It’s possible to love someone and be upset with someone.
It’s possible to love someone and be worried about someone.
It’s possible to love someone and be very, very angry at someone.
It’s possible to be two places at once with your emotions when you love someone with bipolar disorder.
Love is interesting. We can love those who harm us. We can love those who disappear. We can love those who refuse help. And we can love those who are too sick to receive our love.
Seeing the duality of loving someone with bipolar disorder allows you to have conflicting emotions.
Loving someone while also setting limits allows you to take care of yourself when a person is ill.
Saying no allows you to keep the peace in your own brain when the brain of a loved one is anything but peaceful.
Understanding that you don’t save the life of another person doesn’t mean you are abandoning someone you love.
I wrote Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder:Understanding and Helping Your Partner out of a place of love. I wrote it for all of the partners who went through and are going through what I experienced when my partner was so sick he said he didn’t love me, had never loved me and didn’t care if he ever saw me again.
I wrote Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder: A 4-Step Plan for You and Your Loved Ones to Manage the Illness and Create Lasting Stability for those of us with the illness, but it’s also for the family members, partners, friends and health care professionals who have to be on the receiving end of a mood swing!
You are not alone if today is hard. You are not alone if you love someone who can’t be there for YOU.
Decide what you need. Decide how you want to use your money. Decide the line that you will not cross to help someone who is ill. This is your life. Even parents have to make decisions that are painful. Partners have to make decisions that focus on the children sometimes at the expense of the partner who is ill.
Does this create guilt? Of course it does- Duality means that there are two emotions struggling with each other. Love and guilt. Love and anger. Love and frustration. Love and DONE.
Who are you in the journey of loving someone with a serious mental health disorder?
What role do you want in the life of someone who is ill?
Who can you talk to? What do you need?
Focus on yourself first. This gives you the strength of the multiple emotions everyone feels when bipolar is in the relationship.
And remember- treat bipolar first. Avoid The Bipolar Conversation. Ask for help from someone who has been there. Read Loving more than once. Highlight the ideas in Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder that you want to use in your relationships. Protect your kids from the bipolar gene by avoiding anti depressants and ADD meds in childhood. Learn all you can and take care of you!
We can live with duality if we know it’s normal part of loving someone with bipolar disorder.
Julie
If you’re a parent of a child with bipolar disorder, please join me on The Stable Table on Facebook. If you’re a partner, please join me on The Stable Bed. If you have bipolar and want to learn more on how to help those around you understand what YOU need, join me on my Julie A. Fast Facebook page!
