Category : Blogs

Sub Category : World

It's past World Suicide Prevention day now but I wanted to share a message that is extremely important to me.
I have found and observed, so much over the years, (whether it's addiction, eating disorders, depression or suicide...) that there's this prevailing notion that underlies all the "support" people are willing to offer or find acceptable to offer in regards to helping those with mental health problems... The notion is almost subliminal; I've often heard it uttered "there's only so much you can do for them" and "they have to help themselves".
These sentiments are absolutely correct but they are often uttered to the loved ones caring for the ill person; often at their most vulnerable pinnacle.
It's uttered to convey the notion that maybe there's nothing more you can do, maybe it's ok to let go... maybe it's time to move on... 
This hurts me deeply, in ways that I can and can't explain.
It hurts because when I or "they" are at their worst, their sickest... Is when we are most incapable of helping ourselves, is when we are most likely to despair that there's no help to be found, that we don't deserve the love and help our friends and family are painstakingly trying to give us... 
And here the world wants to tell those that are fighting to save us, to walk away... Leave them to it, you've done all you can...
Mental Illness can be short lived or life long, its symptoms might be more hairy and emotionally draining to deal with than others... But if those who are meant to love us unconditionally, are nudged to abandon us if we're too sick... too often... How can there be hope!?
"Save yourself" they say. Yet none of us ever forgave Rose Dawson for "saving herself" in "Titanic"... Years later we're still discussing ways in which a fictional character might have tried to move over on her floating door in order to save her fictional lover from freezing to death. 
Yet if it was a real life scenario playing out in front of the world, she'd be told he's dragging her down, she has to let him go to save herself and before he's even took his last breath! At least Rose was there for him to that point, even if she didn't know how to roll on her side!
Carers are often floundering for ways to help their sick loved ones aboard the survival door. Perhaps they have helped them aboard many times and are finding it harder and harder to find the strength to pull them back up... over and over again.
The carers need your support when they are drained and ill themselves; from giving more than they have to give. 
Instead they often get the statements and notions previously mentioned. 
These can begin to suggest the idea, that the carer is only to blame for their burn out: 
After all, they do continue to fight what the commentators have deemed, "a lost cause"! 
"It's like getting drunk and complaining of a hangover" " it's like banging your head off a brick wall"... No! Actually its like loving and looking after a sick person who keeps getting sick!
I know and love many who were very sick with some form of mental Ill health; some have recovered, some have not. 
But I didn't give up on them and I didn't look down on them! 
I look TO them to discover new ways to TRY help. You don't need to be a saviour, just don't swim away on your life-door and leave us to float and die alone in the cold freezing depths of despair.
I pledge to never give up TRYING to help those in their darkest hardest struggles; to help them recover as often as they are sick and I pray to a God I don't know exists, that someone might do the same for me!
#WorldSuicidePreventionEveryDay #LoveIsLife #DontGiveUp #CarerRespite #CarerSupport #HowToSaveALife #SupportPledge 
#BadTitanicMetaphors
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