The High Cost of Ignoring Your Mental Health, And My Huge Regret

Ignoring your mental health is one of the most dangerous gambits anyone can make. Here’s my personal plea to take any warning signs super seriously.

Note: Trigger warning for self-harm. Reader discretion advised.

In the previous week, another celebrity tragically passed away who isn’t much older than me. Michelle Trachtenberg passed away under undetermined circumstances. I remember watching her in the Nickelodeon classic Harriet The Spy which I thought was such a great movie.

Whilst the cause of her death is unknown and could possibly have been attributed to some liver issues she had, a photo posted of the young lady before her tragic demise had her fanbase expressing great concern, as her appearance appeared completely changed.

Similar concerns have been raised before for many former child stars such as Amanda Bynes and Brittney Spears, and it’s amazing how many comments get thrown their way. How many celebrities and well known people have we seen display a number of concerning signs before having it confirmed the next day that they’ve done something to themselves under the influence of a dark mental health condition? May nothing befall the people mentioned, and may we remember those we’ve lost.

But I wonder how many of us are aware of the potential signs of mental distress in our own lives. Or are we like so many others for whom the signs start but they are acted on too late – or perhaps not at all.

As someone who’s struggled with anxiety and depression in my life, I can relate to anyone who’s been in that boat before, or is currently there right now. Having so many great things in your life and some days struggling to enjoy them or see the light can be extremely disheartening. Seeing someone who I “grew up with” in Michelle got me thinking along this path for the past week.

But the good news is that not all is lost. Mental health issues are extremely treatable, and I’m happy to report that I’ve been living outside of that cloud for several years now. More in 6 Things That Helped Me Get Through Depression And Anxiety and Days In The Sun – 2017 In Review

But there are some events that have happened in the last few years that have triggered me to revisit this area of my life and ensure I stay healthy and strong, especially as a husband and a father, and someone who serves in the community to lift others up.

After having seen so many other people in my life struggle with mental health issues, from family to friends to colleagues to acquaintances, all for a variety of reasons, I would like to charge you today that the cost of ignoring your mental health is way too high, and often it isn’t just you who pays for it, but it is also everyone around you.

I’ve seen too many I’ve known take their lives. I was doing a Facebook cleanup a while ago and I was reminded of the lives that I’ve known that are no longer with us for this very reason.

I’ve seen too many people I’ve known destroy their marriages and ruin their friendships by staying stuck. Long term relationships can be a challenge of their own, but as Dr Gary Chapman points out, sustained and untreated depression is one of the most destructive forces in the bonds between two people.

I’ve seen too many people I’ve known parentify their children, or become negligent and incapable in their role as a provider. Mum or dad (or both) are stuck, and the kids are inevitably impacted.

And every other combination that you’ve probably experienced yourself.

If you haven’t been sure if you’re in that boat or if your symptoms are serious, the fact you’re even thinking about it is cause of concern and absolutely necessary to follow up. Here are some thoughts from my own experiences and some paths forward so that you don’t have to stay ignoring your mental health – you can find answers and make positive changes today before they destroy your life or the people around you.

The problem is not your quality

When I was really in the thick of depression and was crying so much I was using eye drops every day (for real), I was really comforted by an analogy from Dr Henry Cloud when he was talking to Joyce Meyer.

He said that if you have a car like a Ferrari that can drive super fast and works really well, and then the car crashes into the tree, you don’t start being harsh and blaming the car for not being strong enough to survive a crash. You would take it to a mechanic to get it fixed, because the crash has put an unnatural pressure on the car that it would not have otherwise had to deal with.

And you and I are no different.

A lot of us feel like we need to be the strong one. It’s a form of weakness in our mind if anything needs fixing up and we need to pause a little while while that happens. We feel like if it’s really a Ferrari, it should still be able to keep driving after the crash. There can’t be any engine damage or flat tyres – we need to keep going unphased, and it’s our fault if we can’t.

But it’s not weak. It’s practical and real.

If you break your leg, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you rehab it. If your car crashes, you take it to the mechanic, you pay the money, they put in the effort to fix it, you take due care once you get it back. If your house is affected by a weather event, you assess the damage, you find out what needs fixing, you get to work and get the help you need.

In all of those situations, if you ignore it, if you don’t treat it, it gets worse. Imagine living in a house with someone who breaks their leg and doesn’t get it treated, doesn’t look after it, and yells at everyone else. It’d be like a nightmare version of that old Rugrats episode where Angelica has all the adults working as her slaves.

