Category Archives: bipolar spouse

Boundaries Are NOT

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I’ve been reading about boundaries in different forums and I’m afraid there are people who have totally missed the point and are abusing or misusing boundaries. Respecting boundaries is what makes healthy relationships to work. Boundaries are the points at which another person’s behavior starts to infringe on your rights. Knowing your boundaries is important and defending them is healthy, but there are some things boundaries are not. (Information about setting boundaries is available here.)

1. Boundaries are not about controlling other people. The whole point of using boundaries is that you can’t and have no right to control other people. You have a right, even a responsibility, to protect yourself and the people you love. Yes, the people who normally roll right over your boundaries may take notice and start respecting your boundaries once they know where they are, but that is always their choice. If they choose to roll right over your boundaries, you have a plan to get out of their way.

2. Boundaries are not about punishing other people. You have no right to punish another adult. You are not judge, jury and executioner. You are not God. If you have been seriously wronged, you have the right to take your case in front of a judge, but you do not have the right to punish someone yourself. You have the right to defend yourself and not one step beyond that or you are trampling their boundaries.

3. Boundaries are not rules that apply to a specific person. When you say “take your medications or I leave” you are making a rule that applies to one person. When you say “I will not live with a person who behaves badly and won’t do basic self care to get control of their behavior.” you are setting a boundary. Not only is your boundary available for anyone who might come into your life, but you leave it open to allow a variety of treatment programs.

4. Boundaries are not a one-way deal. If you want others to respect your boundaries, you have to respect theirs. Even if a person doesn’t know about boundaries or uses a different term for them, it is important that you allow them to feel safe and comfortable with you.

5. Boundaries are not always communicated. Setting and maintaining boundaries is a very personal thing and some of your boundaries won’t be respected even if you make it clear where they are, so it’s not necessary to share them. When you are too weak to defend a boundary, it is often best not to mention it because if you mention it and are tested, your weakness may be used against you.

6. Boundaries are not immovable. Life happens. Things change. Often in a dysfunctional relationship, the first boundaries are very basic and they can be moved forward as the relationship improves. It is perfectly ok to start with “I can’t allow myself to be hurt physically or verbally” and eventually expand it to include threatening behaviors and dirty looks. Sometimes you have to choose your battles and you can tolerate small improvements as long as you see improvement. Sometimes boundaries are changed as trust grows–I was in a domestic violence situation and it took a while before my husband could make any sudden moves toward me, but that’s no longer a boundary for me.

7. Boundaries are not new, arbitrary, or invented. Boundaries are really discovered. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what makes you uncomfortable or afraid. You may not know you have a boundary if it’s never been tested. You may not recognize a boundary if it’s been violated so often that you’re inured to the pain (as is common in child abuse). Your boundaries exist whether you are aware of them or not. If you learn to defend them as you discover them, you can be more comfortable and confident. You will be more aware of when unexpected boundaries are being crossed, even if you had never considered the situation.

Friends

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You may have noticed that I’ve been posting more information about other authors and books lately. I hope you are finding these posts helpful and that you know that I am doing it because I find these things helpful and I want you to have other perspectives.

As I was building this website, I realized that I needed information from a variety of sources and as I located helpful books and websites, I started introducing myself to the writers. We have a lot in common and although many of them have moved past the isolation I’ve been in, they do understand. We are becoming friends.

I don’t have a lot of friends because having a bipolar partner can make it hard to get out with other people and impossible to make plans. I’m an introvert by nature, so I didn’t think I needed friends. But it’s sure nice to have them.

Maybe you’ve been isolated by being in a bipolar relationship. Even people who make friends easily can have trouble maintaining friendships when the things they are dealing with are hard to talk about or hard for people to understand. I know that. I also know that we all need people we can talk with comfortably and share our hopes, dreams, fears and problems.

You’ve probably heard all the usual advice like join a club or take a class, but it’s the usual advice because it works–if those things are available and you can get away.  If you can’t get away or there aren’t appropriate groups in your neighborhood, try making friends online. You can post on this page if you want someone who gets the bipolar thing, or any of the many email support groups. You can go to a forum online on any topic that interests you and introduce yourself. You’ll find plenty of people with common interests. Exchange email addresses with people after you get to know them from public posts and go from there.

