Posts in category: Dating Tips, Guide and Advice

When you live with someone with a mental illness, it can be hard on your relationship. During particularly hard moments, you might even find yourself thinking, “Their mental illness is killing me !”

Managing their mental health disorder may become the center of your interaction, changing the dynamics of your relationship. Their mental illness symptoms can also increase your feelings of stress.

Challenges of Living With Someone With Mental Illness

There are many reasons why living with someone who has a mental illness can be challenging and stressful. You may struggle to depend on them to take care of their responsibilities, for instance, like paying their portion of the rent.

It can cause emotional upheaval and increased stress. You might also feel isolated and alone since it can sometimes seem like no one else really understands what you’re going through.

If their behavior is unhealthy or unpredictable, you might wonder how to help them while still protecting yourself. This can leave you thinking, “Help! Their mental illness is killing me!”

The good news is that living with someone with a mental health disorder doesn’t have to degrade your relationship. Despite the challenges you may face, there are strategies you can use to deal with the stress while still helping them manage their symptoms.

How Mental Illness Affects Relationships

Mental illness can impact relationships in a variety of ways, particularly if living under the same roof.

Caregiver Burnout

You might experience burnout, especially if you are their primary caregiver or if you’re feeling overwhelmed by handling responsibilities they can’t take care of themselves. Just managing day-to-day living can be emotionally exhausting.

Intimacy Problems

If the relationship is romantic, you may experience challenges with intimacy as well. Depending on your partner’s mental health condition and any medications they take, they might experience hypersexual behaviors (strong sexual urges) or have no interest in sex at all, both of which can be hard on relationships.

Shame and Stigma

In some cases, the person you’re living with might even be hesitant to tell you about their mental health disorder. They may worry that you will end the relationship once you find out or wonder whether you’ll be able to navigate their symptoms together.

The important thing to remember is that, while there can be challenges to living with someone with a mental health disorder, there are also strategies you can put in place to keep those challenges from doing irreparable damage to your relationship.

Tips for Living With Someone With Mental Illness

Whether you already feel the stress of living with someone with a mental health disorder or you want to be proactive and address the challenges before they have a chance to take their toll, there are several actions you can take that are helpful for creating a healthier relationship dynamic. Here are a few to consider.

Learn About Their Mental Illness

There is a lot of misinformation about the causes and best treatment options for the different mental health disorders. Finding the truths or facts about their mental illness can help you better understand their condition while also learning how you can help while living with them.

To learn more about their mental illness:

Be Supportive

Whether it’s your partner, child, friend, or roommate who has been diagnosed with mental illness, there are ways to show that you support them. This begins with providing empathy, love, and compassion as they learn how to live with their disorder.

If the diagnosis was recent, recognize that the news can be devastating, embarrassing, and potentially even frightening. For some, it may provide validation for the symptoms they’ve been experiencing, but the uncertainty and stigma associated with mental health disorders may cause them to worry that you will see them differently.

Let them know that you want to be able to trust them to stay on top of their treatment plan and if they can’t fulfill their responsibilities, it causes you to feel stressed.

While being supportive, you want to respect their privacy, too. Though you may be curious about their therapy sessions and progress, they might only want to share certain things and keep other details private. Give them space to do this while letting them know that you’re there if they need you.

How to Support a Partner With Mental Illness

If your partner has a mental health disorder:

• Let them know that you are there for them and love them.
• Listen to their experience and validate what they are feeling.
• Ask how you can best support them.
• Acknowledge any positive shifts or changes they have made.
• If they’re comfortable, you might attend healthcare visits together to learn how you can both cope with their condition.

It’s also important to build a supportive community of friends and family around you. Joining a support group can also help you connect with others in a similar situation and share your experiences. To best help your partner, you must take care of your emotional needs, too.

If you are co-parents, talk to your children about mental health. Give them the opportunity to ask questions and help them understand how your partner’s mental health disorder can affect their thoughts and behaviors. Also, find ways to cope as a family.