But if you clicked on this one, maybe you don’t need to imagine that scenario, because you see it play out in the space of the mind, where someone ignoring treatment demands everyone else to conform.

Your mind and your soul should receive the same treatment and practical thought as you give to anything else that goes through a traumatic event and is need of repair.

If you’re ignoring your mental health, or someone you know is, I hope you can reason with yourself that it is normal and necessary to get the repairs you need, and not weakness to do so.

Turn the lights on and be honest

You may have clicked on this link noting I mentioned one of my biggest regrets in life. I really try not to live with any regrets or items of remorse in my life, but in this area I do have one. As I was gearing up to write a topic like this, I knew I’d have to bring it up, and it’s been a rough time remembering that I’ve felt this way.

Well, here it is.

One of the biggest impacts on my mental health was actually the mental health of a few other people in my life.

I believe I was actually quite forthcoming about times when I’ve been unwell or not doing well mentally myself.

But I was so quiet and even lied to people about the mental health of these other people who were close to me when people would ask if I knew how they were doing, and I was also not upfront enough about devastating the impact was on me.

“Oh they’re okay, just down with a cold today”. “Oh yeah, they couldn’t make it”. “Ah they’re doing okay I guess”.

And the reason I did this, was because I was explicitly asked to lie about it. They told me not to be open about what was really happening, about any mental health diagnoses, about what life was really like in their home. They would tell me “if anyone asks, just say we’ve got a cold or something”. The few times that I did mention something more would result in people locking themselves in their rooms for several hours and blaming me for how they felt or the phone call they received from a concerned friend, which conditioned me to avoid saying anything.

And I did that for way too long, at great personal cost. Years and years and years.

I was open when I wasn’t doing well with things, but the source of much of my sorrow and, well, trauma to be frank, was that I felt like I couldn’t shine a light on this. I had to protect these people and their reputation and the status quo all the while suffering trying to maintain active relationship while they would dump all their problems on me, constantly berate me, and expect me to be one of their only supports in life all the while they had pushed every other friend and family member they had away.

And then, I did tell some people. And a few more. Not a gossip, rumour mill, guess how evil they are thing. But a straightforward, hey, did you know these people have this ongoing condition that isn’t being treated well, they’re ignoring the advice they have received from their counsellors, I feel really overwhelmed with what they’re expecting from me, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of things to try to prop them up.

And hey, please stop asking me about it, I’m bent beyond capacity trying to deal with it, please feel free to talk to them directly.

I actually thought and believed and carried that if I couldn’t help bring joy into their lives, they were going to die or do something stupid. This is something I resonate heavily with in one of my favourite movies, Something Borrowed. That I was one of the only people left in their lives trying to keep them going. One of them was on suicide watch at the hospital for quite some time which really helped them, but that’s the extent to how bad it could get.

I was thrown against a wall in their house for going to open the door to a friend who had seen they were home and come to see them, I regularly had doors slammed in my face when trying to suggest hey let’s do what the counsellor said or hey don’t miss your appointment with them it’s important, and even saw a knife and holes punched in walls when behaviour was challenged. It was bad, friends. If you’ve been there, I get it. It was so bad that I really really believed I was one of the only things standing between them and the end of their lives.

They needed help, and they weren’t getting it. And I couldn’t deal.

Shining a more honest and open light on how things really were was when true freedom could begin for me. When I could stop carrying the weight of how dark and untreated and exacerbated and constantly flaring the mental health issues of those close to me truly were, I was able to untangle myself and start to breathe again.

This was a pretty rough thing for me to remember over the last few days, just how sorrowful I feel and have felt about how I wish I had told more of their closer friends and people who were much older and wiser than me when they asked, while there was still an opportunity to do so and before the relationships had been severed or destroyed over time and distance.

In truth there was a set of flairs with these people before and after both of my kids were born, and I had to make some really big decisions for the welfare of myself and my family. I sought some extra professional help and did a few extra months of counselling to guide me through it and to ensure I could stay strong for myself and for my family.

My wife is a super wise and supportive person and reminded me that it may not have made a difference to them or their own health or recovery if they had more of their respected friends reaching out to them in a more direct and targeted way. When people choose to pull away from everyone else, to hide their problems, and to chastise anyone who tries to suggest a path to healing is possible, there’s not much any of us can really do except submit to their choices for their own lives.

