But it doesn't work if the person is high on drugs or drunk, or even too out of touch with reality to assess the situation. Tough love is the act of sternness or unsentimental demeanor toward an addict and their addiction. My therapist told me that what I’d done by getting my first job after years of not being able to leave the house, was “diving into the deep end” which did not work. Pushing someone with a mental illness too hard can actually send them backwards. Kel, 5th January 2020 by Kelly Jean Leave a Comment. Molly March 29, 2016, 9:16pm #10 A loved one gives tough love in hopes that the addict will take responsibility and solve their addiction problem. Tough love can help your loved one accept treatment, but addiction is a disease as well, so it does require medical assistance. Perhaps it is fear of enabling that causes some people to approach addiction with the tough love method. And many practitioners of tough love believe it is all right to lambast people living with mood disorders on any grounds whatsoever. I no longer believe in tough love when it comes to folks who have a serious mental illness, however it doesn’t mean that that parents or siblings have to put up with abusive behavior. Tough love, or, abusive love actually, was what got me there in the first place. Just like someone can’t just forget about their broken leg so that they can walk for you. It was Geno's day off from work and he had planned to decompress. I'm Kel, a lifestyle and mental health blogger, living in Somerset with my partner and twin boys. In the addiction and rehabilitation community, tough love has become the standard for families to treat their children – by shutting them out, imposing harsh restrictions, and even disowning them when they fail to quit or follow through on rehab. Currently you have JavaScript disabled. People with bipolar have the “tough” bit covered. Less anxiety in 7 days. Subscribe to the free 7 day anxiety course. Acknowledge what they’re going through. Subscribe to the free 7 day anxiety course, Being A Mental Health Blogger Doesn't Mean You Need To Be Perfect, 40 Worst Things To Say To Someone With Depression. But, … When it comes to mental illness and any addiction, it's important to remember that tough love is used to bring the problem to the forefront and cause the person to make a choice to heal or not. Over 250 self-help support groups and discussion forums for people who need emotional support, help with a mental health, relationship, parenting, or sexual problem, and mental illness support. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. To love someone with depression, you need to love them wholeheartedly, without conditions. with depression mental illness or any other medical disease like cancer, diabetes, chronic pain, heart disease, AIDS, etc. My mental illness is exactly that, an illness. The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the study is broadly accurate and it also went to the trouble of including a dissenting view about the merits of smacking. When talking about a loved one going through a manic episode, I don't think that 'tough love' is going to work. There are ways to deal with that without abandoning your mentally ill child. A free email course to help you reduce your anxiety. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. It’s possible that they don’t need your advice or help, that they’re already getting help. Required fields are marked *. Your email address will not be published. After finally fighting back for my life and dignity against every abusive act, putting the fear of God in them the way they always did to me, they finally backed off, they finally understood, and true healing began. Recognize you might not be the best person to help them. Tough love is commonly used to try and help addicts become sober. There is nothing healthy about tough love in the context of mental illness. I had radiation treatment after work. It doesn’t suddenly disappear because you say it’s time to get over it or because it makes you uncomfortable. When tough love is practiced, however, mere words from the addict will no longer suffice. Tough love addiction treatment has long predominated the recovery community, to the detriment of addicts and their families. Required fields are marked *. Kelly @ MindfullyMad.com, Many people fail to understand the true situation in which those suffering from mental illness are living; they think that it’s something that can be solved quickly and many also choose to walk away. It’s not okay to push someone or make them feel like shit for having a mental illness. 