Dating someone with mental illness

24-Sep-2020 15:28

The first step when dating someone with a mental illness is recognizing the mental illness.There are many types of mental illnesses including anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and psychotic disorders.This process can only be done with trial and error and can be very trying.You must keep reminding yourself that they do have a mental illness and that once you learn them better you will be able to work through it with them.All of us believe things that aren’t real, but people with a psychotic disorder take those beliefs to the extremes, and often become very anxious as a result of their beliefs.Psychotic disorders cannot be cured unless they were lead on by certain stimulus such as drugs and in return go away when the drugs are out of their system.Psychotic disorders can be treated and a person can learn to reality test their delusions and hallucinations in order to recognize their symptoms and cope with them.When someone with one these disorders has an episode and becomes symptomatic they may experience other mental issues such as anger, depression, anxiety, mania, antisocial behavior, and addiction.

Be patient with them, and remind yourself that they do have a mental illness and they do not mean everything that they say.

Okay, now that I’ve briefly explained mental illness, the next step to dating someone with a mental illness is understanding them as an individual.

Learning about them, their individual triggers, symptoms, and how to help them to cope best with their symptoms can be a very difficult but also rewarding.

From experience I’ve learned that the people that they lash out on are the people they feel the most comfortable with and care about the most, so don’t take it personal and don’t lash back.

Just as they need someone to talk to in order to cope, you also need to cope.

When I set out to write this article I wanted my topic to be, “Dating Someone with Bipolar Disorder”, but the fact is that it wouldn’t be all that accurate.