How has living with a mentally ill parent affected you as a person?

Please share your stories.How has living with a mentally ill parent affected you as a person?
Anxiety. You believe what you are told by a parent until you are old enough to experience the reality of life, so by the time your grown you have repressed so much by expecting their drama to play out over the years that you are seething with anger that you have not dealt with and it manifests in physical illness in your later years.How has living with a mentally ill parent affected you as a person?
growing up with a mother suffering from depression with occasional mildly psychotic episodes has made me a stronger and more independent person, but with a chip on my shoulder like the world owes me something...

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Wow - of all questions I decide to answer I get this one! I just experienced living with a mentally ill mother-in-law (what a double-whammy) three months ago. She started out as sweet and caring and out of nowhere, she became mainpulative, demanding, rude and money-hungry. She made comments about how my husband will leave me and accused me of wanting to be with her grungy boyfriend. She managed to get thousands and thousands of dollars from me and my husband and gambled all of it. She made my dad side against me and she even threatened to put me in jail.





You want to feel sorry that they're going through a mental illness, but because they're sane enough to drive, go to the grocery store, do daily errands that sympathy you feel all melts away.





I quit smoking for FIVE years, but when she tried moving in and taking over the household I started up again. I started swearing all the time, smoking up a storm and just started being evil. My marriage almost fell apart.





Thankfully through prayer, she moved out. I stopped smoking. But I'm still trying to get back up there spiritually. That woman brought a lot of demons in our house. (She even had a crazy shrine in her room.)





The best thing for you to do is try and put them away. It may sound mean, but they're a strain to society. This lady would go into the 99 cent store and make a scene because she wants to return something.





Her being around really affected me. Really bad. And I'm usually an agreeable person. I feel like I lose my mind. She still calls my husband and it's like I have Teret's -- I start yelling things in the background like a crazy person.





I believe if a mentally ill parent poses a threat to anyone in the household, you can call the police. Under investigation, they can decide whether to put them in a mental institution and supposedly the government pays for it.





If anybody feels they should give me a ';thumbs down'; or a negative reply, then you really don't know what it's like to experience something this awful. There are WAY more horror stories I can share, believe me. This is just the surface.