family members views
The person with the illness, is not the best person to describe the effect the illness's extremes has on he or she and on a career or relationship with others. On this page are contributions by my family in their own words, none of what they have supplied has been altered by me, although I do not agree with it. The illness puts a strain on relationships and marriages. If you love a Bipolar then you are in for an extreme emotional Rollercoaster Ride. So if you are fainthearted get off now. This is a serious ride for persons determined to love a bipolar! We are emotional bucking broncos.
John
Wife's View
I am Johns wife, and as he says, his idea of how things are, could be entirely different to mine.
Someone said to me that it's a waste of time trying to reason with someone who is Bipolar, in fact, once a certain state of mania or depression is reached, nothing can be said to convince that person that their actions or thoughts could be strange or unreasonable. One of Johns favourite sayings is "You can't reason with unreasonable people" and that is certainly true when I have tried to reason with him in his depressions and manic moods.
Johns moods can change quite rapidly, he can be manic for months and then almost overnight become overwhelmingly depressed for no apparent reason. Once in depression he dwells on the things he may have done while manic and about problems he has caused and possibly unhappiness.
In my view, Johns manic or hypermanic mood swings seem to come about by the use of antidepressants without mood stabilizers such as Lithium. At first this was because we didn't know about him being manic depressive then the latest time it was because he ran out of Lithium and didn't get any more for a week or so, this short length of time on antidepressants alone, was enough to make him become manic, starting to blame me for everything that had ever gone wrong in his life and that I was making him so unhappy that he was having to drink quite excessively to try to blot out how unhappy I was supposedly making him. When John is like this he will often take other peoples advice whether good or bad and on this occasion he was advised to leave me (by people who knew nothing of his condition) and actually did so. He even tried to get a divorce (which luckily never happened). He actually at that time, thought it was perfectly reasonable to walk out on myself and our two daughters without warning so that he could be selfish and do as he pleased without any responsibilities.
This was totally unlike him, apart from when he is manic, or depressed and anyone who really knew him would know that he would never behave like that.
Eventually, his mood started to change to depression and he realized that the decision made on the spur of the moment had been wrong and he came home where he sank into a bad depression with suicidal thoughts, and even being convinced that he would never get out of it. He was thinking the same type of thoughts he had after his first big depression which followed the purchase of our current home which nobody apart from him wanted but he used to say that he didn't care what we thought, he was doing as he pleased. That time, he was manic until about a week before we moved then his mood changed completely to depression and he realized that he didn't want the house either. Fortunately, we are now used to living here and apart from when he is depressed John likes the house.
He is now hopefully on proper medication and has the support of a CPN who visits regularly.
I hope that we are now able to recognize the first signs of a mood swing (if one happens) and to get him to see a doctor as quickly as possible. He has most of the typical symptoms of mania and depression when he is ill so we should be able to head off any major mood swings.
R
Daughter's View
The following was written by my daughter when she was 9. At that stage I hadn't been diagnosed as Bipolar. It shows manic obsession with something that only I wanted and is also mentioned by my wife in her piece above.
John
I know now that I was at least hypermanic in my pursuit of the house Castle Dracula (Braesyde) that we have been living in for the last 5 years. We have had to spend money and worked hard on it but it is now ok.
John was having Grave Doubts probably because his mood had changed shortly before moving in. I do consider myself to have been at least hypermanic when I was so insistent on buying a house no-one wanted. But what a fantastic bargain the old house is with fantastic views
