Disclosing a Mental Illness

This week’s topic is about disclosing mental illness. First, I think it is important to understand that those closest to you can see that there is a difference in your behavior. They might not understand what is causing it or even mention it. This is not them passing judgement but rather them being concerned. When I told my closest friend who I have known since middle school, he told me he had suspected it for some time. Since he went through a similar thing with his sister, he recognized the signs and was concerned. At the same time, he did not not want to intrude on my privacy, so he remained quiet. This is a common thing when it comes to family or close friends. Often, they are waiting for you to open up to them. The more people I have opened to in my life about my situation, the more I understood that the way my friend felt was a common response.

When it comes down to deciding whether to disclose your situation, there are several questions to ask and the following are the two most common that came up in my experience.

Can I trust this person?

There is often a family member or friend that you are close to, but worry about them spreading information that is not meant to be shared. If this is the case, it is safer to either choose not to tell them or to be vague. I have a few people in my life that fall into this category. After about a year of hiding my mental illness from them, I decided to let them in, but did so in a vague manner. I generalized my issues as depression and anxiety because those can be used as a blanket term for mental illness. It gave me a way to acknowledge my noticeably different behavior, but let me keep my privacy, too. If this response still feels like too much information, saying, “I’m working through some things but I’m improving,” works, too. Again, it acknowledges there is a problem, but keeps it private.

How will they respond?

As I mentioned earlier, the response is often better than expected. For me, telling my closest friends and family members lifted a weight off of my shoulders. They knew I was struggling and I knew they saw that. However, we both pretended to ignore it in an attempt to move forward like usual. This caused additional stress for me, which only amplified the anxiety I dealt with. Now, if you recall in my first post, I brought up not relying on your friends to be a 24/7 therapist. Please remember this when you disclose to them because this is a mistake I made. I assumed that by telling them, they were going to be there all the time, ready to help. That expectation was not fair to them or me. An article on the NAMI website brings up the idea that if you receive the same “vibes” from the person after the disclosure that you did before, there is good reason to believe that nothing has changed in the relationship. Going off of that, I want to add that it is entirely possible that person might not react in a positive way. They may distance themselves or avoid you. This happened with many of my friends. In hindsight, it was no one’s fault, it just happened. 

In all, I want to stress that this is not an exact science. My experience may differ from others. Please think about the questions mentioned in this post, the goals of disclosing, and how the person might respond when considering whether or not to tell those around you. In addition, here is another article from the NAMI website on this topic. Between my post and the two articles I have linked, I hope you can find the information needed to help you on this path.

Please check out the podcast discussing the impact my mental illness has on relationships that was posted today. Next Friday, I’ll be back with another blog post.

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