The Emotions of Parenting Mental Health

Knowing we aren't alone

Dec 17, 2023

By 10am on Monday, I had already broken down in tears. Twice.

The first time, I was driving home from the gym just after dawn, my hair wet from the pool, my skin alive from the cold water. Deciding not to turn on a podcast or the radio, I turned onto a familiar street and it hit me.

My daughter is struggling again. Despite all my best attempts, I don’t really know how to help. I’m back in that same place of grief, despair, unrest. Will her appointment today with the doctor resolve anything? When will she get better?

I kept driving and weeping, hiccupping, and breathing. I’ve learned to welcome tears, my daughter’s and my own. Expressing pain, rather than stuffing it down, heals us.

Three hours later, the tears came again in the middle of a work call.

Someone shared a biblical story of a father whose son is devastatingly sick, close to death. The father, a government official, is so desperate to heal his son that he spends a whole day walking, from one city to another, to ask Jesus for a miracle. Instead of traveling back to visit the son, Jesus says simply, “Go home! Your son will live!”

Even though I had read this story before, I found myself momentarily unable to breathe. God, why haven’t you healed my daughter? This story feels almost cruel to read. Where are you in this long road of illness? Do you hear me?

A Glimpse of Our Story

Our daughter Ellie first showed signs of anxiety and depression in junior high, but it wasn’t until her sophomore year (fall 2020), that she experienced a full breakdown. Suddenly, I was thrust into a new identity: parent of a teen with mental health challenges My own experience with recovery from an eating disorder and mild depression gave me some tools, such as reaching out for therapists, leaning on a support system, and eventually exploring treatment centers. But my daughter struggled with some conditions that I wasn’t familiar with, such as major depressive disorder (much more severe than my own), social anxiety disorder (I had literally never heard of this) and ADHD (Ellie hid this so well that I was shocked to learn that she hadn’t been able to concentrate). She also struggled with an eating disorder that was even sneakier than mine. Any previous confidence in my parenting skills was replaced by the unsettling truth: I didn’t know how to parent her through this.

Today, in December 2023, our daughter‘s mental health has stabilized, which I’m grateful for. (Side note: let’s be clear that stability does not mean that these conditions are completely gone; it means that she knows how to manage them and if she slips, she has a support network to help her get back on track). After three years of parenting classes, family therapy, my own therapy, and learning from wise friends, I feel much better equipped to support my daughter in her healing. Parenting a mentally ill teen, even in recovery, is not easy or simple but on good days, it is a beautiful road to walk. I’ve learned to accept the bad days with compassion for myself and my daughter.

The Emotions of Parenting Mental Health Challenges

Today, we aren’t dealing with severe depression or an eating disorder relapse, thankfully. But we are facing a new challenge: our daughter has an undiagnosed chronic illness which led to her withdrawal from her first semester of college (which of course affects mental health). I find that my feelings as a mom are the same as in her mental health crisis. Can you relate to these emotions?

Grief: I grieve that illness limits my daughter’s daily functioning and her future potential. It casts a constant shadow over her mood, her relationships, and our family.
Confusion: I feel confused and scared about how to parent her through this (and wonder half the time if I just did the wrong thing).
Powerlessness: This is one of the hardest parts of parenting a mentally ill kid. Even as I work hard at whatever I can do as a parent, like arranging visits with mental health professionals, picking up medications, providing companionship, coaching her to make good choices, I am ultimately powerless over her healing. I cannot control it and sometimes, even my best attempts backfire. Healing often feels elusive and it’s hard to know if she is making progress or not.
ANGER! Half the time, I am angry – not just angry, but furious - without knowing who to be angry at – my daughter? (Sometimes it’s freeing to admit to my therapist that yes, I am angry at her). My husband? (An easy target, perhaps for not doing as much as me). Our medical team? (Shouldn’t they be able to heal her quicker). God himself (are you there, God)? Sometimes I am angry at myself for my own mistakes, for how I might have caused this (I think I’m finally over that one, but it took a long time). Some days, I can just accept that it’s okay to be angry, without blaming anyone, and go yell in the woods.
Terror: I am often terrified – about her getting sicker, about whether she will heal, about her future, about losing her, about her never becoming independent.
Jealousy: In my darkest moments, I am jealous of other teenagers who are not shackled by these challenges, who live “normal” lives that my daughter has not been capable of. I am jealous of other parents whose parenting load seems much lighter. It helps me to remember not to compare my insides (or my family’s insides) to other people’s outsides.
Hope: In my best moments, I am aware of God’s grace in the hardest moments – the “evidence of grace” that shows me that we are not alone.

I’m curious - when have you experienced these same feelings? How do you cope with them? What helps you move through the hardest ones into a place of peace or at least sustainability?

Faith in the Journey

In the story, after the father got a hopeful message from Jesus, he faced a very long, unsettling walk home – a full day of walking from one city (Capernaum) to another (Cana). Without cell phones, social media, or even telegrams, he would have walked for hours, wrestling with his own emotions: wonder, hope, confusion, anxiety, loneliness and fear. What if he returned to find his son dead? Was it too risky to hope for a full healing? Had he been crazy to leave his son on the brink of death, to ask a religious leader for help? How would he handle whatever situation he found at home? Perhaps this is the essence of faith – asking for help and then walking with hope for many miles without assurance of the outcome. It seems like a similar journey to the path of healing from mental health challenges

The father got his wish for his son’s healing. Our family’s journey of healing has been a much slower, less linear process - two steps forward, one step back - but I try to notice the moments of grace, of faith realized, of how far we’ve come. I also find that identifying and naming my emotions along the way, to myself and to others whom I trust, is a key step in my own healing. It validates my experience and helps me to start to express the pain that I’ve been holding inside.

In a future post, we’ll talk about ways we can not just name but express these feelings in healthy ways. It can be a bit complicated as a caregiver to make space for our own needs! Thank you for joining me on this journey. Half the battle is not doing it alone.

I’m so glad you’re here! Let me know what emotions you’ve noticed and how you’ve made space for them.