How to Support a Partner with Mental Illness

This is going to be a difficult post for three reasons. One, I’m pulling from a significant amount of personal experience in relationships. Two, what I’ll be explaining is not going to be easy to digest for those who support a partner with a mental illness. Three, relationships, even the best of them, are inherently messy. Two unique people connect on a meaningful level, decide to continue connecting, and mesh their lives with one another. But relationships are less of a naturally homogenous mixture and more like a smoothie. Leave a smoothie alone for a while and the ingredients separate; you have to blend everything back before it tastes good again.

That is the model for nearly all relational problems — Two people work through their differences and concerns together until a solution develops that they can both live with. Repeat as necessary.

Problem is, that model tends to break apart when utilized in supporting a partner with mental illness. Those humans (you/they/them) who love and care for another human with a mental illness (we/us/our) must come to terms with the fact that we have been in a relationship with our illness for longer than we have known them. That doesn’t mean our illness takes priority over the relationship by virtue of time, but that we know the topography of our illness far better than they do. To make an excessively nerdy point: we know how to get out of Mordor, while our partners have never left the Shire.

Much of my relationship issues have centered around how I am and what I need in the midst of a depressive or anxious spell. I’ve found it helpful to establish some guidelines and flexible boundaries for my partner and I to respect the relationship we’ve crafted, and effectively battle the orc inside my mind (yes, this post will include copious references to Lord of the Rings). Here are the Do’s:

• Ask: “What do you need from me in this moment?”

  • “Be quiet, get me another blanket, and leave me alone.”

  • “Let’s go for a walk, but don’t talk.”

  • “I’m gonna talk and I need to you to listen and not respond.”

• Ask: “Do you need support or advice?”

  • Fantastic question to gain clarity on a situation! External stuff in our lives can trigger our mental illness to present itself, or it’s just a bad day and nothing can account for it.

  • In the midst of battle, we generally do not need nor want advice, and unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated even when someone is in the best of moods.

• Establish time boundaries

  • When in a serious depression I don’t want to see a human being. Instead, I’d like to cocoon myself in soft things, pull the blackout curtains tight, and nap the minutes away. This is not healthy, but it is part of the process. Max of three days in this state for me before there is cause for alarm. I’ve compromised and done two days because my partner was worried. The idea here is to talk about how much space to give your mentally ill partner when we’re rallying our inner-troops to defend our mental Helm’s Deep.

  • After that period expires, the mentally ill person has a responsibility to communicate their needs more coherently, and their supportive partner is given the authority to be more present in helping dig their partner out of their mental hole.

• Develop a non-verbal signal

  • I love the Mood Octopus! One side says you’re happy, the other side says you’re prepared to unleash hell.

  • Find a cute way to visually tell your partner that this is not going to be a good day for you. A note on the fridge does nicely, or a simple text with the flag of your Hogwarts House upside down (I know, I know, I’m mixing reference material).

• The best option is usually to do nothing.

  • When you’re unconcerned with your partner’s safety, give them room to embrace their suck.

  • Try not to take an aloof or uncommunicative partner in this headspace as a reflection of the state of your relationship. Nothing you did or didn’t do likely has anything to do with what our brain is doing to us.

Always remember that we love you; we’re upset that our minds are negatively impacting our relationship, and we’re not in a good space to respond with care and consideration. We’re in a fight/flight response over a period of several hours, if not days. We will snap at you because our bodies are primed to react. This doesn’t absolve us of our responsibility for the things we may say or do in these states, but it is an explanation for behavior that is outside our norm.

Give us space, give us cookies, and enjoy some alone time with your favorite hobby.

We’ll be back, we promise. We just need some time.