Changes to cure situation
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| Sat, 10-09-2004 - 1:23pm |
She is British and we are in the US so to get her into the country we had to agree to enrol her in a mental health institution which would assist getting her medical insurance within the US. She has been under their care ever since, but they have just made the discovery that it was all a medical notes mix up, chinese whispers, gueses etc, and she isn't mentally ill and never has been.
They have asked her to leave, which means she has not met her conditions of immigration and has been deported.
She did visit as a tourist last month and we were terrible to her. I can't really explain, but the whole family felt we needed to verbally attack her and put her in her place (as a mental health patient). Partly this was due to guilt, but mostly it was because we have been told by her therapists to encourage her to believe she is mentally ill as that is part of her treatment - to make her accept and believe she is mentally ill. OK, we now know that is not appropriate, but we have been doing it believeing it teh right thing to do for 6 years now, so now when we meet her, if she does anything which implies she is not accepting being mentally ill we feel a surge of anger and scowl and our frustration builds. We can't avoid it because we have alraedy done it before we are consciously aware we are doing it.
It does not help that now she has entered a niche where all her friends are mentally ill and all her conversation is about therapy. Yhis makes it very hard for us to change because she hasn't. What am I saying! She wasn't mentally ill, so what change should she make to make us feel different about her? See what I mean, the way we think about her is already programmed into us!
There are too many of us to change how we view her now. We never did observe any syptoms, so the absence of symptoms doesn't help us change. Also blood is thicker than water so when this leads to a clash the family naturally side together against her and re-inforce their bad feelings about her. I can't change my whole family, but the good news is she has agreed she will change, agreed to go to any therapy or whatever and change herself.
Please could you suggest any changes we could ask her to make to solve this problem?

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Carrie
They certainly would not accept the stance that it had suddenly swapped and become them that all has the problem, every one of them, and her not.
That is why she is agreeing to change to sort it out because else it is her who suffers.
After 6 yrs of this kind of treatment, it's going to be hard to break the pattern.
Carrie
The problem is that with 6 years of observing no symptoms, and with therapists going on about the importance of making sure she accepts she is mentally ill, I think that in most people's minds the symptom of her illness is DENYING SHE IS MENTLLY ILL.
Last visit there was an incident when we had a dinner party. Someone suggested that she shouldn't overdo the excitement and perhaps she should go for a lie down. She replied that in the UK she is the manager of the IT department of a large government organisation with lots of responsibility and respect, but that in the states she is being treated like there is something subnormal about her. She was firmly gripped by two of the family and removed to her room for the rest of the evening. Later my aunt commented to Nick (my brother), "I see she is getting worse - Is there nothing the doctors can do?".
Can you think of any other way she could set the needed boundaries without inflaming the family. Being sent to her room all the time won't solve it.
And Nick let it happen? She has no support. If I were her, I'd avoid family functions. Is there a way a doctor can tell the family that she's not mentally ill?
Carrie
I am in contact with her doctor, who is very obliging and feels very sorry for her. Nick won't even contact him - probably he thinks it's just "not done", or maybe he is scared her doctor might have something to say to him for letting it reach this stage - who knows.
The question really is what method she could use to establish the necessary boundaries.
Carrie
It is infortunate but this forum is an inappropriate place to post a full blow by blow account of the last six years.
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