust anyone) to actually talk about it or ask for help. Even if I were, I still have my weird hang ups about not paying people for their emotional labor. The problems I have are ones that can and should be solved by myself and a professional, not my friends.

[Elise]

Hi there Raffles, it could help to consider that with friends, asking for their support is different than asking for them to solve or fix an issue/illness. Being there for each other is an important part of social connection.

I’m going to take a guess that if you had a friend who broke their ankle and needed crutches, you wouldn’t mind going the long way around a ramp rather than make them take the stairs, or if they were really sore and needed not to do a really physically demanding activity you would understand without judging them. All you would be asking and communicating to your friends would be similar, as mental health is health, and needs accomodating in a similar way. Also, just disclosing a health issue doesn’t mean you have to go into the detail of the causes or the depths of how it feels, whether that’s physical or mental, unless you want to. Again; this is how having the support of a friend is different to seeing a healthcare practitioner like a psychologist, who has the training and is in a scenario where they can do the labour with their expertise.

Having support from friends can also really help our brains cope to know we’re not alone, it’s different from the benefits of treatment, but can be really using whilst we’re having it, as well as when treatment isn’t happening, too.

You mentioned having bad experiences with both people not reacting well, or enough. In some cases, do you think it is possible that the person was worried about saying the wrong thing? Would you be able to articulate to us what it is you’d ideally like a friend to do if you shared information about your mental health with them?

[Raffles]

I really don't feel comfortable receiving support from friends, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the direction this conversation is heading. I can say that judging by the reactions people have had, I don't think they were worried about saying the wrong thing.

Regarding the point about accommodations and assistance: I feel weird about asking for this things because I don't particularly need them. My case isn't that severe, so I can do everything. I don't want to ask for accommodations and/or assistance if I don't need it.

[Mo]

This might feel more like asking for accommodations than you're comfortable with, so apologies if that's the case, but there are times when I've found it helpful to say something that doesn't go into any real detail about my situation but sets some sort of expectation for the social time I'm going to spend with someone. That might look like "I'm excited to see you today! Just so you know, I'm a little low energy (or whatever phrasing feels accurate enough to what I'm experiencing) so I might be quieter than usual, but it won't mean I'm not enjoying myself."

It can be a way to signal you're not operating at 100% without going into more detail than you feel comfortable sharing or asking for the other person to do something concrete in response. To me this feels pretty different from a more explicit conversation about my mood/mental health or asking for anything specific from the other person, so I thought I'd bring it up, but I realize this might fall under the umbrella of things you don't feel comfortable discussing.

[Raffles]

No worries, thank you for listening to my reaction. I didn't mean to sound angry, it was just that I started a thread about one topic that was resolved and then it started to get into more personal questions about my mental health and relationships that I didn't want to talk about. And that does seem like a reasonable and attainable middle way. Thank you!

[Heather]

Hey Raffles, I have a thought: I wonder if you might want to try our chat service next time around? There are some things chat offers that the boards don't -- total privacy, the ability to only talk with one person for a given conversation, more real-time dynamics -- that I think might feel like a better fit for you in some ways than I get the impression the boards do.

If that sounds like something you want to try, our regular chat hours are listed here -- https://www.scarleteen.com/our_live_chat_service -- but you can also ask to schedule a chat with any of us who work chat outside those hours if they don't work for you, or you want to talk with one of our staff in particular.

[Raffles]

Yes, I can do that next time. I don't mind the lack of consistency and delay and privacy because of the anonymity, and I do worry about my abilities to chat because I'm dyslexic which makes my reading and ability to process slow haha. But if I can text, I can probably chat. My apologizes. I recognize that I have been posting a lot lately. I have been planning on taking a break from the boards, and now seems like a good time to do that. Things are a little too messy right now and talking about it hasn't made it much better. I thank all of you for you advice and support, and I will talk to you whenever it is that I'm a functional person again (hopefully within the next few months).

[Heather]

Just looking for what might look best for you. I wish you all the best in finding your best ways to work through the mess.<3