Recently, Bob posted a story on our original Bipolar Blog called “Heartbroken and devastated from ending a marriage with my bipolar wife.” In his story, Bob talks about all he would do for his wife only to feel unappreciated and heartbroken. I don’t know Bob or his wife or their situation. Nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors in anyone’s home. However, I could sort of relate to Bob’s description of how he responded and how he felt.

When you’re in a loving relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder, it’s common to feel frustrated and unappreciated at times. No matter how much you do to show your love, your loved one may not be in a condition to return that love or respond to it in any positive way. The more you do without receiving anything positive in return, the greater the frustration and resentment.

You might start to wonder, “What about me? How long should I have to put up with this?”

I can usually tell when a loved one is upset with me. They sulk around the house, bang stuff, slam doors and drawers, avoid eye contact, and stop talking to me. Maybe I know the signs because I engage in the same behaviors when I’m upset.

Until relatively recently, however, I didn’t fully grasp how abusive the silent treatment can be. A major client of mine “went dark” on me. The client had failed to pay me upon completion of a project. Payment was about two months late.

After repeated phone calls and e-mail messages that never produced a payment, I stopped providing services, responding to e-mail messages, and returning phone calls.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has a Stages of Emotional Responses chart that traces the emotional path people generally travel in coming to terms with their loved one’s mental illness. I’m pretty much at the final stage, Stage III: Moving into Advocacy, but I’m still sort of stuck at Stage II: Learning to Cope, which is characterized by Anger/Guilt/Resentment, Recognition and Grief.

Yes, we’ve been living with bipolar disorder for about 12 years now, and I’m still angry and resentful. Now, though, I’m not angry at my wife who has bipolar disorder. I blame bipolar disorder. It accosted my wife, tried to ruin our marriage, emotionally traumatized our children, ruined my wife’s career, and stole tens of thousands of dollars.

I recently attended a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) support group meeting that’s run as a problem-solving workshop. All attendees are sworn to confidentiality, so I won’t go into details, but as one of the attendees described her situation, I felt overwhelmed by what she perceived to be the problem. It was total chaos. What she described as one problem was actually a problem pileup – numerous problems all jammed together.

Problem pileups are common in bipolar disorder. Problems tend to come in waves making you feel confused and overwhelmed. When you’re in the midst of it, you may have trouble seeing what’s actually going on. As a first step, NAMI advises making a list.

This past weekend, I participated in NAMI’s Family-to-Family training program to become a facilitator (presenter) for the course. My goal is to work with others to start a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) affiliate and one or more mental health support groups in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and offer the Family-to-Family course to people in the area who have a loved one living with a “persistent and serious mental illness” – bipolar disorder (manic depression), schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, panic and other anxiety disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Family-to-Family is a unique 12-week course (2.5 hours per class), taught by people who have loved ones who are living with one of the serious mental illnesses mentioned previously. The course is designed to lead family members through the three stages of emotional responses:

1. Dealing with catastrophic events: Characterized by crisis, chaos, shock, and denial.
2. Learning to cope: Characterized by anger, resentment, recognition, and grief.
3. Moving into advocacy: Characterized by understanding, acceptance, and advocacy/action.

At times, I become resentful that bipolar disorder occupies any part of my life, but because it does and because writing about is one of the things I do, I sort of accept that it’s going to occupy a corner in my mind.

Some time ago, when Candida and I were having trouble cooking up ideas for blog posts, I asked my wife Cecie to help us drum up some topic ideas. Soon, we were talking about bipolar disorder every day. We read books, articles, and research studies about bipolar. We even watched a couple movies and videos. I began to notice that when friends or family members asked what we had been up to lately, the topic turned to bipolar disorder.

Over the course of my family’s experience with bipolar, I have been on the receiving end of plenty of excellent information and advice. I’ve also heard several phrases intended to help us deal with painful, overwhelming situations that I have come to despise. Here are a few:

“Hang in there.”

“God never gives you more than you can handle.”

“Don’t take it personally.”

One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is a lack of insight – an inability (not unwillingness) to notice a significant shift in one’s own mood or behavior. This happens most often during acute mood episodes – manic or depressed – but can be part of the bigger picture of living with the illness. Family members agonize over how to help someone who doesn’t want help, and they sometimes watch helplessly as the illness destroys their loved one’s life.

When a loved one is cycling into mania, she may become more energized than usual–more driven to get everything done all at once. If you’re a people pleaser by nature, it’s easy to get swept up into the vortex and even contribute to it by being too helpful (in the wrong ways). If possible, it’s better to slow down and take a more rational approach. Otherwise, you and your loved one are likely to run around “like chickens with your heads cut off,” increasing everyone’s stress level.

As we write in Bipolar Disorder for Dummies, bipolar mania tends to feed itself. Mania increases stress, which fuels the mania, which further increases stress and deepens the mania. It can be a vicious cycle.

Yesterday, Lynn posted a comment on our Bipolar Disorder Medication Spotlight: Seroquel. Here’s what she had to say.