To feel very uncomfortable about this Guardian article?

[KingscoteStaff]

Front page of the 'Family' section. A grandfather talking about his 21 yo granddaughter who has just committed suicide.

It just doesn't feel real. Could it be some sort of exercise in writing the most unsympathetic narrator ever?

Jeepers - I'm sorry to hear what you went through. I do think there is a big difference between someone who abused hard drugs and someone who is anorexic and depressed. Both are illnesses but I had a partner who was addicted to heroin and he had a very uncertain grip on reality which comes as part and parcel of substance abuse but is not generally typical of someone with MH illnesses or anorexia.

The mere fact that he mentions it in such a way suggests that he is being defensive about the allegations. Otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it.

When we get a strong emotional reaction toward someone else, we can only turn inwards, deeply inwards and we will see a mirror reflection of how we feel about ourselves. This is a long ongoing process. If we give love and compassion to ourselves it is easy to project that to others.
MH problems that pop up in families, unlike physical ailments, seem to propel the family and -people close -into self analysis, rejection, denial, blame, insecurity. We are confronted with the unwell person but also with ourselves.
I have a sister who rejects my mental illness, she dislikes me intensely for it and it doesn't even directly affect her in any practical sense. But she seems to take it personally, it doesn't fit with her narrative of life and our family so she stops communication and belittles me for it. Nothing to do with me - all about her.

Sorry for what you've been through Jeepers. You're right, where mental health is involved, it's messy, complicated, inadequate and painful.

My mum was severely mentally ill but I, in part, blame the wider dysfunction and abuse within our family (there before she was even born) for her illness.

Yet, I also understand that the mentally unwell can be the abusers - as is the case with your brother.

Things aren't black/white, either/or - however I think the difference here is the dynamic of the relationship. It's the fact that this man is talking about a woman barely out of girlhood. His responsibility should somehow be different I feel, to a young woman a generation removed from him.

The way you write of your anger and confusion about your brother feels authentic, justified and so understandable. Compared to this piece which still, to me, feels morally reprehensible somehow.

Amanda that's awful

lottie and Gloria not everyone has access to therapy not everyone can engage in therapy they find it to difficult and not everyone wants to attend therapy

These emotions can be explored in therapy but they are also felt by people who don't or can't attend for whatever reason

To many people the idea of going to see a counsellor is just something that they are just not open to but will struggle with their emotions and maybe have had similar experiences of emotions as he has

These uncomfortable emotions shouldn't be locked away behind closed doors, the complexities of family dynamics and the impacts of mental health on not only the person/s diagnosed but what also should be discussed openly is the impact it can have on families

Well he may not want therapy but i don't think that justifies such a cruel article about his granddaughter together with her name and a photo of her as a child.

Others have put their views on why it's wrong much more eloquently than I can.

Thank you lottie. X

I wonder to what extent this article is characteristic of an older generation, who were brought up to believe much more strongly in 'free will', and when mental health conditions carried much more stigma: e.g., people who suffered from depression were viewed as "weak". The author of the piece is 80.

This doesn't just apply to mental health, but to conditions like Dyspraxia and ASD. My father-in-law (90) was very dismissive of his partner's son's ASD, and equally skeptical about my daughter's dyxpraxia and processing problems.

I don't see it as a cruel article I see it as honest on how a person is feeling

As for her privacy that is for the family to decide

Has anyone read the article and thought well she wasn't so pleasant they did the best they can but she felt it wasn't good enough. I think it's quite clear that little could be done to make a difference to how she felt

Yes, it's the naming and showing that's troubling. He could have written it with changed names/more anonymously.

It feels like he wants to question and denigrate her character - which, as I've said, feels abusive given she's young, female and just well outwith the normal boundaries of a grandfather/granddaughter relationship.

What do you mean 'she wasn't so pleasant?' She was ILL.

Who would say that about someone who had a brain tumour that changed them or Alzheimer's?

Exactly - it does come across as an attack on her character. As I've noted before - normal families don't vebally tear their close relatives to shreds to strangers. They just don't. They may argue behind closed doors and curse at one another but to the outside world an emotionally healthy family is very defensive of their close relatives.

That's exactly why I'm upset by it Enthusiasm. Because it reads that she just wasn't good (or pleasant) enough.

Certainly, a grandfather verbally tearing a granddaughter to shreds, feels particularly cruel/boundary pushing.

He wasn't even a carer; he didn't live near to her or see her that often from what I can gather. And why search her early childhood for some sort of clue or justification? A child is innocent or free from blame surely? Yet he's blaming the child Emma, or negatively portraying her black outlook.

"I don't see it as a cruel article I see it as honest on how a person is feeling" The only feeling that comes across is contempt.

"as for her privacy that is for the family to decide" We don't know if they all agreed.