How to Support a Child With Mental Illness

If you’re living with a child with a mental health disorder, listen to them when they talk about their symptoms. You might not understand exactly what they’re going through, but it’s important they know that you believe them.

Communicating with the child and their care provider is key, so you can come up with solutions together. If you have other children, you might also want to get them in on the conversation.

How to Support a Friend or Roommate With Mental Illness

If you live with a close friend who has a mental illness, you might notice a change in their behavior. Maybe they are withdrawing from social activities, for example. Ask your friend how you can help. If it feels necessary, you can ask if they’d like for you to contact a mental healthcare service for them.

If you have a roommate that you aren’t close with, you can still offer your support where you can. In any case, you want to remember to respect their boundaries (and set your own). Don’t interfere if it doesn’t feel safe.

Don’t Become Their Therapist

Beyond educating yourself on how to support the person you’re living with, keep in mind that it is not your responsibility to be their therapist. This is inappropriate—even if you are a trained mental health professional—because it creates an unhealthy power dynamic that will not work as a long-term solution.

A mental health counselor or therapist can offer your loved one or roommate the opportunity to feel supported and empowered to care for themselves. This type of professional can also help the person you’re living with learn how to prioritize their well-being as an individual.

Put Protections In Place

Depending on the mental illness, the person you’re living with may engage in certain actions or behaviors that put you at risk in some way. In these instances, it’s important to take steps to protect yourself.

For instance, if their mental illness makes it difficult for them to control their spending, you might consider separate bank accounts. Some banks also offer a spending cap on debit cards, which might help prevent them from spending an excessive amount at once.

Practice Self-Care

Self-care is critical in maintaining healthy relationships, in general. But it can be especially beneficial if living with someone who has been diagnosed with a mental health disorder.

Ideas for self-care include:

Be mindful of burnout or caregiver fatigue. Experiencing burnout will impact your well-being and your relationship with your loved one. If you are experiencing signs of burnout, you must prioritize your well-being and take a necessary break.

Getting Help

If you’re living with someone who has a mental health disorder, it is not unusual to experience a range of emotions such as frustration, anger, and sadness. Seeking out individual therapy, couples counseling, and/or family therapy that aims to strengthen your relationship can be immensely helpful during this time.

• Individual therapy. Therapy can help you can process your thoughts and feelings in a healthy way, which may improve your coping skills and communication skills. Counseling can also offer you a fresh perspective and helpful guidance in a situation that may feel overwhelming and stressful.
• Couples counseling. Emotions can be explored in a productive way with couples counseling. As partners, you can learn to establish appropriate expectations and set healthy boundaries. Couples counseling may also help prevent you from falling into unhealthy dynamics with your partner.
• Family therapy. If your child has a mental health condition, you might consider going to family therapy. Family therapy can help manage the effects of your child’s mental illness on all members of your family. You can also learn the best ways to support your child through their illness.

Consider seeing your own counselor to help support you during this time, even if you are already in couples counseling or family therapy. Therapy can help you process your emotions and allow you to keep showing up for your loved one in a healthy way.

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone seems to agree without giving the problem much thought? This is often an example of a psychological phenomenon known as groupthink. Groups tend to think in harmony, which can make reaching a consensus easier while also reducing critical thinking and novel ideas.

People opposed to the group’s decisions or overriding opinions frequently remain quiet, preferring to keep the peace rather than disrupt the crowd’s uniformity. This phenomenon can be problematic, but even well-intentioned people are prone to making irrational decisions in the face of overwhelming pressure from the group.

Keep reading to learn more about how to spot the signs of groupthink, what causes it, and the effects it can have on decision-making and behavior.

8 Signs of Groupthink

Groupthink may not always be easy to discern, but there are some signs that it is present. There are also some situations where it may be more likely to occur. Janis identified eight different “symptoms” that indicate groupthink.

