I remembered an important lesson yesterday. I was contacted by an individual who shall of course remain nameless. This individual, it is believed, not only by myself, but by many has not been in constant contact with reality for many years. You see these people, often believe that the things that they say are true, and correct, yet they are not.
It is never a good idea to feed into the delusions of these individuals. Buying in to their false beliefs only gets them worked up, and removes them even further from reality. The best thing to do with people like this, truly, is to leave them be in their little artificially created worlds, and move on in your own real one. Any other response is futile.
We once had a family reunion which twenty or so family members attended, I spent a good part of the trip intoxicated. Yesterday this person, who was not in attendance, according to the entire family, made a comment to me stating something to the affect of, I was so intoxicated throughout the trip that I didn’t even realize that they WERE there!
This is where I began to back out of the conversation. This was clearly a deluded thought and statement.
But ok, I need to ask myself a couple of questions here, as does anyone who has friends of loved ones who are also out of touch with reality. A. Do I really need to be interacting with this person; is this person such an integral part of my life that I need to just say, love you, talk to you soon, and leave it at that, or is this person peripheral enough that I can completely disassociate myself from this person, thereby saving myself the stress and aggravation associated with dealing with them at all? My decision was to end the relationship, at least until or if this person ever regains a solid grasp on reality, decides to, or becomes capable of being honest, and can have a rational, normal conversation, without thinking that I personally have some vendetta against them.
I received a communication from another individual directly after my discussion with the first that was so normal, so rational, and such an expected “in-touch” response, that it only drove farther home, the unfortunate state of the former.
Listen we live in an imperfect world right? We all know this, I have certainly had my fair share of difficulties in life, nearly 100% self-inflicted, and so has everyone else (self-inflicted or not). However, unfortunate as it is, there is a rather large percentage of the population that suffers from one type of mental illness or another.
There are two types of individual, that form a subcategory of that group; those who actively seek help for their disorder(s), and those who do not. I, as you know am not a huge proponent of medicinal treatment of mental or psycho-social disorders, however, there are myriad medications out there, a tool of the ever evolving science of psychology, that are just sometimes simply necessary to balance the chemicals in an individual’s brain to the point of allowing them to function normally or quite nearly normally in our society.
If these individuals were say, on a deserted island somewhere, away from society; family and friends, where their conditions affected no one but themselves then obviously their taking of medication would be of no concern, but, when these individuals interact with others on a regular basis, it becomes an entirely different matter.
Arguably, is it their responsibility to medicate so that they do not negatively effect those who care for them? Is it they who should be proactive in seeking the care that they need?
Clearly there are a plethora of questions here, as well as concerns.
For today, we shall leave this discussion here, but this is a biggie, so have no fear we shall revisit it soon…
M