I would recommend giving The Bridge by Rabbi Edwin Friedman a read. This resonated so heavily with my experience and helped me to release people to the consequences of their choices, no matter who they want to blame for them.

But it certainly may have helped me earlier to have a more open reality check with more people who could have helped me make better decisions rather than keeping my boundaries low, my self sacrifice high, and my neglect of my own wellbeing a non-issue.

I wish that the people who said at the time they cared so much for those people as I do had all the information to have made a decision that could helped us all out a great deal.

Or maybe not. Maybe no one else could have possibly reached them even with all the facts. But I regret not trying enough at the time, and I regret lying to others to save face instead of save us all. And I certainly regret waiting until I was 28 before I started looking after myself properly in this set of relationships.

Now I don’t think we should be shouting from the rooftops and telling absolutely everyone about every negative thing that happens in our lives, especially when other people are involved. But the right people, in the right forum, in the right way. Mental illness isn’t an excuse for cruelty or destruction.

Truth be told, a lot of mental health challenges people face are passed on or triggered by mental health issues in others. Stanford reports that children and even siblings of those with extenuating depression are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop it in their own life, at 4 to 5 times the rate of those who wouldn’t otherwise.

Sharon Martin joins thousands of psychologists who research this area and writes about the well established and well researched roles that every family member plays in dysfunctional family dynamics that result in one or a few people carrying the primary issue, and all the other family members suppressing or repressing themselves in order to cope.

Bernasco et al write about the profound detrimental and destructive impacts untreated depression have on close friendships. I’ve already mentioned that the research is clear on impacts to marriages and long term romantic relationships. The same for work relationships and whatever other dynamic you find yourself challenged with.

And you know what – there’s a strong chance the people in your life who may also be in the same boat have someone else in their lives who hasn’t dealt with their mental health issues properly either. And so the cycle continues.

Or maybe it ran in your family and your friendships and your community… until it ran into you. And you’re going to make the difference.

If you, your family, your siblings, your cousins, your spouse, your kids, your boss, whoever is in your life, is spiralling, and you feel yourself drowning in forces you haven’t got the strength to resist or pop up, put your hand up, call for help, tell the lifeguard what’s happening, and make sure you don’t drown.

You can’t control others. You can only control you. And it isn’t a bad thing to raise your hand and say, “Hey, I’m drowning in my own despair, or the despair of someone else close to me”.

Turn the light on. You matter. You! matter. It’s important to put others first when you can, but if we disappear completely, we can’t help anyone.

Stop feeding the enablers

One of my most contentious posts on this site is Why Timon and Pumbaa Are The True Villains Of The Lion King. All the Disney fans hate me going after a beloved franchise and two really entertaining characters.

But the truth is that Simba could not have avoided his responsibilities as king without Timon and Pumbaa. He needed a Nala and a Rafiki to come back into his life and remind him who he was and what he was meant to do. To help him be who he was meant to be, rather than enabling him to spin his wheels being a lion who ate bugs in the middle of nowhere, disconnected from everyone else.

We all have Timon and Pumbaas in our life. We may even be someone else’s Timon and Pumbaa – keeping them where they are, helping them stay there, doing everything we can to preserve and continue a toxic status quo.

Did you know that 100% of drug addicts or alcohol addicts have an enabler? That their toxic behaviour would not be possible without someone paying the bill, covering for their outbursts, cleaning up their mess, and letting them do it again and again without recourse?

Did you know that in dysfunctional family roles, there’s always at least one of those as well? In marriages that drown out, in businesses where work conditions cause people to self implode, wherever it may be – there’s a dysfunction occurring, and there’s one or more people empowering it to happen, and to keep happening.

Ignoring your mental health usually means you’ve got people who are helping you do so as well. As Dr Henry Cloud says, enablers protect people from the consequences they need in order to actually change. Whether you’re a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, a whatever – if you rescue someone from the consequences of their neglect every time, they have a free pass to continue to do it, and they never feel the real weight of their actions and their need to change.

As Lysa TerKeurst points out, if someone has proven consistently they aren’t going to change behaviour, you are well within your right and necessity to alter the level of access they have to your heart. More in What Guarding Your Heart Really Means

We all need to take stock of who’s in our lives, and ask – am I enabling someone else’s bad behaviour? Am I allowing other people to enable mine? Should I allow this to keep happening?