"I think it's quite clear that little could be done to make a difference to how she felt" I'm not quite sure how to express what I think about this statement but how on earth can it be "clear"? The author wrote a crap prose with shitty metaphors describing his GD not as be love in any way whatsoever but as a mere disappointment of his expectations. We only hear his pompous and self important voice nit Emma's. Emma was just out of childhood and all children deserve to be loved unconditionally. Not something this grandfather did. The only thing that is "clear" is that the writing is terrible and full of vanity and he has no love lost for his GD, not even in death. It's one thing to feel all of these things but to write such a cold legacy and exposing her real name is, in my opinion, simply despicable. Shit granddad.

"normal families don't vebally tear their close relatives to shreds to strangers. They just don't"

^^^ This

Lottie I think I wasn't clear and can see how you misunderstood. My brother has mental health problems and he was also a heroin addict. I see his drug addictions as a symptom of his mental health issues rather necessarily the cause, though I am sure the drugs made things worse, and as you say contributed to his views on what happened. I do not think it is uncommon for people with mental health issues to turn to drugs and/or alcohol. This was certainly the case for my aunt who was bipolar and committed suicide when I was a child.

Anyway, I digress. The details aren't really relevant to Emma's case.

People can be both honest and cruel. It's fairly common. In fact this piece feels quite dishonest - particularly the manipulation of the bird episode - which sounds far more like a child admitting fear after the event than turning a happy experience negative.

Has anyone read the article and thought well she wasn't so pleasant

I think they probably have and that's the problem. That's what he wants you to think. And that's what makes it so objectionable.

I think the whole point is that she wasn't "pleasant". She was very damaged - who knows how or why - and this made her very difficult. That's not saying it was her fault - we know she was ill - but that doesn't mean the rest of the world or even her family have to describe her as pleasant.

Badknee referenced this point earlier but we see lots of threads about "toxic" behaviour and people needing to go NC - everyone from parents to teenagers who have crossed so many boundaries that the remaining family feel unsafe. On the one hand we accept that people have a right to protect themselves from this. On the other hand, we have to be endlessly strong and empathetic even when we too are being dragged down.

I also think it is unhelpful to try and simplify complex and messy events and emotions into what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

I really respected your post jeepers but the issue isn't about how it is acceptable to feel, but how it is acceptable to write on such an issue in a national newspaper. No-one is denying him the right to anger, frustration etc.

I too can see it from both sides. My mother had mental health issues when she was younger. One of my best and oldest friends had anorexia, and I know 3 other women who had it. I've seen the toll it takes on the individual and the family.

It would never ever occur to me to write about any of those women in such negative, critical terms. All the more so if they were now dead. Purely on an journalistic level, it lacks balance, as we learn very little about the woman he is writing about.

It's a narrative he has to believe, and now cruelly and bizarrely wants the wider world to believe, that she was inherently flawed and unpleasant. Even going so far as to denigrate her childhood character. Because it exhonourates him from guilt and responsibility.

My own abusive family, once I confronted them and eventually left them, came up with a whole catalogue of my supposed inherent character flaws. My childhood was eviscorated. But I now know that in their narcissistic, black and white world - I have to be the 'baddy'. And narcissists are the masters of character assassination.

But at least I'm alive to be and show that I'm more than the cardboard cut out they created of me. Poor Emma has no voice does she?

I think the whole point is that she wasn't "pleasant".

As I said I think that's what he wants readers to think and some people have fallen for it.

We don't get any sense at all what she was actually like from the piece, beyond the fact he clearly disliked her. There's certainly no evidence she wasn't pleasant, simply that she wasn't well. Much of the behaviour that enrages him is simply standard anorexia, it's not particular to her character. If my experience of anorexia is anything to go by she was probably lovely a lot of the time, and very difficult at others. No-one is wholly one thing. Particularly not when they are mentally ill.

families do at times have these feelings and there is no such thing as a normal family all families are unique all families have different dynamics and siblings will often experience their relationships very differently with their parents. we have all heard of the black sheep of the family and no one can understand why they are like the way they are when everyone else is so well normal

He is not writing the article to be liked and no families do not all love unconditionally in an ideal world they might do. Families support and love can also change

I would be surprised if anyone read the article and thought wow what a loving grandfather he was so patient and she really was difficult. It was the nature of her being that life with her for him was difficult and that is what he is writing about

Cunty Grandad who writes badly.

ipost

I still think you should write further about this

The bird incident shows how little he understood his grandchild (probably because he was too self-absorbed to consider her for long, as he has been in publishing an article like this). The incidents he describes are not abnormal. They don't indicate anything except what is standard of children. Melodrama. 'The worst experience of my life' from a little girl? She is thinking about how freaked out she was and for now it is the fear that has stayed with her and is most interesting to talk about. Someone judgemental with no experience of children wouldn't get this.

He sounds like a testy, self-centered man who never warmed to this child and isn't very good at people who make demands on him. No one who writes a piece like this is empathic, humble, loving - it lacks balance in content and the decision to publish speaks volumes.

And I write that fully aware of the genuine gamut of emotions that genuine family caregivers must go through. I think we would be being very kind to this man to presume that he falls into that category.