Spring Forward, Fall Back

By Joe Kraynak
May 26, 2009

I work at home. My wife (who has bipolar) works for the local school district. Several times during the year are difficult for us. It seems, for example, that when we “spring forward” for daylight savings time, we almost invariably spring into mania. We do okay over the summer. When she returns to work in the fall, sometimes we do okay, sometimes not. The Christmas break is also usually a bad time.

In part, I blame this on seasonal shifts, changes in workload, and holiday stress, but I think some of it is also due to the fact that the household dynamics change. Accustomed to spending 8-10 hours a day working alone, when school lets out, I suddenly have someone around nearly 24/7. Whatever balance we’ve achieved as individuals or a couple is suddenly gone, and we have to work on establishing a new balance with a whole new set of rules.

Do you and your partner have to deal with similar transitions? Do you feel they cause enough strain to fuel a mood episode? What do you do, if anything, to try to smooth the transition and reduce the stress?

In 1999, my wife, Cecie, experienced her first major manic episode. She ended up in St. Vincent’s Stress Center, where she was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. She has been hospitalized a total of three times – all for mania. She rarely experiences the debilitating depression that many people with bipolar disorder struggle with. We have two children together, both of whom are pretty much adults at this point. Over the past decade or so, we’ve struggled to coexist with this disease. At times, it seems to be a cruel puppet master pulling our strings to act out some demented drama on the stage we call our home. Most times, we manage to keep this beast chained up, through a combination of medicine and therapy, but occasionally it escapes and turns our home inside out. In 2005, I had the good fortune to co-author Bipolar Disorder For Dummies with Dr. Candida Fink. In the process, I learned a great deal about bipolar disorder and strategies for treating it, preventing major mood episodes, and dealing with the fallout when preventive measures are ineffective. Through this blog, I hope to share what I’ve learned about bipolar while I continue to discover even more.