We don’t do anything about it and we enable others because of a fear of rejection. That if I challenge this person, I’m going to lose something that I need or want. And so people choose between the known dysfunction and the unknown future.

In truth, this usually speaks to a lack of support overall. That one or a few people have become too much of a dependent source for you. Psychologists call this co-dependency and enmeshment, where you can’t see the difference between where you start and the other person ends. That there is a system in place where complete control rests with one person and not the other, and there is an inability to decouple and have your own life.

We are supposed to support and be there for each other, but when one or a few people become “everything we need”, danger is never far away.

Review who you have in your life. There’s probably more people ready and willing to support you than you think.

And what if it’s me who is taking advantage of enablers in my life? I guess a simple question to answer is this – do you have anyone in your life who can tell you when you’re wrong? If not, you’re probably driven by enablers.

Allow other people to feel the consequences they have created for themselves. That can look like a whole bunch of different things. Sometimes it means having conversations with them for a shorter period of time. Maybe it means certain topics you can no longer discuss together. Maybe it means mediation with a third party – I’ve done this a few times. Or maybe it means something more dramatic, and you need what Henry Cloud refers to as a necessary ending.

And if it’s you feeling the consequences, then let them do their work. Sometimes we’re not going to make the changes we need unless it’s painful enough. Sowing and reaping, my friend. It’s great when you’re investing the right things, but it should be taken as a lesson to change if we’re producing the wrong things.

Find a professional you can trust and know the roles of your support network

One of the quickest and most necessary steps you can take to stop ignoring your mental health is to seek professional help. The same way you need to seek specialised and continued help for a smashed car, a broken bone, or any other problem, your mental health is the same.

I’ve already mentioned I’ve done this a few times in my life – 2014 for several months, 2016 and 2017 for several months, 2021 and 2024 for a few months. I’ll no doubt jump at it again should I need the extra help in the future with no shame. So if you’re feeling a bit worried about it, hey, you know of at least one other person who’s proudly gone and gotten help.

In Australia where I live you can take a quick test that accurately assesses the level of depression or anxiety or perhaps another condition you may be having, and there is funding available to give you a number of sponsored counselling sessions. I don’t know about every other country but fortunately there are many support structures and frameworks to help you when you’re doing it tough.

Friends are good, wives are good, husbands are good, families are good, churches are good, support groups are good – I’m grateful for all of these.

But your spouse isn’t a therapist. Your parents aren’t your counsellors. Your children especially are looking to you for your guidance and support – don’t pin an unfair expectation on someone dramatically younger than you to carry you, when you should be carrying them. Your friend isn’t equipped on their own to carry the full weight of your despair or chemical imbalance or constant outbursts or anger flares. Your colleagues doing R U OK Day are great but you’re not going to find freedom in a 7 minute conversation by the microwave, and it’s an unrealistic expectation to believe so.

But they can help. They can all help. And you need a village around you. And the village also needs you to be a part of it.

They can’t be your therapist, but hey, if you’re nervous or unsure, maybe you can ask them to take you to one or go with you, or to find one that’s relevant for what you’re facing.

In that village, you also need to seek specialists and proven experts to guide you through, to get you the medicine you might need, to put you on that treatment or that hospital stay or that long term watch that you need to recover and come out stronger.

Just as you can’t carry the full weight of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, NPD, Alzheimer’s, pre or postnatal depression, whatever it might be, on your own – the people around you can’t either.

And they don’t have to. The ball is in your court.

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Ignoring your mental health is absolutely perilous. I’ve seen and known too many other people and have personally been too affected when it happens.

Wherever you go, there you are. You bring the sum total of your life with you everywhere you go. And if you’re not all there, if you’re not who you know you can be, if you’re feeling like that sadness has been staying too long, if you’ve lost the ability to enjoy the things in front of you – get help, or encourage those people to do the same.

There are many professional services that are available to get you started if you’re unsure. Lifeline is a great starting point in Australia, and I’m sure your country or region has just as many great options for you to make your journey towards health and wholeness.

Don’t feel ashamed. You don’t have to. We all struggle. We all do it tough. And sometimes we get stretched beyond our measure, and we snap. Get the help you need to be put back together.

How about you? What are your tips to avoid ignoring your mental health and finding wholeness?