Even if it seems like you know a person quickly online, do be careful. Sometimes things are not as they appear and it is easy to post things online that might not be absolutely true. Give it time. Check out other places where your new friend might post and see if their posts are consistent. If something doesn’t feel right, step back and think about it. Those gut feelings are usually right.

You may never meet online friends in person, but you may find that on your next trip across the country you have a place to stop for coffee with someone who has never seen you but knows you and cares about you. It’s good to have a few friends of your own.

Don’t be a stranger. I’m out here making new friends.

 

 

Radical Well-Being

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I meet a lot of other authors online and occassionally come across someone in a different field who has something worthwhile for those of us dealing with bipolar. Rita Hancock MD, author of Radical Well-Being–A Biblical Guide to  Overcoming Pain, Illness and Addiction, is one of those authors. As a doctor she has found  that often physical pain and compulsive behavior is magnified by spiritual or emotional pain.

Her book offers both insight and solutions. My review is  in the next post.

 

(1) Tell us about your book!

Radical Well-being—A Biblical Guide to Overcoming Pain, Illness, and Addictions is about how emotional and spiritual stressors can aggravate physical pain problems and illnesses (such as fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, neck and back pain, irritable bowels, allergies, rashes, etc.) and even cause us to fall into compulsive behaviors like overeating, consuming drugs and alcohol, etc.

In my book, I tell lots and lots of stories about patients who have broken free from these problems by addressing things like

  1.  unforgiveness toward people who hurt them;
  2.  lies that they internalized about themselves when they were children; and
  3.  areas of sin that they were refusing to acknowledge.

(2) What motivated you to write Radical Well-being?

After only a short time in practice, I noticed that some patients had physical pain in spite of negative x-rays, MRIs, and blood tests. Sometimes, those people had alignment issues or muscle spasms that caused pain. Obviously, if I found potential physical causes, I treated them. But, sometimes, even after I treated those people, they still hurt!

Eventually, as I matured in my faith and as I matured as a physician, I got gutsier and started asking patients about past emotional traumas (and even spiritual issues) in those situations. It turned out that getting my patients to talk about the “issues” of their lives made a huge difference in their stress levels and in their physical health. I figured if my patients benefitted and found pain relief and relief of stress-induced illness that way maybe others needed to hear about this, too.

(3) Did you write about yourself in any of those patient stories?

You bet! Little pieces of my own story are woven into a few of the patient scenarios I talk about in my book. I have personally benefitted from thinking this way, too! That’s why I know how good it feels to break free from the lies that we internalize about ourselves while growing up.

(4) How can this information help people with bipolar disorder or their family members?

I believe EVERYONE can benefit from uncovering the lies that we believe about ourselves, forgiving those who hurt us, and coming clean with God in regard to our sins. Specifically, in terms of BPD, I believe there could be a fair amount of guilt, anger, bitterness, and resentment among the family members and sufferers of this condition.

Many of my patients are bipolar, so I’ve had a reasonable glimpse into the stresses associated with this condition—not just those experienced by the patients, but those experienced by their families, too.

(5) What parting words would you like to leave my readers with?

No matter if you’re manic, depressed, holding steady in-between, or if you’re a family member or friend of a person with BPD, God loves you very much and wants you to be freed from emotional and spiritual stressors that might be adding to your situation. My prayer is that you and everyone else you know can find this kind of uplifting relief by reading my book, Radical Well-being.

Thanks so much for this opportunity to talk about my book, Bonnie!

Mass Murder Prevention

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What can I do? As we hear the news of yet another school shooting, those of us with mental illness in our own families pray for the families of the victims and live in dread of becoming the families of the shooters. We know that few of the shooters really have a diagnosed mental illness and even fewer are being treated or even watched. We feel helpless and hopeless to prevent the next tragedy, but there are things every adult can do:

1. If you have any sort of weapon registered in your name, make sure it is secure—that it can’t be easily stolen by a burglar or a troubled family member. Locks and keys—not hidden in a drawer or under the mattress—are the way to keep your gun from taking innocent lives.

