You may be surprised to learn that having a child diagnosed with a mental illness can cause you to go through the five stages of grieving, these are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You will not necessarily experience them in order, and you may move in and out of them more than once. I know that I did.
This type of grief is called ambiguous grief. Ambiguous grief is when there is no real closure such as the death of a loved one. But that person is lost to you in some way. Maybe you feel the loss of who they were. You may feel it for the dreams that you had for them maybe their illness is in some way debilitating. Or you could be feeling the loss of the parent that you dreamed of being.
I remember when I realized the deep sadness and emptiness that I was feeling was grief. It was in its own way liberating. I had a real reason for feeling as I did. We know we do not really need a reason but sometimes having one seems to make it easier to bare. So I was watching Pretty Little Liars, (who knew it could be educational) and there is a scene in the mental institution, Radley Sanitarium, where the doctor is telling one of the characters that she is experiencing ambiguous grief due to her friend having gone through psychosis and who is in the intuition still recovering. This was such an ah-ha moment for me. I was actually giddy. I learned that I was, in fact, grieving and in the depression stage.
This was the beginning of my learning to accept my new normal. What was my new normal? It was accepting that the parent I wished to be was not the parent my child needed. I learned to enjoy moments by living in the here and now and absorbing it for all it was worth. I learned to have hope in a different future for my son. This meant him receiving his GED instead of a high school diploma, and I was thrilled and proud of him for it. He obtained a full-time job instead of heading straight to college. His dreams have not changed but the path that he chose take did. I am very proud of his perseverance. He is an incredibly strong and intelligent man and had I not accepted this new normal, I would not have been able to give him the encouragement he so richly deserved.
Although, I made it to the acceptance stage that did not mean that I stayed there. There were times when things were not going well that I would bounce to one of the other stages again, but that was okay. I understood what I was experiencing. So I was able to feel it, process it, and move into acceptance again. I hope this is as helpful to you as Pretty Little Liars was for me. My hope is for you to find and embrace your new normal.
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Published by Parenting For Good Mental Health
Hello,
My name is Tricia. I am the proud mom of two amazing young men.
My youngest son was always a very energetic and highly reactive child. Life with him was often like a roller coaster ride. He had to work very hard to learn how to manage his emotions and behaviors. By the time he turned 10, he had learned to manage them fairly well. But one night while watching the movie The Mummy, his anxiety was triggered. Night after night, he just could not get the scary images out of his head. This went on for almost a year where he would cry in bed at night. Nothing we tried seemed to help. So we decided to take him to see a psychiatrist where he was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, depression, OCD, and bipolar disorder.
Unfortunately, the care and medications that he received from various professionals did not really help. By educating myself, I began to learn that there were many more options that had not been provided or suggested. I believe that had I had more information sooner; his care could have been better tailored to his needs. This was a very difficult time not only for my son but for our entire family. We had to develop new ways of interacting that did not cause fights over the littlest things. We had to learn the hard way what not to do in a crisis. My husband had to learn that you don’t have to have a reason to be depressed or anxious. Sometimes you just are. And that it is not helpful to say to a depressed person, that they have no reason to be depressed. Having never experienced these feelings himself, my husband really struggled with understanding these things. But now that he gets it, he wishes he would have understood sooner so he could have been more supportive to our son in the beginning.
Thankfully, our son has found his own way through the darkness. And he has developed some skills and tools for managing his mental illness. He is successfully working a fulltime job and even has his own place. I am very proud of all that he has achieved. But his path could have been easier and less painful for him had we known about these other options sooner.
As parents and caregivers we need to educate ourselves on their illnesses and the evidence based care options that are out there. We have a limited number of clinicians that treat children and teens, so we sometimes only get to see them once a month. What kind of impact do you think you could have on your child if you only saw him once a month? We need to bring as much to the table as possible. The clinicians can only work with the information they are given. The more you can tell them the better they will be able to tailor your child’s care to his needs. We also need to know how to be the parents our child needs because what works for other kids does not always work for ours.
I would like to help educate others so that their path to recovery might be made shorter. There is a lot of support out there, but sometimes we do not hear about it. NAMI is the first support that I will recommend.
NAMI the National Alliance on Mental Illness is the largest grassroots mental health organization in America. Through NAMI you will find support and education that can help you to better facilitate the care your child needs. https://www.nami.org/
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