Part II of How’s That Working for You?

Tuesday’s post asked those with bipolar to weigh in on what works and what doesn’t. This week, family and friends of those with bipolar get their chance to weigh in on the same question in a different context. As a friend or loved one of someone who has bipolar disorder, what has helped you deal best with the situation in terms of helping yourself and your loved one?

I’ll kick off the discussion of what has and hasn’t worked for me in the past.

As Joe pointed out in his post “Bipolar Disorder and Family Dynamics,” bipolar disorder typically affects and is affected by everyone in a family. While no family member is to blame for having or causing the disorder, all family members can and should work together to try to avoid conflict and keep the tone of unavoidable disagreements to a dull roar. Strong emotions tend to fuel conflicts, which isn’t good for anyone involved.

While every family is different, here are some basic strategies that are often helpful in reducing the level of conflict at home:

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.

Rejection sensitivity is a psychological condition that causes a person to feel oversensitive to rejection or perceived rejection in relationships and social interactions. An individual with rejection sensitivity may perceive an unintentional snub or even being made to wait as deliberate rejection and feel severe, painful anxiety and perhaps even anger as a result. Appearance-based rejection sensitivity may contribute to eating disorders (see “Sensitivity to Rejection Can Be Dangerous” on PsychCentral).

What drew my attention recently to rejection sensitivity was an article in this month’s edition of the journal Bipolar Disorder based on a study entitled “Pain during depression and relationship to rejection sensitivity” (Ehnvall A, Mitchell PB, Hadzi-Pavlovic D, Malhi GS, Parker G.). These researchers looked into the relationship between severe, treatment-resistant bipolar depression, pain, and rejection sensitivity.

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.

Last week I did a post entitled “Supportive Catch Phrases That Make My Blood Boil.” It generated some great discussion, and I thank all of you who posted such insightful comments. Venting like this helps me keep a sense of humor when I’m feeling the sting, and many of your comments made me smile, some made me laugh, and a few made me think that maybe my feelings were misdirected.

A couple people were obviously upset. I noticed on our Facebook page that we lost a few people who previously “liked” the page. I’m sorry to see that, but I can understand why some people may have been turned off. It just goes to show that I’m not always the most sensitive person on the planet either.