🍽️ What it means to have grown up with a parent struggling with severe mental illness
Growing up with a parent who had severe mental illness meant you became an emotional detective, constantly reading the room and adjusting yourself to navigate their unpredictable inner world.
You may have learned that your parent's mental health struggles became the center of your family's universe, with their mood swings and crises dictating the emotional climate of your home. You might have developed an extraordinary ability to sense when trouble was brewing, becoming hypervigilant to micro-expressions and tone changes that signaled an incoming storm. Your childhood may have involved walking on eggshells, suppressing your own emotions to avoid triggering their episodes, and taking on responsibilities far beyond your years.
You likely became an emotional sponge, absorbing everyone's feelings around you while losing touch with your own needs and boundaries. Your survival may have depended on being the family's emotional fire extinguisher—always ready to put out the next crisis before it consumed everything. This extraordinary emotional intelligence came at the cost of learning that your own feelings were secondary, that stability was temporary, and that love often meant becoming someone else's emotional support system rather than receiving care yourself.