1. Illusions of unanimity lead members to believe that everyone is in agreement and feels the same way. It is often much more difficult to speak out when it seems that everyone else in the group is on the same page.
2. Unquestioned beliefs lead members to ignore possible moral problems and not consider the consequences of individual and group actions.
3. Rationalizing prevents members from reconsidering their beliefs and causes them to ignore warning signs.
4. Stereotyping leads members of the in-group to ignore or even demonize out-group members who may oppose or challenge the group’s ideas. This causes members of the group to ignore important ideas or information.
5. Self-censorship causes people who might have doubts to hide their fears or misgivings. Rather than sharing what they know, people remain quiet and assume that the group must know best.
6. “Mindguards” act as self-appointed censors to hide problematic information from the group. Rather than sharing important information, they keep quiet or actively prevent sharing.
7. Illusions of invulnerability lead group members to be overly optimistic and engage in risk-taking. When no one speaks out or voices an alternative opinion, people believe that the group must be right.
8. Direct pressure to conform is often placed on members who pose questions, and those who question the group are often seen as disloyal or traitorous.

How Groupthink Works

Why does groupthink occur? Think about the last time you were part of a group, perhaps during a school project. Imagine that someone proposes an idea that you think is terrible, ineffective, or just downright dumb.

However, everyone else in the group agrees with the person who suggested the idea, and the group seems set on pursuing that course of action. Do you voice your dissent or just go along with the majority opinion?

What Causes Groupthink?

Groupthink is complex and there are many influences that can impact when and how it happens. Some causes that may play a part include:

Group Identity

It tends to occur more in situations where group members are very similar to one another. When there is strong group identity, members of the group tend to perceive their group as correct or superior while expressing disdain or disapproval toward people outside of the group, a phenomenon known as the ingroup bias.

When people have a lot in common and are very similar to one another, their beliefs and decision-making are often biased in similar ways. This means that they may come to the same conclusions and interpret the available information in the same ways.

Leader Influences

Groupthink is also more likely to occur when a powerful and charismatic leader commands the group. People may be more likely to go along with authoritarian leaders because they fear punishment. Transformational leaders can sometimes produce this same effect because group members are more willing to buy into their vision for the group.

Low Knowledge

When people lack personal knowledge of something or feel that other members of the group are more qualified, they are more likely to engage in groupthink. Since they lack the expertise and experience, they tend to let other people set the pace and make the decisions.

Stress

Situations where the group is placed under extreme stress or where moral dilemmas exist also increase the occurrence of groupthink. It’s easier to maintain peace and stick to the group consensus rather than rock the boat and slow things down by introducing conflicting ideas.

Examples of Groupthink

Groupthink has been attributed to many real-world political decisions that have had consequential effects. In his original descriptions of groupthink, Janis suggested that the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the failure of the U.S. to heed warnings about a potential attack on Pearl Harbor were all influenced by groupthink.

Other examples where decision-making is believed to be heavily influenced by groupthink include:

• The Watergate scandal
• The Challenger space shuttle disaster
• The 2003 invasion of Iraq
• The 2008 economic crisis
• The Tiananmen Square disaster
• Internet cancel culture

In each instance, factors such as pressure to conform, closed-mindedness, feelings of invulnerability, and the illusion of group unanimity contribute to poor decisions and often devastating outcomes.

Groupthink Can Have Serious Effects

Groupthink can cause people to ignore important information and can ultimately lead to poor decisions. This can be damaging even in minor situations but can have much more dire consequences in certain settings.

The phenomenon can have high costs. These include:

• The suppression of individual opinions and creative thought can lead to inefficient problem-solving.
• It can contribute to group members engaging in self-censorship. This tendency to seek consensus above all else also means that group members may not adequately assess the potential risks and benefits of a decision. 
• Groupthink also tends to lead group members to perceive the group as inherently moral or right. Stereotyped beliefs about other groups can contribute to this biased sense of rightness.

Groupthink vs. Conformity

It is important to note that while groupthink and conformity are similar and related concepts, there are important distinctions between the two. Groupthink involves the decision-making process.

On the other hand, conformity is a process in which people change their own actions so they can fit in with a specific group. Conformity can sometimes cause groupthink, but it isn’t always the motivating factor.

