Tag: Relationships

SIGNS OF A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP

Published on by Aimee EddyLeave a comment

For most of my childhood and into my adult years, I didn’t know what a healthy friendship was. As a child I had friends turn against me or hurt me. In my adult years I chose people I thought were good friends, only to get hurt by them. When I started dating as an adult, I got myself into bad relationships. For the longest time I didn’t know what a healthy relationship was. I found myself being hurt, taken advantage of. and abused.

It wasn’t until I started to work towards recovery from mental illness that I learned through therapy what a healthy relationship is. That’s when I started cutting unhealthy relationships from my life. I ended friendships that were toxic and started working on building healthy relationships.

Sometimes while struggling with mental illness, you feel so bad about yourself that you can’t see the signs of a toxic relationship, or you think that you deserve how you are being treated. No one deserves to be treated badly. We all deserve to be in healthy relationships. You might ask how I know what a healthy relationship is? Below is a list of signs of a healthy relationship.

  • You have good communication. A healthy relationship cannot survive without good communication. You need to be able to talk to each other about important things, feelings, and much more.
  • You lift each other up. You support each other and you give each other strength. When one of you is down, you lift the other one up and so forth. If your partner cares for you, he or she will lift you up and make you feel good about yourself.
  • You respect each other. You value each other and care about one another’s wants and needs. You treat each other with consideration, and you recognize each other’s worth. You show kindness and compassion.
  • You are there during good and bad times. In a good relationship, you are there for each other during happy times and bad times. You take care of one another when you’re sick and celebrate the good times together. A good partner will take care of you after surgery, when you have the flu, when you lose a loved one, and you will do the same for him or her.
  • You listen to each other. In a good relationship your partner is willing to listen to you when you need someone to confide in or have something important to say. Your partner wants to hear about your bad days and good days. He or she is willing to let you vent when you need to. He or she doesn’t ignore you or cut you off when you are talking. The person cares about you enough to want to hear what you have to say.
  • You take care of each other. In a good relationship your partner should take care of you as much as you take care of him or her. It’s not a one-way street. One person doesn’t do all the work in a good relationship. You care for one another’s needs.
  • You respect each other’s boundaries. Everyone has boundaries and the person you care about should respect those boundaries. If you need time alone, then your partner should respect that. If you can’t handle something emotionally and you need to step back, that should be respected.
  • You support each other. If your partner starts a new job, be supportive. Your partner should be encouraging, helpful, and available when you are emotional. He or she celebrates your success with you and helps you out when things become too much. You do the same for your partner.
  • You care for each other. Your partner should show you how much he or she cares about you and your needs doing little things to show care like hugs, compliments, saying “I love you,” and helping you without you asking.

It wasn’t until I met my husband that I learned what a good relationship is. On our first date he promised to treat me like a woman, take care of me, and respect me. This promise convinced me to go on another date with him, and after twenty years together and almost eighteen years of marriage he is keeping that promise. He showed me what a healthy relationship is supposed to be, and he is the first man who ever treated me like a beautiful woman. I also now have healthy relationships with my friends.

Use these signs of a good relationship to guide you in friendships, boyfriends or girlfriends relationships, and marriages. If your relationship doesn’t have any signs of a good relationship, consider talking to your partner to work towards fixing your relationship. Therapy helps not only marriages, but all types of relationships. Consider it. If you find your partner is unwilling to fix your relationship, then walk away if you need to.

I walked away from a friendship that became too much for me. I got well and she didn’t. Our relationship risked my mental well=being. Now years later, she’s doing better, and we are talking again. We are slowly getting to know each other and rebuilding our friendship.

I now have many healthy relationships, and this helps me bathe in the light of recovery.

THE LITTLE THINGS

Published on by Aimee Eddy2 Comments

God looks down on us and sees we are struggling or need guidance. He provides for us through little things and thoughts in our minds. It’s easy to miss these little things while we are struggling. When mental illness clouds our minds, it is simple to blame God and to hate him for what we are going through. We may lose our faith and miss the little things God’s doing to take care of us.

When I was at my worst, I stopped going to church and I lost my faith in God. In spite of this, he gave me a wonderful mom who went to great extents to find me help. He gave me a therapist who helped me reach recovery long enough to live a life I didn’t get to as a teen and to graduate from college. When I moved in with an abusive boyfriend and hit rock bottom of my illness, God gave me a friend to support me and save my life.

When I had turned away from God, he gave me a special friend to invite me to her church and a Bible study she led. In time she sat with me in a sanctuary, and we prayed together asking God to come into my life. I had traveled miles away from home to a writing conference to meet her and find out she lived in my area. God works in mysterious ways.

When I was living with my ex-boyfriend, he took in a stray dog named Daisy. I didn’t want anything to do with Daisy, but she was determined to win me over. She nudged my hand until I pet her. When I went to bed at night, she slept right beside me and when I felt like giving up, she cuddled with me. God gave her to me to get through the abuse and the illness that I struggled with. From that time on, every dog I have ever gotten I’ve heard a voice inside my mind say, “That dog is the one for you.” Each one of my dogs provided comfort to me through different stages of my illness. I know that God is the one who led me to each of the fur babies I had throughout the years.

When I had given up on men and dating, God gave me a friend to set me up on a date and other friends to encourage me to go on that date. That guy turned out to be the love of my life. He is my husband and my everything. He encourages me, he supports me, he takes care of me, and he gets me through the hard times. I have never had a man treat me as good as he does, and he knows how to handle my bad days. He is the reason I’m in recovery. He is truly from God.

