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On Attachment

#103: How to Help a Partner Struggling with their Mental Health

On Attachment

Stephanie Rigg

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Looking out for someone who you care for that is going through a hard time is a challenge most of us will have to face in our lifetimes. But feelings of threat to the relationship, especially as an anxious attached person may come up in these times, and I want to help you navigate through these while prioritising your wellbeing, and not overstepping.

We'll cover:

  • Monitoring your “fixing” the situation
  • Ways to support someone and yourself
  • How you can be a balanced supportive person
  • Nothing changes, unless something changes.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships.

0:19.7

I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg,

0:22.8

and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.

0:29.6

In today's episode, I'm answering the listener question of how to support a partner who's

0:34.5

struggling with their mental health. So I think that given the prevalence

0:39.0

of mental health challenges, there's a good chance that all of us will encounter this

0:45.0

situation in some form, at some point in our lives, if we haven't already, having to be the

0:52.3

support person for someone that we really care about. And I should say at the outset,

0:57.0

this listener question was in the context of a romantic relationship, but most of what I'm going

1:02.0

to share today could be applied to any relationship, whether that's a friend, a family member,

1:07.0

or someone else. But most all of us will be confronted with the situation of having someone

1:13.4

that we care about who's going through a hard time and having to navigate all of the conflicting

1:19.5

feelings and boundary struggles and the push pulls that can come with that because,

1:25.7

you know, spoiler alert, that can be a really complicated emotional terrain to try and navigate.

1:32.6

We can feel immense worry and concern and care and really want to be able to help someone,

1:38.3

but maybe also feel frustrated by them not taking the steps that we think that they should be taking or, you know, them not

1:46.9

making progress at the rate that we would like, wondering whether we should be holding out hope

1:53.9

for things to change, juggling, wanting to be sensitive to the ways in which they're struggling

1:58.8

against the very real impact that

2:01.6

that's having on us and concerns that we have in that department. There is a lot of really

2:05.6

conflicting stuff that goes into that kind of dynamic. And while today's episode is not going

2:12.9

to give you the solution or give you, you know, total clarity over what to do if that's a situation

...

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