The passing of Robin Williams has affected us all in some way. Mental Illness is something that affects many of us in some way or another, either we have it or a friend or family member has it. But we don’t understand it as well as we should and often we choose to ignore it. I have personally suffered from mild depression for many years and I have also supported my dearest friend Renea, who has Bipolar for the last 11 years.
My observations about Robin Williams
Robin Williams had a form of dyslexia where the letters and words and numbers were all back to front (I am curious as to how this was worked out, but the fact remains that it’s true). While at school he was teased and bullied dreadfully and had to seek out new routes home to avoid his tormentors. To gain his mother’s attention and to make her laugh he would tell jokes. He once stated that his only friends as a child were his imagination.
His father worked away and his mother also worked, he was left to be attended to by the maids they employed. Robin claimed his upbringing left him with an acute fear of abandonment and a condition he described as “love me syndrome”
He suffered from alcohol and cocaine addiction in the 1970s and 1980s and yesterday we learned of his suicide due to depression, an illness that we weren’t really aware that he had. But if you look at his childhood you can totally understand why he suffered from depression.
They describe him as a kind caring dedicated person who spent most of his life caring for people and making them laugh. People who have interviewed him say he was truly amazing to interview, funny, kind, caring. He supported Christopher Reeve’s when his insurance ran out until he died. He was a Philanthropist and founded a Foundation that raised funds for a variety of causes in the US.
Having supported someone like I have the for last 11 years I can look at Robin Williams life a bit different to other people. He truly was an amazing person and a comic genius, but how hard would it be to wake up every day and put a mask on just so you are liked. How hard would it be to not be able to go – I am having a crap day today and I just want to sit and sulk – or – I just want to be myself and people just need to accept me for who I am and love me for who I am, not for my mask that I put on every day.
Looking at his background and seeing how his childhood was, there was no way that he had any understanding of how to love himself, of how to feel worthwhile. He grew up feeling unloved and unwanted, how was he to know how to love himself as an adult? We all loved him, he was probably told a million times that he was loved and appreciated, but he wouldn’t have taken that on board, or he would have seen it as people loving his ‘mask’, his comic genius, his act that he put on every day. He would have kept telling himself how he was only loved if he was being funny or if he was making people feel special.
He would have been totally exhausted in the end. He was struggling financially, fighting mental demons, alcoholism and the feeling of being unloved. The feeling of everything being too hard would have been with him constantly.
We all need to take this on board, we all need to understand what happens to someone who has these struggles. We need to stop the bullying, we need to love our children unconditionally, we need to show them we love them, we need to teach them to love themselves, we need to teach them they are worth everything. We need to make sure our friends know that they are loved and supported and if we have mental issues then we need to seek help.
I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I have no training what so ever, but I do have 11 years experience supporting someone with mental illness, I have sat through many psychology appointments and many psychologist appointments. I have attended group sessions at a mental hospital and talked to many psychiatric nurses. I believe I have a fair understanding of mental illness and would love to help anyone who needs it.
Question: Do you suffer from mental illness? Do you need help? If you want to chat let me know 🙂