5th January 2020 by Kelly Jean Leave a Comment. Related: How To Explain Social Anxiety To Someone Who Doesn’t Have It 10 Social Anxiety Myths And Why They’re Total Bullshit When Your Illness Becomes An Inconvenience To Others. Thank you so much for this! When you say “time for tough love”, what you’re really saying is that you’re inconvenienced by my mental illness or that you don’t really believe in its existence. The only criteria that seems to matter to them is that the behavior bothers them. Validating them isn’t going to make their mental health worse, it’s just going to make them feel safe and supported. By day I'm a professional photographer and by night I blog about managing anxiety, depression, having a chronic illness and many other things. Your mental health is a part of you, and you should not feel pressured to change for others. Mental health has been a consistent and prevalent theme in K-dramas these days. Less anxiety in 7 days. How I was being sick everyday, I couldn’t stop shaking, sweating, panicking and I didn’t feel safe at any point of the day. This is kind of a tough topic to write about. Get yourself educated on what your loved one is going through. It also made me realize that those who have loved ones battling mental illness need encouragement and support as much as we do. I hear the words “you need to snap out of this now” and “you need to just get over it” but these words don’t offer encouragement or strength to me during my journey, they don’t stretch out to me like an arm to help me up from the ground. I’ve never thought of tough love in regard to mental illness before but I guess I could see the application. Why Tough Love Doesn’t Work For Mental Illness There are many complexities to a persons mental illness, including trauma, years of learned habits and chemical imbalances in the brain. While exposure therapy (facing your fears) is a really good technique for anxiety and I explain how I use this in my book, it isn’t as simple as just going and facing your fears head on. What works in addition to medical treatment, ie, therapy & medication is compassion, support, kind words and most of all love. This is amazing! Filed Under: Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health. By day I'm a professional photographer and by night I blog about managing anxiety, depression, having a chronic illness and many other things. Do some research into the symptoms, so that you can better understand what is typical for them to experience. What does seem to work is being very firm with boundaries. It isn't used to punish. I'm Kel, a lifestyle and mental health blogger, living in Somerset with my partner and twin boys. But the tough love approach is fundamentally antithetical to the reality of addiction and fails to recognize addiction as a brain disorder and psychological symptom. Your dismissive and sometimes gaslighting attitude towards me does not work on my mental illness. The study was carried out by researchers from Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York, and Arizona State University and was funded by The National Institute for Medical Health. However, once an addict hits rock bottom, tough love is probably too little too late. Conversely, tough love always made me feel even lonelier, more ashamed, and burdensome on everybody in my life. It may not be fruitful to say you are on the … If that’s how it worked, I would have said goodbye to it a long time ago. Facing your fears and using exposure techniques with an anxiety disorder involves taking SMALL achievable steps, while working through all those intrusive thoughts, dropping safety behaviours and doing the same small steps until they are comfortable before moving onto something bigger. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. How To Explain Social Anxiety To Someone Who Doesn’t Have It, 10 Social Anxiety Myths And Why They’re Total Bullshit, When Your Illness Becomes An Inconvenience To Others. Treatment can be a long, difficult process and some mental illnesses don’t just go away after treatment, they have to be managed for life. Your tough love doesn’t work on my mental illness. Why Tough Love Doesn’t Work For Mental Health. The clear message being sent is the only way to regain the support and interaction and everything that comes with it is to agree to accept help in the form of drug rehab. “Tough love might look like an appropriate response, but it often backfires by further damaging the frayed connections to the people to whom the child is closest.” This last statement resonated very strongly with me. I once went back to therapy after one of my breakdowns and told her how I wasn’t coping, how I’d gotten my first job and stuck it out for a year but my anxiety wasn’t improving, it was actually getting worse. Why Tough Love Doesn’t Work Most people would probably not consider going to the extremes that these programs employ. I often feel so much guilt because I’m inconveniencing others with my mental illness. When she got discharged from the hospital and came home, her mood got really really nasty. ... I’m lucky to have a supportive companion who offers support and love—sometimes the sort of tough love we all need. ... mental health treatment does … Don’t blame them or belittle them for their mental health. I'm Kel, a lifestyle and mental health blogger, living in Somerset with my partner and twin boys. Is tough love … I can’t simply push my mental illness aside to do everything you want me to. This is especially true where a co-occurring mental illness is present. Professional help and understanding is needed to continue supporting those who need us, Your email address will not be published. The set of behaviors typically identified with “tough love” are usually stigma and denial in the guise of support. Seriously, just acknowledge them! ... All this stuff about removing stigma from mental illness is well meaning but... very very complicated! Heroin abuse in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions. For other people, managing their mental illness may be down to