How to Cope with Insensitive Comments About Your Mental Health
If you’re struggling with mental health, it’s a given that not everyone will understand. An estimated 59.3 million Americans, or 23.1% of the total population, struggle with mental illness. Yet, the popular perception of mental illness is still rife with stigma, misconception, and beliefs rooted in outdated medical practice. As a result, people can be deeply unkind about mental health problems. While it’s not your responsibility to educate the people around you, you can take steps to ensure that you can cope with their insensitive comments.
Most people will have mental health problems at some point during their lives. Whether that’s temporary depression, grief, anxiety, or a diagnosable mental health disorder doesn’t matter. Mental health problems are something everyone faces, so it’s important to keep that in mind. In addition, you’ll want to accept that dealing with these kinds of comments is hurtful and make space for yourself to process, feel, and recover from those emotions.
Acknowledge and Recover
Insensitive comments are hurtful. That’s true whether or not the person saying them meant anything bad with them. It’s important to give yourself that space.
“They didn’t mean anything bad by it but that still hurt, and I get to feel hurt”
Here, it’s also important to set boundaries on how you get to feel hurt. E.g., taking a few minutes to be sad and to acknowledge that something hurts is good for you. Wallowing for several days and allowing yourself to replay the scene over and over in your head is very bad for you. Acknowledge and recover is a technique where you make 10-60 minutes to go “This made me feel bad, I get to feel that” and then go back to your life. The amount of time you dedicate to it should depend on how badly you’re hurt and how good you are at moving on from things. And, when you go back to life, you probably want to start with something distracting (like doing something with your hands or playing a game) rather than doing nothing or watching TV which would allow you to continue thinking.
Set Boundaries
Boundaries are important for reducing the amount of hurt you feel in the future. For example, if you see someone often, you may want to set boundaries around insensitive comments.
A good boundary politely establishes a line that should not be crossed and then establishes a consequence if that boundary is crossed. Here, it’s important to follow up on consequences.
For example:
- “I am not comfortable with how you talk about my mental health. I find it hurtful. If you keep talking about my mental health when I see you, I will stop seeing you”
- “I’d appreciate if you could treat my mental illness as an illness, if you can’t, I will be engaging with you less”
- “Please be more considerate of me when you make comments, I’m sure you realize that saying that is hurtful. I’m not up for talking to someone who keeps casually hurting me”.
Some people will be very receptive to receiving boundaries and others will not. Unfortunately, there’s very little you can do when people are not but exercise your boundaries and practice the consequence you set. Good consequences include things like:
- Limiting seeing the person
- Reducing contact
- Only seeing the person when you have a safe person present
- Discussing the person’s behavior with your therapist and discussing next steps with them
- Refusing to engage with insensitive comments
You should never set a consequence that you are not willing or able to follow up on or practice. If it comes time to exercise the consequence and you can’t do it, your boundary is manliness. So, boundaries have to be set with care.
Educate Where You Can but Choose Your Battles
Many people are open to education and learning about mental illness. If your close family and loved ones are behaving in an insensitive manner, chances are very high that they don’t want to. You can work with them to offer learning material, books about your mental illness, and to talk to them about what it’s actually like for you. Especially with family, you might find that family members are a lot more receptive and understanding than you’d think, because mental illnesses tend to run in families. You might be surprised to hear things like “oh, like aunt X has” or “I have that sometimes too” or “I struggle with the exact same problems”.
Not everyone is open to education. Try to engage, if you don’t get anywhere or only get resistance, you probably want to stop investing in trying.
Get Professional Support
It’s important to keep in mind that you may want and need professional support dealing with insensitive comments. The worse your mental health, the more likely it is you’ll want to be able to talk to a professional about comments, to work out what the comment actually means for you, and to structure it. For example, if someone says you’re lazy, talking to a professional and working out that your loved one feels invalidated because you don’t do as much work as they do and they don’t feel appreciated can help you to take steps to make your loved one feel more appreciated, fixing the root cause of the issue. Therapy can also be about helping you cope, by giving you a way to place the comment, skills to deal with comments, and next steps you can take to make yourself and your loved ones feel better.
For example, you can work with your therapist to develop a resilience plan. Here, you work to build your support networks, work to identify which people in your life are educatable, know who you can turn to for support and help, and list and reinforce positive coping mechanisms. E.g., talking to your loved one, acknowledging pain, venting emotions by going to the gym versus having a tub of ice cream. Resilience plans vary a lot per person because they have to reflect your actual capabilities – which means you’ll get a plan that specifically fits your social circles, your coping mechanisms, and your skills – alongside plans to build up the skills you don’t yet have. That often means engaging in ongoing learning and ongoing mental health help so you can be resilient enough to deal with emotional upsets.
Getting Help
Most people don’t make insensitive comments out of malice. Instead, they’re likely to be ignorant of issues, to feel insecure or defensive, or even to feel invalidated by how you are being treated versus how they are being treated. The result can feel extremely bad for everyone involved. If you’re not managing that, if you don’t have the resources to talk to your loved ones or to try education, or if you fall apart when you hear this kind of thing, you will need help. In addition, comments are very often based in truth, such as you not being able to handle things – which may be a sign that you do need more help than you’re getting. Talking to a professional, getting insight, and working to improve your ability to manage comments and people in your life is always going to be the right way to go. Good luck.
