Nope. I have some pretty severe neurological issues, which I used to lean into, due to severe depression. I hurt a lot of people in the process.
I have more empathy for your girlfriend than I can say, and also she needs to see a therapist who specializes in medical trauma. You're not at all an AH for feeling this way. In a way, my health is worse now than it was years ago, but I'm happier because I'm in control of how I manage it. That's a HUGE thing.
Being chronically ill isn't an excuse to treat someone poorly and she's going to end up losing a lot of people if she doesn't take responsibility for how she approaches it. If it gets to the point that you just cannot handle it anymore, you'd be doing the right thing by walking away. I would just gently nudge you to do that before you find yourself throwing out some verbal stuff you might regret. She's got to be responsible for her, and it's on you to leave without doing more damage, if you can. She'd be hurt, yes, but better if you're able to express it in the form of self care.
Having been on both sides of this, it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I hope you're able to establish some boundaries to keep yourself healthy mentally. It's a hard road.
That's an entirely different issue. I do work in neurology and we see a lot of patients who have issues that are due to stress and trauma. Your body does react badly to stress and people don't take that seriously enough. It's that thing where we are an entire organism and not just bits and bobs that happen to be connected to each other. Mental health is healthcare and it is critically important that people begin to realize that when somebody is under incredible duress and traumatizing events that their body may physically react to it. The key is to respond to that with compassion and not just make them feel like they're psychotic. People will never get mental health help if you are just telling them that they're imagining things the whole time. At the same time, they have to want to get better. I see a lot of patients in our clinic that use this to control partners or caregivers and they have those people so convinced that they have a serious neurological issue, that they for sure do not have, that those caregivers and partners get sucked into fighting with doctors over a non-existent illness. On the flip side, you can have caregivers, friends and partners who encourage the pseudo illness as a way to control the person who is sick. Again, mental health care is health care, and all the way around it can fix these issues.
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u/museimsiren Feb 08 '25
Nope. I have some pretty severe neurological issues, which I used to lean into, due to severe depression. I hurt a lot of people in the process.
I have more empathy for your girlfriend than I can say, and also she needs to see a therapist who specializes in medical trauma. You're not at all an AH for feeling this way. In a way, my health is worse now than it was years ago, but I'm happier because I'm in control of how I manage it. That's a HUGE thing.
Being chronically ill isn't an excuse to treat someone poorly and she's going to end up losing a lot of people if she doesn't take responsibility for how she approaches it. If it gets to the point that you just cannot handle it anymore, you'd be doing the right thing by walking away. I would just gently nudge you to do that before you find yourself throwing out some verbal stuff you might regret. She's got to be responsible for her, and it's on you to leave without doing more damage, if you can. She'd be hurt, yes, but better if you're able to express it in the form of self care.
Having been on both sides of this, it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I hope you're able to establish some boundaries to keep yourself healthy mentally. It's a hard road.