Potential Pitfalls of Groupthink

While groupthink can generate consensus, it is by definition a negative phenomenon that results in faulty or uninformed thinking and decision-making. Some of the problems it can cause include:

• Blindness to potentially negative outcomes
• Failure to listen to people with dissenting opinions
• Lack of creativity
• Lack of preparation to deal with negative outcomes
• Ignoring important information
• Inability to see other solutions
• Not looking for things that might not yet be known to the group
• Obedience to authority without question
• Overconfidence in decisions
• Resistance to new information or ideas

Group consensus can allow groups to make decisions, complete tasks, and finish projects quickly and efficiently—but even the most harmonious groups can benefit from some challenges. Finding ways to reduce groupthink can improve decision-making and assure amicable relationships within the group.

What Can You Do to Avoid Groupthink?

There are steps that groups can take to minimize this problem. First, leaders can give group members the opportunity to express their own ideas or argue against ideas that have already been proposed.

Breaking up members into smaller independent teams can also be helpful. Here are some more ideas that might help prevent groupthink.

• Initially, the leader of the group should avoid stating their opinions or preferences when assigning tasks. Give people time to come up with their own ideas first.
• Assign at least one individual to take the role of the “devil’s advocate.”
• Discuss the group’s ideas with an outside member in order to get impartial opinions.
• Encourage group members to remain critical. Don’t discourage dissent or challenges to the prevailing opinion.
• Before big decisions, leaders should hold a “second-chance” meeting where members have the opportunity to express any remaining doubts.
• Reward creativity and give group members regular opportunities to share their ideas and thoughts.
• Assign specific roles to certain members of the group.
• Establish metrics or definitions to make sure that everyone is basing decisions or judgments on the same information.
• Consider allowing people to submit anonymous comments, suggestions, or opinions.

When people in groups have diverse backgrounds and experiences, they are better able to bring different perspectives, information, and ideas to the table. This enhances decisions and makes it less likely that groups will fall into groupthink patterns.

Smoking damages the lungs in a variety of ways. One of the ways smoking harms the lungs is the damage it does to the tiny hair-like cilia that help keep your lungs free of pollutants. When you quit smoking, however, the cilia begin functioning once again, which can sometimes lead to increased coughing.

Although coughing is not a common symptom of withdrawal from smoking cigarettes, some ex-smokers do develop a cough early on in smoking cessation for a short period of time. This can be distressing for some people and may make giving up cigarettes more difficult. But understanding why this symptom happens can help you find ways to cope with it.

This article discusses how smoking affects the cilia of the lungs and why you might experience increased coughing after you quit smoking. It also covers some of the things you can do to help ease your cough.

Causes of Coughing After Quitting Smoking

The reason why some people start coughing after they have quit smoking usually has to do with the cilia in the lungs. Cigarette smoke paralyzes and damages the cilia; when you stop smoking, the cilia start to function again.

Cilia create a protective barrier between the outside world and the delicate tissue of the lungs. The bronchial tubes in healthy lungs are lined with a thin coating of mucus and cilia. Moving back and forth in unison, cilia clean house by sweeping inhaled pollutants that have been trapped in the mucus layer back out of the body.

Once the mucus reaches the throat, it’s either coughed out or swallowed. This work done between cilia and the mucus layer in the lungs protects us from a host of respiratory infections and diseases.

How Smoking Affects Cilia

Cigarette smoke contains thousands of chemicals that can damage the lungs. It also leaves a sticky yellow coating called tar on everything it touches, including a person’s teeth, fingers, clothing, and furniture—and the inside of their lungs.

In the lungs, the buildup of tar shuts down the motion of cilia and causes inflammation in the airways, prompting excess mucus production. With the lung’s natural defense system neutralized, toxic particles in cigarette smoke and other inhaled dust, dirt, and germs stay in the lungs, putting the person at risk for chest infections and respiratory diseases like chronic bronchitis and lung cancer.

Smoking Cessation-Related Coughing

When you stop smoking, cilia gradually start functioning again, and the lungs begin moving trapped toxins up and out. This might cause a cough that lasts for the first couple of months of smoking cessation until the cilia have fully recovered.