getting the right medication and adjusting it to the right dosage, it may be other therapy treatments that are more complex or it may be situational and will unlikely go anywhere until the situation causing it has changed. Posted on October 7, 2017 April 6, 2020 Author Anne Moss Rogers Categories Addiction Tags is tough love the right way to treat an addict, should I use tough love, tough love, tough love and addiction, tough love and mental illness 12 Comments on Is tough love the right thing to do? Some degree of unconditional acceptance is helpful in any therapeutic process, but it must also be carefully integrated with tough love when it comes to healing from mental illness. I know that I am walking a very fine line when I say that there were times that I, as a mentally ill person, needed a healthy dose of tough love from my friends and family. The above is what I needed to feel better (& I do). I’m going to discuss being held accountable while having a mental illness. When it comes to mental illness and any addiction, it's important to remember that tough love is used to bring the problem to the forefront and cause the person to make a choice to heal or not. It isn't used to punish. 28th September 2019 by Kelly Jean 2 Comments. Ask them how they’d like you to support them and what help if any that they want from you. It is so refreshing to hear someone else say that I don’t have to make other people feel better when my illness makes them uncomfortable. In order to offer tough love effectively, you must also offer your loved one some way to call for treatment options, visit treatment programs or … Knowing that your tough love doesn’t work for mental illness, here are some ways you can support your loved ones instead: It’s okay to set healthy boundaries. A young woman living with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to childhood abuse describes why "tough love" doesn't work for trauma survivors. But it doesn't work if the person is high on drugs or drunk, or even too out of touch with reality to assess the situation. Why Tough Love Doesn't Work for Addicts and Alcoholics ... pop up on his Caller ID. That means loving them with their illness. Avoid making them feel bad about having a mental illness. There is much more to it than that. A spokesperson for the NSPCC is quoted as saying: “Smacking is not an effective form of pu… Kelly Jean. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. When a person becomes manic, they begin to lose touch with reality and lack insight and awareness into their thoughts and actions. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. It’s okay to admit that you don’t know how to handle this or how to help. ... when it comes to mental health problems, data does suggest a close connection. Treatment can be a long, difficult process and some mental illnesses don’t just go away after treatment, they have to be managed for life. Assailing a person for symptoms beyond their control isn’t love, it is sadism. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. The Positive Effects of Love on Mental Health Love has been defined in various ways. Tough love is a hard, but a valuable language to learn. When you push someone with an anxiety disorder for example, into things that are too big for their anxiety, you only end up reinforcing the fears behind their intrusive thoughts and setting them back in their recovery. Your email address will not be published. Currently you have JavaScript disabled. Sometimes it means giving an ultimatum of going for treatment or … Yeah I'm realizing my mistake of going too far with tough love. They fall in love after having to work together on a construction site. Your email address will not be published. A free email course to help you reduce your anxiety. Tough love is a response to the non-response of a loved one to recognize the need for treatment and acceptance that they are ill, mentally ill. I know this all too well as I have been pushed more than once over the years, into situations that I have definitely not been ready for which resulted in several breakdowns. It is about forcing a loved one with little or no insight into facing their situation. Remember their mental illness is not who they are as a person, it’s just something they have and didn’t ask for. Always know that no matter what you struggle with, your mental health does not make you less of a person. Though love is carried out by either withdrawing completely from the addict or stern, harsh treatment. They cut into my deep psychological wounds and make me feel like a project that needs “fixing”. There are many complexities to a persons mental illness, including trauma, years of learned habits and chemical imbalances in the brain. Tough love is an expression that was first introduced to the public by author Bill Milliken in his book, Tough Love, published in 1968. The study was published in the peer-reviewedjournal Parenting: Science and Practice. But it is extremely common for friends or loved ones to want to “call out” the person dealing with addiction and point out all the ways that person is hurting themselves and the people around them. According to SAMHSA, between 2007 and 2012, the number of heroin users has doubled from an … It’s tough love, but it works, he says. 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