Jul 20, 2023
Relationships in life are enriching, needful, and helpful, enhancing happiness throughout the life. The challenge is to navigate through the ups and downs in those relationships, especially if you have a mental illness. Every kind of relationship faces a problem at some point. When you know the coping strategies and identify the problems, your relationships can flourish irrespective of mental health problems.
Mental illness is a common health condition. But when it affects your daily lives and relationships, it must be approached with the right therapy and counseling. According to the National Institutes of Health, People who have common mental illnesses are more likely at risk of marital dissolution. But you shouldn't let having a mental illness prevent you from engaging in a successful relationship of any kind, from friendships to marriage.
In this blog, you will explore how mental health and relationships are co-related. You will also know the symptoms, the impact of mental illness on relationships, and how relationship therapy helps restore relationships and mental health.
Mental Health and Relationships
Wonder how mental health is affecting relationships? How we behave in our relationships can significantly influence our mental health and ability to handle difficult situations. Being mentally ill can be physically, intellectually, and emotionally draining. Hence, it makes sense that it would have such a substantial impact on us.
Struggling with your own feelings and thoughts is frustrating. It seems even more disheartening when you can't always be there for your relationship the way you want to be.
Depression and anxiety-related disorders are prevalent mental health issues. Healthy and happy relationships can result from understanding the difficulties of your mental health and how to deal with them using coping mechanisms.
There is no particular method to diagnose mental illness in an individual. Although symptoms of mental health issues differ, some general signs indicate the prevalence of mental illness.
Sometimes anger and laziness you notice in your partners’ behavior is normal. But it is necessary to talk to your mental health therapist if you notice unusual behavior in your partner.
Common Mental Illnesses that Affect Relationships
Conditions such as stress, anxiety, and depression can affect relationships in many ways. The symptoms of the above condition may make you feel disinterested in relationships, causes frustration, and develop trust issues. Since mental health and relationships, both play a vital role in life, understanding the mental illness that affects relationships is crucial.
Stress
Stress can be detrimental when it comes to relationships. You might feel down and wish to spend more time alone than normal, or you may argue with your partner more regularly or shout more frequently as a result.
Whatever way you respond to being under too much pressure, your relationships are probably going to suffer. For instance, if you start to distance yourself from your partner, they can feel pushed away. Or if you're angrier than normal, your spouse or other family members can start acting defensively and argumentatively in return.
Depression
Your partner may become upset if you are unable to communicate clearly due to depression. Additionally, you could begin to feel bad about how formidable your presence is for those around you, which can reduce your self-worth.
According to the National Institutes of Health, People who have poor social connections are more likely to have serious depressive disorders in the future. This shows how our relationship and mental health significantly impact each other.
Anxiety
Your relationships may suffer if you experience anxiety regularly or a lot of the time. while you're anxious, you can find it difficult to calm down while you're around your partner, friends, or family. And suppose you don't feel completely safe in your connection with your partner. In that case, you may fear continuously that the relationship will end or you might want continuous assurances from your partner that they won't leave you. Neither of these behaviors will pave the way for happy relationships.
Substance Abuse
The triggers of certain people to use substances can lead you to know the correlation between mental health and relationships. If a person with mental illness cannot find someone to share his feelings and emotion, they fall into depression. They find an addiction or substance abuse to be an easy escape to come out of depression. But later, only they realize it is too late to overcome these addictions.
How mental illness affects relationships?
Having a mental illness is not only going to affect you, but also it will have an impact on your partner. Watching your partner suffering from mental health problems is extremely stressful. They might exhibit some behaviors like insecure feelings, codependent behavior, or no to less communication. Taking care of your partner and guiding them through this tough phase with the help of relationship therapy will improve your partner's mental health.
The Feeling of Insecurity and Resentment
We frequently have emotional blind spots when we're mentally unwell. As a result, we are unable to reason clearly or respond healthily. This lack of perspective is upsetting, and as a result, we experience feelings of insecurity and humiliation.
Codependent Behavior
If you depend too much on your partner to solve your problems and ignore your own necessities, it may be a sign of codependent behavior. Separation anxiety can be considered a symptom of codependent behavior. This type of codependent behavior can harm your mental health and may result in manipulation or abuse.
Broken Communication
The major problem in relationships is broken communication. If you don't understand your partners’ feelings, especially when experiencing mental illness, it will negatively impact the relationship. If you are a caring partner, and there is no communication, your partner affected by mental illness may feel isolated.
Break Down in Social Connections
Mental illness causes misunderstanding and fights between friends and the people with whom they are socially connected, like neighbors, colleagues, etc.; it creates a sense of isolation and abandonment, which again worsen the symptoms of depression. Despite this, as a friend, one must understand and help the person affected by mental illness without judging them.