2. If you have a friend or family member who is showing signs of depression—not necessarily sadness, but maybe feelings of hopelessness, thoughts about death and dying, unexplained aches and pains, extreme tiredness, talk to them about those feelings and help them to get to a doctor. These can be the earliest symptoms of many serious problems and they can be successfully treated.

3. If you have a friend or family member who shows signs of paranoia—who expresses feelings of being persecuted, fear of things that don’t seem quite reasonable, unexplained anxiety of any sort, take those feelings seriously and steer them to get appropriate help.  These can be the earliest symptoms of serious problems and there are treatments that work.

4. If you are feeling any of the symptoms above or have other troubling psychological issues, don’t tough it out—get help. Nice normal people snap and do stupid things: make sure you aren’t one of them.

5. Tell everyone you know that having mental illness isn’t the problem. Having undiagnosed and untreated mental illness may be the problem.  Having overwhelming stress and snapping just once can also be the problem. Stopping the stigma and getting people who know that they need help to understand that getting help for mental illness is no different from getting help for other medical problems, that seeing a psychiatrist is no more a sign of weakness than seeing a cardiologist or an oncologist or a gynecologist.

6. Educate friends and neighbors of the less noticed symptoms of stress, depression or paranoia so they can watch out for them and encourage their friends and family members who suffer from them to get appropriate help.

7. Educate friends and neighbors of the sneaky little symptoms that you have come to recognize as signs of impending episodes—these can be signs that a person with no known illness is approaching a breaking point. Catch it before it becomes dangerous.

If those of us who are familiar with chronic mental illness can recognize the danger signs in our loved ones, we can start recognizing those signs in others who may not have chronic mental illness, but who might be headed toward a breaking point and in need of intervention.

If we recognize the danger, we may be able to stop the next mass murder before it happens and save the victims, the potential shooter, and their families from a horrific tragedy.

If you are reading this and you aren’t familiar with the symptoms of stress, depression, and paranoia—do a search of those things and get familiar. Then watch for those symptoms in yourself and others who are close to you. You can save unnecessary suffering and innocent lives.

Impulse control?

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We are the proud owners of a 2012 semi truck. Although we had agreed that Troy would work with the same company for at least a year and have some money in the bank for emergencies before making that step, with less than a year total of driving and with only two months since he switched employers, Troy surprised me by bringing home his “own” truck. Surprise! Huh?

So far he’s brought home one check that was comparable to what he was making as a company driver, two that were less than half, and two that weren’t deposits because he had a negative balance. Do you have any idea how raw my tongue is from the biting. He gets upset when I look at him sideways, so “I told you so” is not exactly helpful however true. I knew this would happen. I told him to do the numbers from company driving to see how it would compare. I told him to get to know the company a bit. I told him things he didn’t want to hear. So he surprised me.

Why do I feel like I’ve been jumped from behind and beaten senseless? All of the bills are late this month. I can’t start substitute teaching until I get my background check (scheduled for this Saturday) completed. I’m not making enough on the books yet to support us. How can he be so oblivious? How can he be angry with me for not being supportive enough when he doesn’t do what he agrees to do? I know impulse control is an issue, but who knew that they’d lease a $100,000.00+ truck to someone who doesn’t have a whole year working since he’s been on disability? They’re crazier than he is!

How do you deal with it when your bipolar partner does something impulsive that scares the daylights out of you? (Comments below would be appreciated.) Do you try to fix it? Do you make them fix it? Do you step back and try to figure out where to go from here? Divorce? Murder?

I’ve learned to fight crazy with rational. This is not the end of the world. I paid the power bill and we do still have time to pay everything else before anything terrible happens–the bill collectors will wait one month without even getting upset. He will either get a reasonably good check this week or he will return the truck and go back to company driving–that was his idea. He gets paid every week, so we could have a regular check in two weeks, most and I could start getting substitute teaching checks the week after that. We will survive. We always have.

Meanwhile, it’s pushed me to think more about promoting my book and that might just be a good thing.

