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Many people view resilience as strength and toughness, the ability to fight through and endure whatever challenge and adversity stands in their way. I used to think that I was resilient. I overcame a less than ideal childhood and graduated with a university degree. I had a high-stress job with loads of responsibility. I had two kids at home, one of whom has severe developmental disabilities. My spouse was a cancer survivor. Nothing phased me, I was an unstoppable force, and my resilience would get me through whatever challenge came my way.
Then mental illness struck my youngest daughter and my world changed. In what seemed like an instant the unstoppable force that was my resilience was crushed under the weight of a medical system that seemed incapable of helping, a legal system that erected roadblocks at every turn and an illness that I did not understand and could not fix. Life became a blur of hospitalizations, differing psychiatric opinions, treatment centers, police, lawyers and social workers. The more I fought the system, the more the “unstoppable force” pushed and pulled, the tighter the constrictor knot became.
It didn’t matter how hard I tried, my daughter’s mental illness continued to get worse, and I became an emotional and physical wreck. I was angry or sad all the time, I punched walls at the office, I experienced road rage, felt waves of uncontrolled sadness and despair and I couldn’t see a path forward. I was fighting against a situation and a system that seemed determined to squeeze every ounce of happiness and strength out of my increasingly weary mind and body.
Then, after joining a group designed to provide mental health caregivers with coping skills, I changed my approach. I stopped trying to fight the system, stopped trying to fight my daughter’s mental illness and the constrictor knot that was slowly killing me loosened. I accepted the things that I couldn’t change and focused on making myself better. It turns out that in physics, resilience is a material’s ability to absorb energy and return to its original shape. Instead of trying to bulldoze my way through the chaos, I worked on trying to return my physical and mental health to a more natural state.
When I stopped fighting her illness, stopped trying to “fix her” and stopped trying to fight the system my life got better. My relationship with my spouse has never been stronger and my relationship with my daughter got better. There is less chaos, not because she is cured, or because they have found the magic pill, or because she has accepted treatment – none of those things are true. The difference is that my wife and I are mentally and physically stronger and as a result we can deal with my daughter’s ups and downs more effectively, we can create that safe space for her and the chaos is all but gone.
Things still aren’t perfect and until she reaches a point where she truly accepts professional help and does the difficult work in counselling that she needs to do they probably never will be, but things are better. They are less chaotic, less out of control and when I think back to where I was and where she was headed a few short years ago I’ll take it.