Ways to heal your relationship when mental illness strikes
As mental health in a relationship plays a crucial role; it is important to find out the ways to heal your mental illness so that it will no longer affect your relationships. Read on the following points to find ways to heal your relationship and mental health.
Understand the illness and the available treatments
Your partner may show signs of laziness, unhappiness, anger, or irritability. However, these behaviors could actually be signs of mental illness. Take responsibility and ensure your partner is receiving effective mental health treatment.
Seek support from a professional
Educate yourself from a relational therapist on how to help your partner in the process of recovery. Having no idea on how to help can be frustrating for both you and your partner. You can ask them whether they need any help, or you can ask them whether they need assistance to contact the mental health therapist nearby.
Engage in Better Communication
Better communication implies positive communication. Communicate in an honest way and ensure your partner that you both are going to overcome this situation as a team. Ask them what you can do to help them after hearing about their experience and validating their feelings.
Prioritize Self-care
Practising self-care is an art and it is important for both partners in a relationship. You need positive energy and enthusiasm to take care of your partner to manage the illness. Hence, getting enough sleep, healthy food, and exercising are important factors you should focus on.
What are the benefits of relationship therapy in Treating Mental Illness?
Relationship therapy has numerous advantages. It helps you to understand how important and significant your mental health and relationship is. Following are some of the benefits you can get through relationship therapy.
Restores Trust
Therapy helps you to practice forgiveness, and take responsibility. Your therapist helps you to find out the underlying thoughts and beliefs in you so that you work on them and rebuilds trust in your partner.
Improves Better Communication
You can explore new methods to communicate with your partner. The therapist assists you in how you make your communication positive and enhance your relationship and mental health.
Effective Coping Skills
You can find out and develop the coping skills to manage the conflict, express yourself efficiently, problem-solving, and eliminate the cause of your mental illness like stress and depression. Developing coping skills also helps to calm your anxiety.
Removes Obstacles in Your Relationships
Relationship therapy helps you to find out and remove the obstacles in your relationships. Contradicting goals, and need can cause stress in relationships. But, therapy helps you to understand the differences and respect the opinions of your partner.
Provides a Safe and Non-judgemental Environment
Whether it is online therapy or in-person, relationship therapy provides you with a non-judgemental and safe environment. It creates an environment where you feel connected, supported, and comfortable.
Techniques Used in Relationship Therapy
Mental health and relationships are intertwined. Both are important to lead a happier life and that's why relationship therapy helps to handle the conflicts that affect your relationship. Relationship therapist employs different techniques to enhance your relationship by practicing different therapeutic techniques. Let’s take a look at some of the relationship therapy techniques which helps in refreshing your mental health and relationships.
Gottman Method
According to the Gottman method, stress is one of the factors which creates conflicts in relationships in addition to money, household work, and technology. Therapist employing this method aims to disarm conflicting communication between couples and aids in developing friendship and better communication skills.
Psychodynamic Therapy
This therapy examines your coping strategies and interpersonal communications. The main goal of psychodynamic therapy is to help you to understand how your unconscious content becomes the root cause of your behavior and resistance to change. With this understanding, you can improve self-awareness and improve relationships, and mental health.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT effectively assists you to overcome the stressors both in and out of your relationship. The strategies used in Cognitive behavioral therapy help to modify negative behavioral patterns and distorted cognitions. This therapy helps you to cope with mental illnesses such as depression, external stressors, and relational problems and aids you in expressing yourself effectively.
Ellen Wachtel’s Approach
This is A strength-based, integrated approach that focuses on the positives in relationships rather than difficulties. The goal of the therapy is to get more of what you or your partner longing for in a relationship by promoting self-reflection and emphasizing strengths rather than deficiencies.
Imago Relationship Therapy
Through Imago relationship therapy, you can move forward to a “Conscious Relationship” by understanding your partners’ feelings. This therapy emphasizes childhood experiences and stresses will have an impact on adult relationships. Understanding your partner’s childhood wounds develop empathy which creates a deep and strong connection between you and your partner.
Final Thoughts
Healthy and positive relationships are a wonderful support system. Sometimes, you may have experienced prejudices or discrimination while talking about your mental illness. But this is not the case all time. Relationships need empathy, trust, and communication. Your partner may not know what you are experiencing because of mental illness as they have no idea how it feels. Hence educating your partner about your mental illness is absolutely necessary.
At LifeBulb, you can get professional support from our relationship therapist who guides and support you in rebuilding your bond with customized treatment and therapy. With a supportive and non-judgmental environment, you can learn the coping skills and strategies that resolve conflicts and issues and foster healthy and strong relationships and mental health.