I woke up this morning and while I usually don’t turn on the TV until evening, I turned on The Today Show and saw Justin Bieber’s mother promoting her book about growing up with abuse and how she survived it. She has a big advantage with promoting because of her son, but my story is just as interesting and I’m a “normal” person who has some helpful ideas. I sent my story to the Today Show at NBC. I will probably never hear back from them, but it would definitely lift my spirits if they even acknowledge the idea. I don’t know if we could afford a trip to New York, but we couldn’t afford not to go if they agreed to interview us.

I’m working on an article for the local paper, too. Got to be careful what I say locally because everyone at church will read it.  I’m pretty sure they already know we’re a bit off over here, but I don’t know how they will react. It’s strange that I’m more comfortable approaching the whole world on the internet or the whole country on the national news than putting an article in the local paper or doing a local radio interview (still trying to work up the nerve to do that) or even local tv. Maybe it’s that I don’t really expect to get on the Today Show so it’s low risk.

Besides, maybe going on a national talk show would cause a nice spike in sales and someday down the line I’d get a decent check from Amazon so I wouldn’t have to be so nervous. I don’t think the local media could do that for me. I could be wrong.

What’s a Vacation?

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The past couple posts have been about projects that I thought you’d be interested in, but it’s time to get back to writing my own posts and I thought I’d give an update on what it’s like being the designated sane person at my house.

I took two weeks of vacation away from the house and the computer and everything and spent two weeks in the semi with my husband.  I should probably be coming back ready to roll, but I actually came back early because the son who was supposed to be watching things for me managed to get both my scooter and the family car impounded and himself arrested.  I don’t think it was entirely the heat (it IS over 100° F here) that has sucked the life right out of me.

I know that all things work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to his purpose and I can hardly wait to see what God does with this. People wonder how I keep it together and it just occurred to me that I may try a little harder just because I want to be here when it gets good,

Meanwhile, back at insanityville, I’ve just read a great book about domestic violence and was reminded of what that was like before Troy decided that he didn’t want to be abusive any more and being thankful that we weren’t dealing with that any more when…the stress hit Troy like a ton of bricks.

I missed a phone call last night. Actually I missed several of them. Sometimes when I get busy reading or writing or working on a project I lose all track of time and if I don’t happen to hear the phone…it doesn’t occur to me that his world is not on hold like mine is. By the time I checked my phone there were 17 missed calls with three or four messages.

I can’t repeat what was said in polite company, but the messages sounded full of rage and paranoia and abuse. I tried to call to talk but of course he wouldn’t answer right away. When we finally talk, I mention that the phone is set to the loudest setting and is on a table in the room where I was most of that time but I didn’t hear it ring. He is sullen and still angry. I should have missed him and called. I obviously don’t love him as much as he loves me–and he leaves me those scathing messages? Hmmmm? I know it’s the mania talking and he brings up his meds before I do. He has noticed that he is taking tomorrow’s pills today and doesn’t know where he messed up. Oh, no.

I hope and pray he doesn’t overdose on the lithium (toxic and therapeutic levels are so close anyway) and wonder how he’ll get this straightened out. He should probably talk to his doctor, but I wouldn’t wish his bad mood on her. He will need blood levels done as soon as he gets home. Until then, who knows what he’ll do.

I get that he’s stressed to the max and that stress can do this to him, but I’m stressed, too and I don’t have drugs to balance me or even anyone to talk with. I have this blog and I do hope it helps someone besides me. I guess if the purpose is to show that even without a happily ever after, we can keep working through our relationship it does show that. Hey, if we can keep this marriage going after years of domestic violence, the full range of bipolar behavior, and raising four sons who  have either learned bad coping techniques or inherited bipolar genes or both,  you can probably work through whatever is complicating your life.

A Family’s Secret–Bipolar Disorder on Treetop Lane–Author

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I’ve been trying to get some new books posted to the site, books that will help people understand what bipolar is really like, books that offer a little different point of view, books that show some of the variations of bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder can present in very different ways and it seems like nothing can really prepare you for it.

While looking for books to share with you, I’ve met some interesting people by email and the author of this book has become one of my friends. Carol Horan wrote a memoir about her marriage to a man with bipolar disorder called A Family’s Secret–Bipolar Disorder on Treetop Lane.  It is available on Amazon. Carol also has a website at http://bipolarfamilysecret.com/ where you can learn more. Let me introduce Carol:

            Now happily remarried and retired, Carol is grateful for having two adult children who she feels close to in her heart, if not geographically. She is the grandmother of seven, four girls and three boys. She loves to read, cook, teach water fitness, golf and volunteer at an agency which helps abused children. She also enjoys Yoga, Pilates and swimming. She currently co-facilitates Divorce Care with her current husband at her church.