When I was working on publishing my book, God gave me two fellow authors who are also editors to edit my manuscript for free. He gave me another author to create my cover. Step by step God led me through writing my book and publishing it. He gave me a wonderful husband to comfort me when I cried after reliving the emotions of the past and to encourage me when I felt like giving up. God wanted me to tell my story. God has given me the strength to speak at many events to spread the awareness about bullying and how it can bring on mental illness.

When I was going through breast cancer and grieving after a bilateral mastectomy, I met Alexander Kovarovic through a Facebook support group, and he asked me to be part of his nonprofit. Five years later I am his assistant overseeing Advocacy and Education for his nonprofit One Life Project. God put him in my life so I can help young people with mental illness and hopefully prevent youth and young adults from suffering like I did.

Saturday, I got out of work at 2:30 PM. My husband and I went for a ride and stopped at a secondhand store. I walked past this rack of puppets and then I turned around, walked back over to them and I looked them over. Then I walked away. A voice inside me, God’s voice ,told me to buy one. I looked at my husband and said, “I think I should get one of those puppets.” He encouraged me to buy one, so I did. Then a name came to me, “Lucy.” My puppet’s name is Lucy. I know God was talking to me.

I will practice making her talk without moving my lips. I plan to use Lucy to talk to young children about bullying. I handed out my information to Girl Scout and Brownie leaders selling cookies at my store. Hopefully one will call or email me so Lucy and I can tell our story. We have a lot to tell young kids about how bad and hurtful bullying is. I know God will provide me the opportunity to do this.

Look for the small God things in your life. He is helping you through rough times without you even knowing it. Open your eyes to the tools and people he is providing you to get through your mental illness. You might think he is punishing you, but he’s not. He’s carrying you and taking care of you. Think about the things and people in your life that are helping you through this struggle. They are not there by coincidence. God is providing them for you.

God gave me special people and tools to guide me to and to keep me in recovery. God is walking beside me in the light of recovery.

TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS AND MENTAL ILLNESS

Published on by Aimee EddyLeave a comment

Getting into toxic relationships can happen to anyone. Sometimes we must go through bad relationships before we find good ones. Some people are more prone to unhealthy relationships than others. Many who have mental illness fall prey to toxic people. These people see the weakness in those struggling and take advantage of that. Those who are struggling find themselves unable to fight back and only sink deeper down the hole.

When I was in high school, I had a friend with an overprotective and in some ways an abusive mother. It took a while before her mother would even let her come over to my house. The friend and I became very close. I was sinking into depression, and she seemed to understand what I was going through. Then my senior year my cousin was killed in a car accident, and I fell into the deepest part of my hole. After I graduated, I moved forty-five minutes away to my grandparents to go to college. I continued to write to my friend and visit her on weekends. The deeper I fell down the hole, the more abusive she became. She played games with my sick mind and abused me in other ways.

I didn’t have many friends growing up and those I did have either moved away or turned on me. I was confused on what a healthy friendship was, and I was too sick to decipher what was wrong or right. I held on to her tightly even though she kept hurting me and it only made me sicker. I became suicidal, I had anxiety attacks that made me sick every day, I couldn’t sleep, and I began to cut and burn myself. I had hit rock bottom. The abuse continued until she moved away to college.

Years after I graduated from college, I was set up on a date. I thought I was in love. I moved in with him and planned to marry him. At first it was great, but slowly his kindness turned to abuse. I couldn’t use certain pans because I might ruin them, my cooking was no good, I was a failure because I was unable to go on to a four-year college, and so on. The verbal abuse worsened and then came physical and sexual abuse. He told everyone how well he took care of me and how awful I was to him. He went to therapy with me and told my therapist how I abused him, and I got lectured. I couldn’t see what he was doing to me. I was falling apart. My illness continued to worsen.

After he kicked me out, I ended up in a mental health hospital. It wasn’t until I started to work towards recovery that I realized what he had done to me and that he preyed on people who were weaker. He used my mental illness to get pats on the back for taking care of me.

Later, the abuse I went through with my friend and ex-boyfriend led to PTSD. I had nightmares of what happened to me. For a long time I was uncomfortable with hugs from other women because it sent me back to the abuse I received from my friend. I struggled for years trying to understand what happened to me. I’m not sure if my friend did it because of her mother or because she saw her chance to take advantage of someone weaker. For a long time I thought it was my fault, because I let it happen. I was too sick to fight back, and I allowed myself to be abused. I had to work through that in therapy.

After my ex-boyfriend, I swore off men. I moved back home with my parents and planned to live with them for the rest of my life. How could I ever trust another man again? I lost a lot of friends because of my ex and I lost myself. I had to work on it in therapy. Even when I met my husband, I was afraid to trust him, but it became impossible to deny that I was falling in love with him.

No one deserves to be in a toxic relationship. No one deserves to be abused. If you’re in a bad relationship, walk away. Look for the signs of a bad relationship such as physical harm, verbal insults, controlling behaviors, being forced into uncomfortable situations, refusing to let you be around friends and family, and forced sex. You are important and you deserve to be treated with love, respect, and kindness.

I am now in a very healthy relationship with my husband. I have some very good friends who treat me with kindness and respect. Because I am in healthy relationships, I stand in the light of recovery with happiness in my heart.