Disclosure Series Part 3: Who Should You Tell About Your Mental Illness?
Disclosing your mental illness to another person may be one of the most important decisions of your life. If you pick the right person, you could gain a level of support and understanding that will be a major source of strength for you through the hard times. If you pick the wrong person, it could be very damaging.
Choosing who to tell about your mental illness is a tough decision with lots of implications. In this section of the disclosure series I will try to share some of the things that worked for me when I was faced with the same choice.
Why Are You Disclosing?
Before you choose who you will be telling about your mental illness, it can be helpful to ask yourself why you want to disclose this information to other people. In Part 1 of this series I discussed a few of the reasons why I decided to talk to other people, so it might help you to check that article out. When you are making your decision about who to tell, try to ask yourself some of these kinds of questions: Do you want to tell people in order to gain support? Do you know someone who is struggling with mental illness themselves, and you want to offer them support by sharing your experiences with them? Is your marriage in trouble and you need to come clean with your spouse about what is going on with you? Do you need to speak to a doctor or a therapist because you are worried about your mental health?
In most cases, the reason why you want to disclose will often lead you to the person that you want to tell about your mental illness. In these cases, a lot of your work is done for you. However, in some cases the decision might not be as clear.
It kind of goes without saying that you should be careful about who you choose, but there are some tough questions nonetheless. For example, should you tell your employer and coworkers? If you have children, should you tell them? How do you tell your spouse? Who do you tell first?
“I’ve Got to Talk to Someone!”
In some cases, your frustration with your mental illness can just build to the point where you feel like you’ve got to tell someone or your head will explode. I felt this way during the early days of my recovery from Post-traumatic stress disorder. I had so many thoughts going through my head, and so many questions to ask, that I was desperate to talk to anyone who would understand.
If you find yourself in this situation, it can help to take a breather and try to get your feeling written down. This will help in two ways: 1) it will help you get the emotions out and onto paper so you can think about them a bit more clearly, and 2) it will give you some useful notes that will be very helpful when you do decide who to tell.
When I was in this situation, I spoke to a therapist. It was the logical choice for me. I knew that if I talked to one of my friends or to my family about my PTSD, I would only confuse and scare them because they had no experience dealing with it. I knew that therapists would have the training and expertise to talk to me about my PTSD, so I could talk to them without worrying that it would upset them.
If you are unable to think of someone, even after writing your thoughts down, there are a couple of things that you can try. You could try plugging your thoughts into Google to see if anyone else has had the same struggle. (I got a lot of good information by doing searches like “I need to tell my wife about my depression”) If you are in therapy, you can speak to your therapist and get their opinion on who you should tell. Or, you could simply follow your instincts. Is there someone that you know who just gives you a “good” feeling? If so, think about why they give you that feeling and whether you think you could trust them if you told them about your mental illness.
“I’m Going to Get Fired/Get Divorced/Lose My Friends if I Don’t Say Something”
This is a really scary situation to be in. Sometimes mental illness take up so much of our time and energy that our lives get way out of balance and things start to drop off. It could be your work that suffers, or your marriage, or you friendships, or whatever part of your life that you simply can’t maintain. If the situation gets bad enough, you might eventually find yourself in a situation where you need to tell someone about your mental illness, even though you may not be ready or willing to do so.
First of all, if you find yourself in this type of situation, and you are in therapy, it is best to speak to your therapist as soon as possible, especially if it is for a work or relationship issue. These types of disclosures can be very complex and very tough, so it’s a good idea to have someone who can advise you. If you don’t have a therapist, try to speak to a trusted friend or even to a crisis line.
Even with help, these types of disclosures can be very difficult. I was in a couple of situations where I had to tell someone about my mental illness to avoid some pretty bad consequences, and it’s a scary thing to have to go through. If you find yourself in this kind of situation, the important thing is to take care of yourself, and to carefully prepare what you are going to say. I found that writing things down was a huge help in getting me through these disclosures.
Trust Your Instincts
When you finally do decide who you want to tell, trust your instincts about that person. You will be very nervous about talking to them, but do you feel “good” about telling them about your mental illness? Do you think that they are the type of person who will be understanding? Your instincts are your best guide for situations like this, so if your gut feeling is that you can safely talk to a person, then you are probably right in talking to them.
In Part 4 of this series, How To Tell Someone Else About Your Mental Illness, I will end the disclosure series by discussing some of the issues around telling another person about your mental illness.
Anxiety Depression Life Mental Health Relationships
iamscared responds:
Posted: March 29th, 2007 at 3:53 pm →
Thank you for all of this. I can’t tell you how much I admire the bravery that lies in your personal disclosures on this site.
Sara responds:
Posted: April 30th, 2008 at 5:33 am →
For some reason, when I was googling this topic like crazy, this site never came up. Thanks for writing it, though. The article on examining your reasons is especially good. I did tell eventually - I sort of had to, but was looking for guidelines back then.
Robert responds:
Posted: October 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am →
This last July I married a woman who did not fully disclose her mental diagnosis to me before the wedding. We had dated for a year and a half and I was very much in love with this person. However, the stress of the wedding triggered her symptoms and she snapped. Even worse, she blamed everyone (including me) but herself for ruining HER wedding. Over the next couple of weeks she continued to be verbally abusive toward me and my family. Finally, she explained her history of mental illness. After that I thought perhaps things would settle down. Her erratic behavior and abuse continued and three weeks after getting married I found myself asking for a divorce. I can’t even begin to describe the emotional pain that she put me through. That’s why I believe that full disclosure is very important. First of all, I deserved to know. Second, had I known, perhaps we would have done things differently. Maybe we would have waited another year to get married or we would have hired a wedding planner. Maybe we wouldn’t have gotten married at all. I honestly can’t say. Nevertheless, I deserved to know. She may have been scared to tell me. I understand that. But not telling me caused me and my family an extreme amount of pain.