My abuelo doesn’t understand my mental health, friend defends him
My grandpa doesn’t understand how hard it is for me to get up in the morning, to not hyperfixate, to not be emotionally unstable.
My friend says it’s normal for him to be like that and makes excuses and defenses for him.
I don't know anything about your life or situation so please take this with a massive grain of salt.
Your grandpa may be a victim of a time when men were absolutely not allowed to have mental health struggles.
Seriously, I know some of us can't even fathom that, but it simply wasn't allowed.
There was no understanding, there was no conversation, and if you attempted to discuss the subject you would be met with very abrasive and inaccurate advice that is the equivalent of "suck it up" or "anxiety and depression are made up" as I am sure you have seen a lot of this still exists today.
I know this isn't advice on how to repair or improve the relationship, but it might give you some small insight as to why he may be reacting this way. We may not be able to fix the older generations (not that we should give up), but if we keep normalizing talking about our struggles maybe the next generation will be healthier than us. It's a small move, but in my life so far I feel like I have seen changes I never would have thought possible in adult men mental health.
Source: not a grandpa, but I make a lot of noise when I stand up from a comfortable chair.
When the choice is getting on with life or starving to death, you tend to become focused on the basics. Whether this is an improvement may be debatable (sublimation?), but sometimes life is harsh. Grandpa might have faced similar mental problems when he was young, and had no choice but to ignore them and may simply perceive that problem differently.
I, too, am not a spring chicken, so add whatever salt you like to this description. But I do think that there are a lot of hungry people around the world willing to ignore their own troubles and steal your lucky spot regardless of your mental state.
The cheeto thinks he can build walls to keep those hungry people at bay... but rather than letting them migrate to start at the bottom in the land of opportunity I think his approach is just going to end up with all of us doing more dirty work on our respective sides of the walls... possibly much sooner than we would like. Beware you don't end up out-competed in the rat race while you grapple with your internal demons.
Honestly, that attitude of his is holding down who knows how much trauma. If he let's down his walls and starts feeling things now, who knows how much is going to flood out. Guarantee it's way more than you expect
Luckily we've been raised in a time where we could express our emotions, at least to some extent. He never could. Men had a standard to live up to. Crying wasn't something allowed.
Not saying it's right. Not saying it should be tolerated. But I've come to accept it's just a product of the times and work my way around that.
Wish I had better advice on how to overcome that.
Maybe your friend is right? Don't we all regularly fail to empathize with people? I don't get why people vote for certain people, I don't know 100% how it feels to be a woman, someone else... I don't know how an ilness feels if I never had it... That's perfectly normal. The thing hat matters if we respect such people (despite not understanding them).