In other words, while you were smoking, your cilia were moving less, so they were not able to move mucus out of your lungs. Once you quit, those cilia become active again. The resulting cough is caused by those cilia actively working to clear mucus and old toxins out of your lungs.

You may notice that the cough is dry at first. As the cilia begin to function once again, they will start to move mucus, which may result in a wet cough accompanied by coughing up phlegm.

How long does the cough last after quitting smoking? It might last for a few weeks or even a couple of months, but it should gradually begin to improve. It can take up to 12 months for the cilia to return to normal function and handle moving mucus out of the lungs.

Relief for Coughing After Quitting Smoking

While you don’t want to necessarily reduce the productive quality of your cough because it is helping to rid the lungs of tobacco pollutants, there are a few things you can do to soothe your throat and help the process along:

• Stay hydrated by drinking water, juice, and tea. Teas with licorice root are an especially good choice, as licorice root is a natural expectorant that also soothes the throat.
• Use a humidifier in your home, especially if you live in a dry environment. It will help to loosen mucus and encourage a productive cough.
• Ease your tender throat with a tablespoon of honey one to three times a day. It coats and soothes irritated throats.

Generally, the goal is not to suppress a productive cough. But if the cough is causing you severe discomfort or interfering with your sleep, talk to a doctor about what you can do to find relief.

When to Call the Doctor

If you experience any of the following symptoms, schedule an appointment with a doctor as soon as possible, as there may be something more serious than cilia recovery going on:

• Shortness of breath: Struggling to catch your breath after little or no exertion or feeling that it is difficult to breathe in and out.
• Wheezing: Noisy breathing may be a sign of inflammation in your airway.
• Blood in sputum: Coughing up flecks or streaks of blood in phlegm can be a sign of infection.

We use our phones for many things, from making business calls to checking our email to communicating with friends and loved ones. Our phones have become an inextricable part of our lives. But does this reliance on smartphones have any impact on our brains?

Some recent research indicates that it might. Experts suggest that all of this phone use might affect our social and emotional regulation skills, disrupt our sleep, and turn us into lazy thinkers.

Kids are also using these devices more and more, which has led experts to question the possible long-term effects on development. One study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that the amount of time kids spend staring at digital screens rose 52% over a three-year period.

How this might affect development remains to be seen. However, it is a question of interest for healthcare practitioners, mental health professionals, educators, parents, and anyone who uses a smartphone regularly.

Phone Use Can Negatively Affect Cognitive Ability

Recent research suggests that smartphone usage does indeed affect the brain. Remember, however, that such research is still in the early stages. While we know a bit more about some of the short-term effects, the long-term effects remain to be seen. 

Changes in Brain Chemistry

Some evidence indicates that using mobile phones might lead to chemical changes in the brain. In one study presented to the Radiological Society of North America, researchers found that young people with a so-called internet and smartphone addiction actually demonstrated imbalances in brain chemistry compared to a control group.

Reduced Cognitive Capacity

One well-known study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that cognitive capacity was significantly reduced whenever a smartphone is within reach, even when the phone is off.

Researchers dubbed this effect the “brain drain hypothesis.” Essentially, we are less likely to rely on our own cognitive resources if we know an information source is readily available.

A more recent meta-analysis also found that the presence of a smartphone was associated with decreases in working memory. This is consistent with earlier results, but the newer analysis indicates that the magnitude of this effect might not be as pronounced as previously believed.

One factor that researchers think might play a part in how strongly people are affected by this: FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Being distracted by our phones suggests that we are always, on some level, thinking about what is happening in the online world—and what we might be missing when we aren’t using our phones.

Worse Reading Comprehension

You’ve probably noticed that how you read online text differs from how you read the printed page. For many of us, it’s common to skim online articles or skip around the page to find key points. But this isn’t the only difference. Some evidence indicates that we understand less of what we read online than what we do in print.

One 2020 study found that reading on an electronic device such as a smartphone results in lower reading comprehension.

