Have you ever experienced a loved one trying to recover from a mental health illness?
Maybe you’ve experienced mental health illness yourself?
It can sometimes be a difficult thing to comprehend unless you have been through it yourself.
It can come without warning, and it can create untold damage and destruction.
Most people are not experts in knowing what to do.
But there is one thing that we can all do that helps so much more than you realise.
Simply don’t judge what you may not understand, and instead offer kindness, empathy, and a willingness to try and understand.
Just simply try to understand what it might be like.
Whilst we ourselves may not be able to take away all of the reasons why someone is struggling with their mental health, we can help and show that we care by trying to understand with an open and kind heart, and by listening with an empathetic ear.
I knew someone who’s best friend took their own life.
She would talk openly about how well she understood mental health because of it.
Yet years later, I experienced this same person ignorantly judging and persecuting someone for experiencing a significant decline in their mental health due to a number of reasons beyond their control.
It wasn't because she was a horrible person, but because she simply wasn’t willing to try to properly understand.
People will usually criticise or judge as a defense mechanism what they are fearful of, what they don’t understand, or are not willing to understand.
Her significant other unfortunately was also not the empathetic kind either; ignorantly labeling the impact of one of the traumatic events that had affected this person’s mental health by a derogatory term that I won’t mention here.
The sheer ignorance, lack of empathy, refusal to listen to the full story, and refusal to even attempt to understand was nothing short of astounding; especially given what they themselves had already been through.
They even labelled this person’s mental health struggle as toxic to others, when all they wanted was understanding, support, kindness, love, and time to heal.
But what they got instead was judgement, persecution, a lack of empathy and understanding, and they had their privacy to heal taken away from them.
It was this, along with their unconscionable attitude and judgement towards this person, that almost ended up being the tipping point for this person to take their own life.
The only thing they managed to achieve with their words and their attitudes was to make a bad situation much worse than it needed to be.
It’s these types of attitudes and behaviours that are not helpful and can be very damaging to someone who is already in a fragile state.
It’s these types of attitudes and behaviours that make people feel even more alone, and afraid to speak up when they need help.
People like this are unfortunately part of the problem, and definitely not part of the solution.
We can help more people than we will ever know by simply offering an open heart, an open mind, open arms; and a kind, empathetic ear.
We can help by replacing judgement and fear of what you don’t understand; with a willingness to just listen and try our best to understand.
Because when we do, unbeknown to us; we might just be helping to save someone’s life.
~ Mark