Carol spent a total of twenty-eight years in the field of marriage and family therapy. She began working at a community mental health agency for six years. Later she worked for two counties doing outreach with chronic truants and their families for six years. At the same time, she began a private practice in marriage and family therapy which lasted for twenty-two years. During that time she worked as an EAP associate for two Employee Assistance Programs. She was also a presenter for a county Kids in a Divorcing Society Program for fifteen years.

She spent fifteen years employed as a counselor and prevention coordinator for a large high school district.

She feels strongly about our need to advocate for laws that help those who suffer from mental illness. They need access to professional help, medication and hospitalization. Far too many people suffering from mental illness find themselves homeless or incarcerated. For many it is a vicious and never ending circle. Individuals and families suffer, and so does the public at large. Mental illness is treatable.

Untreated mental illness, however, is frightening to the patient and their loved ones. A major difficulty is getting a patient to submit to treatment and medication, since one of the worst aspects of the disease is the accompanying denial that there is any need for help. The denial found in patients who are suffering from a mental illness is often similar to those who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs.

When Carol’s first husband was experiencing mania, he saw no need for help. He was convinced everyone else had a problem. This is often the case. Her memoir is drawn from her memories and journal describing her experiences in a twenty-six year marriage. There were many good memories, but untreated mental illness changed everything.

Don’t forget to look for her book on Amazon. And check out her website at http://bipolarfamilysecret.com/ .

 

 

 

Self-Help for Bipolar

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Pictures in the Dark – bipolar non-fiction is the project of a friend of mine who has bipolar disorder and has learned to live with it, mostly successfully, using a variety of techniques and coping skills. She is very self-aware and is able to function mostly without medication, though we both agree that this is not possible or even preferable for many people who have bipolar disorder.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I know much of her story from her websites and from being a facebook friend. She has some great ideas from her own experience of living with bipolar and she has the writing skills to communicate those things well.

If you are reading this because you have bipolar disorder and are looking for information to make your relationships work or if you have a partner who has bipolar disorder and who is accepting enough of the diagnosis to want to do more than take medication, please consider at least preordering a copy of the book.

If you are reading this because you have a bipolar partner who isn’t compliant and who doesn’t believe they have a problem, you still may want to read this book yourself to get a better idea of what bipolar looks like from inside. The more you understand what is going on, the better you will be able to cope and help.

If you are reading this because you have any strong interest in mental illness, if you want to put some money into helping people with bipolar disorder and into stopping the stigma, go to this page and select your level of involvement.

If you can’t donate, consider following and sharing our progress at http://bi-polarbears.com or http://picturesinthedark.com – if you’d like to submit to ‘Darkroom’, on the understanding that there will be some form of compensation (even token if we don’t make our goals), and see the breakdown of what the income is going towards, please do.

I’m not being paid for this endorsement and I don’t advertise anything on this site unless I really believe in it and know that it will be helpful. I hope some of you will join me in supporting this.

It Takes a Crisis

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I’m not sure how or why it happens, but any time Troy is ramping up or manic, it can all come to a grinding halt when the world falls in and suddenly he is doing exactly what I wanted in the first place, but this time it’s entirely his idea. What do I mean?

Last week-end when the mortgage was due, and our dog had escaped and been attacked by a neighbor’s dog leaving a neck wound that cost $150 for the vet to clean up and send home medication, Troy came home with the idea that he was going to rebuild the fence around the dog yard. Never mind that the dog doesn’t escape through the fence, but through the porch, Troy was determined to change the chainlink fence for wood and there was no room for discussion. He gets like that when he is manic and he’ll say that every time I don’t agree with him I accuse him of being manic. That’s not true, it’s just that when he’s not manic he can usually discuss things rationally and we come to an agreement.