The exact reasons for this are unclear, but researchers have found that people sigh less often when reading on a smartphone. This impact on respiration is also associated with excess activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex and reduced reading comprehension.

Phone Affects Social-Emotional Skills

In the commentary appearing in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine took a closer look at the available literature on smartphone and iPad use among very young children.

The concern, researchers suggest is that kids will not develop their own internal self-regulation mechanisms if they always rely on being distracted by a digital device.

The experts suggest that hands-on activities and those involving direct human interaction are superior to interactive screen games. The use of mobile devices becomes especially problematic when such devices replace hands-on activities that help develop visual-motor and sensorimotor skills.

Phone Use May Lead to Disrupted Sleep

Using your smartphone or tablet at bedtime might be interfering with your sleep, and not because you’re staying up late to check your email, scrolling through your social media feeds, or playing a game of online trivia.

In a study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, a dozen adult participants were asked to either read on an iPad for four hours each night before bed or read printed books in dim lighting. After five consecutive nights, the two groups switched.

What the researchers discovered was that those who had read on an iPad before bedtime displayed a reduction in levels of melatonin, a hormone that increases throughout the evening and induces sleepiness. It also took these participants longer to fall asleep, and they experienced less REM sleep throughout the night.

The culprit? The type of blue light emitted by most mobile devices. The cells at the back of the eyes contain a light-sensitive protein that picks up specific wavelengths of light. These light-sensitive cells then send signals to the brain’s “clock, ” which regulates circadian rhythms.

Typically, blue light peaks in the morning, signaling your body to wake up for the day. Red light increases in the evening, signaling it is time to wind down and go to bed. By interrupting this natural cycle with the blue light emitted by mobile devices, the normal sleep-wake cycles are thrown out of whack.

These sleep interruptions can hurt your brain and mental health. Poor sleep is associated with various mental health problems, including mood changes, stress, anxiety, depression, and brain fog.

Our Phones Might Be Making Us Mentally Lazy

Mobile devices don’t just offer distraction—we also rely on them to provide information. We no longer have to memorize phone numbers or keep a Rolodex on our desks—all that information is conveniently stored on our phone’s contact list.

Instead of mulling over questions you might have about the world around you, you can just grab your phone and Google the answers. Instead of trying to remember appointments, meetings, or dates, you simply rely on an iPhone app to remind you of what you need to accomplish each day.

And some experts warn that this over-reliance on your mobile device for all the answers might lead to mental laziness. One study has found that there is a link between relying on a smartphone and mental laziness.

Researchers suggest that this can interfere with analytical and logical thinking. Some even wonder if using our phones too much might contribute to decreased intelligence.

Clearly, much more research is needed. Experts warn, however, that the use of mobile devices has far out-paced the available research on the subject. Scientists and doctors are just beginning to understand the potential short-term (and long-term) effects of smartphone use on the brain.

Mobile devices are bound to have their detriments, but the researchers also suggest that we have yet to fully understand how they might benefit the brain.

Follow Now: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

So What Can You Do to Protect Your Brain?

Even though we might know that our phones might negatively affect our brains, the reality is that we need them. For many, they are a connection to information, resources, tools, and communication that are essential for daily life.

What we can do is work on becoming more intentional about how we use and interact with our phones. Strategies that can help:

Build Awareness

We need to know what we are dealing with before we can take steps to address it. This means tracking and assessing how much you are using your phone.

What are you using it for? What’s your average daily screen time? Do you use your phone to soothe difficult emotions or avoid important tasks? Answering such questions can give you insight into problems you might want to address. 

Consider Setting Limits

Setting specific limits on your phone use can be helpful. It’s important to be purposeful about your mobile phone use, but you should also consider what works for you.

For some people, this might involve removing certain apps from their phones. Others may find it helpful to use apps or phone settings to control how long they use certain apps or websites each day.

Some people find that it is helpful to have phone-free times or even entire days. For example, you might decide you won’t use your phone after 7 PM or on Saturdays so you can fully focus on the other people in your life.