Psych-Mat

Online help resources in Singapore if you are in an intimate relationship with someone who has a psychological disorder.

The problem

In this post I will provide some suggestions and resources to help someone undergoing distress due primarily to their intimate other having a psychological disorder.  I quite frequently receive heartbreaking requests from individuals who are in a painful relationship or marriage in which their mate is suffering from some kind of serious psychological problem such as alcoholism, gambling addiction etc.  Often these  individuals are isolated and confused about what to do.  The purpose of this post is to provide some general information to help them get better informed and started on the path to a better relationship.

Let me describe briefly an example which although hypothetical is based on cases I see very frequently.  A 35 year old married woman with three children (a boy aged 13, and a girl aged 11, and a younger son aged 8 with ADHD) bitterly complains at the first consultation with me of the many problems she has experienced due to her husband drinking excessively for the past ten years.  She also states that the older son is doing poorly in school and has been associating with a “bad crowd”.  The girl is doing OK except that she has become the caretaker of her younger brother because the mother has frequent periods of debilitating depression.  The mother has recently tried to cope with her husband’s drinking by drinking with him but that has made their arguments become more intense to the point where the husband has began to slap her.  Despite the husband’s well paying job there never seems to be enough money to cover the family’s expenses and debts are accumulating. On top of this the father’s drinking is affecting his job and he has been warned about this.

 

How to improve your knowledge and understanding of yourself.

  “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion”

 Although these lines were written by Robert Burns, Scotland’s most famous and honored poet, over two hundred years ago, they continue to have important psychological significance.  The purpose of this post is to explicate the psychological implications of his words and provide some practical ways for you to obtain accurate new information about yourself.

 Having grown up with a great aunt who quoted Burns on a daily basis, I can still only lay claim to a “wee” bit of understanding of his dialect.  My interpretation is that he wishes, somehow, we were gifted with the ability to see ourselves the way that others see us, because it would save us from many mistaken actions and erroneous ideas, particularly wrong beliefs about ourselves.