Rather than argue with me, he gets up early while I am still asleep and runs to Home Depot for supplies to make the new fence. The fact that he spent the money that should have gone toward the mortgage is not his fault because he didn’t realize this was the mortgage paycheck–he thought he paid that last week. He didn’t check because his memory is perfect (yeah, whatever) and the money is gone, he’ll catch that next week.

I leave for church on Sunday morning alone. Thinking that he’ll be up shortly, I start the coffee and make sure the dogs are inside. Somehow I didn’t close the back door tightly (that needs to be replaced soon, too) and the dog managed to escape through the porch by pushing things out of the way and knocking down the board I had put up to cover the escape until Troy came home to discuss how we would patch the hole.

Since the dog (Jay) has a hole in his neck from his previous escape, he isn’t wearing the collar with his rabies tag and our phone number so Troy is frantically looking for the dog, contacts the police to help, and calls me at church to come home immediately to help find Jay. By the time I return the call and get home, Jay is there to greet me and Troy is working on a way to patch the hole in the porch wall. It will take a bit for me to calm down.

We now have one side of the porch reinforced with the materials bought to build a fence, the tool desk moved away from the walls so there is no way to climb up and out through the screened windows, and a storm door reinforced with the scraps. It actually looks pretty good and we will probably eventually get more “fencing” to finish the other walls. Why we couldn’t discuss it and start out to do the most urgent thing first is beyond my comprehension, but at least it’s done.

I know you can’t argue with crazy and I know sometimes it takes seeing to believe, but why can’t I ever get through to him without a crisis? Why do we have to end up in the emergency room or calling the police to track down our dog or some other crazy drama?

Because, in spite of being on good medication, in spite of trying to make good lifestyle choices, in spite of watching for signs and going through our routine for averting disaster, sometimes bipolar is bigger than both of us and wants to  remind us just who is the boss.

And life goes on.

Dis-Stressed

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I’m working on getting this site cleaned up and filled up and finding people who have books and materials that might be interesting to you or my other readers, you know, useful information for a successful life with this complication hanging over us, fiction and memoirs that tell stories that let us know we are not in this alone, plain old books that might come in especially handy because we are living with a bipolar spouse, and I have added a couple to my “found books” page and hope to be adding others soon. It’s stressful because some of the stories I am reading are so poorly edited that I wouldn’t wish them upon you. Some have no signs of planning or organization. So I’m asking you–if you have discovered a resource that you think should be on this page, make a note in the comments.

I will have to moderate those comments because unfortunately when links are allowed to go through unmoderated it seems like spambots come out in force and have a field day. I promise, I will approve posts as quickly as possible, but there’s only one person working on this, so be patient.

No, this page is not my greatest stressor. This page suffers the most when I am stressed out, but often it is my sanctuary in a storm. Writing actually helps me to calm down and think things through. If you haven’t tried it, do.

Right now I am dealing with a husband who has been working for nearly nine months with the same trucking company (the first job after over ten years unemployed) and he is starting to see greener grass with other trucking companies. One of the annoying things about him before he started treatment was that he couldn’t keep a job for more than a few months and was on to something new, frequently leaving gaps in employment when he couldn’t replace a job as easily as he expected.  Well, at least he is finding another job before leaving this one. We have made some progress. Still, I don’t believe he has really thought this through, nor does he want to think it through. His current company isn’t treating him as well as he’d like and another might be better. Greener pastures await.

But I am not so sure. I fear change. I kept a job I really didn’t like for 13 years rather than make a change. He can’t wait one year. Nine months and he’s off. I know he may have better experiences with other companies, but he won’t accept that he might also have worse experiences, that he might not last even nine months with the next company. I’m afraid.

I’m afraid he’s manic. Not floridly manic, hearing voices, starting fights, wanting to run the company. No, but maybe a little manic–believing that he deserves special treatment or that he knows more about trucking than the people who have been there all these years. Believing that he is being intentionally and personally attacked when a phone isn’t answered or an error is made.

And I’m at home…waiting, wondering, worrying and writing. I’m at home… trying to hold myself together, trying to understand, trying to plan my own next move.  I’m at home… looking for resources to help other people who are like myself. Waiting for the other shoe.to.drop. Waiting. Thanks for waiting with me.