I was diagnosed as being bipolar when I was 20. My parents thought of me as being lazy on days when I couldn’t get myself out of bed. They would yell at me and attempt to punish me in some form. I tried to kill myself 3 times and they yelled at me in an emergency room that there is nothing wrong with me. I needed to grow up and stop begging for attention.
Fast forward 8 years.
I have myself under control and work hard to make myself the best bipolar me I can be. My older sister who has two children starts to show signs of mania.
Shopping, drugs, sex, etc… while having two children in her home. My parents pitied her because she was a single mom. They repeated took her children for the weekend allowing her to indulge in her manic behaviour. They said “oh poor _________, she needs to get help and straighten herself out.”
It makes me hate my parents when they talk about mental illness now. They seemed to have found empathy for her right away when it took years of me suffering to make them support me. They support me now, but it hurts very deeply to think about my dark days and see very plainly,they were not there for me.
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I have a friend who has sort of a similar problem. He’s the “good son” in his family and his siblings are huge fuck-ups, but they get showered with aid and support from their parents. He gets yelled at if he isn’t fully self-sufficient.
It’s not fair. But your parents are just people, flawed like all of us are. Therapy? Therapy.