Free Therapist Advice Purchase eBooks and MP3's for Immediate Download EFT/Meridian Tapping Bipolar Treatment Depression Treatment Alternative Treatment for Pain Santa Rosa Therapy Meditation, Yoga, and More News, Links, and Inspiration
Runs A Business Wrecks Her RelationshipsNEW by: Paul Campbell. UK
Hi everyone reading this,
I am 59 and will be 'collecting my bus pass' on the 17th February this year. I have been in three, difficult, long-term relationships since 1973.
The first one, (still working on a friendly basis, at arm�s length), with a psychosomatic hypochondriac, was a lover for a couple of years but then, being a generation older, became like an aunt. The second, in 1984, (a misguided effort to flee the �lodger-nest� of 'auntie'), was with a 6 years younger woman, who was a violent bipolar, with severe social phobia and agoraphobia. We married at Gretna Green, Scotland, in 1987, and later had two children towards the end of the troubled marriage. We had a daughter in 1990 and a son in 1992. We broke up in early 1993. I slept on the settee the last two years because I was barred from the bedroom of our small flat. When the children arrived, due to anxiety over the constant emotional turmoil, I started to suffer regular panic attacks.
I then spent the next 18 years struggling to maintain contact with my children, against a siege wall of cynical opposition, and Parental Alienation Syndrome, which persists to this day. I still suffer from chronic depression, but thankfully, I no longer have recurring panic attacks after every contact, now that my children have grown up and can partially think for themselves, outside of their mother�s brainwashing. Naturally, both children have been emotionally damaged by the pointless power-struggle and strife caused by their mother�s paranoia.
In the last 7 years I have been involved with an exciting and stimulating - but exceptionally volatile and emotionally violent woman - whom I believe is an undiagnosed Reactive Bipolar. She has had two, extremely violent, marriages, with two 6� 3�, 240 lb men, who, of course, fought back (fatal mistake � played into her hands).
Despite being mostly very passive, she has even attacked me on a number of occasions, usually while kicking me out of her home.
Three years ago, I was attacked while driving back from Soho, the day after an exclusive, luxury antique hotel suite, birthday present from me, including two bottles of vintage champagne. She was afraid we were going to be late for a relative�s wedding and I after an hour of screaming at me while she was driving, I got punched in the face, and kicked out of the car while she tried to drag me down the road, as I was getting out. The next year she taunted me with texts, while lying in a four poster bed and downing a bottle of Krug from, �my antique hotel birthday suite�, in a Sussex castle she had booked, after dumping me the evening before on trumped up charges.
After 5 years, I managed to contact her second ex-husband, while separated by one of her usual, �final bust-up�, �51st birthday celebration�, with her. Beware of champagne!
What am I dealing with?
Jan 06, 2010 Rating
Bipolar DenialNEW by: Family Member of Bipolar Denial
Thank you for your comments Bill and you are right in suggesting the family has to accept that this disorder can certainly be found throughout the family tree line. I like your reference to "riding the bicycle" but my situation is at the point where we have to get our loved one to accept the idea of even getting on the "bicycle" and we are all prepared to help balance the bike from all sides! Where we are at is trying to find the best approach to enable our family member to accept that there is a disorder causing unbalance in their life and with help it can be addressed. We feel like are hands are tied...
Jan 06, 2010 Rating
Family Denial can be added crueltyNEW by: Bill
As a bipolar person, denial is a huge issue, and it helps tremendously in coping with the disease to acknowledge one has it to learn as much about it as possible. As horrid as the disease seems it can have a rhythm between the two wheels of mania (or hypomania) and depression (or severe depression), and once one learns to somewhat ride this bicycle it is not all that bad.
Denial is that fear of even getting on the bicycle of bipolar, for the approach of some less compassionate physicians or families is a presentation that it is solely a matter of an "outer control". Along with intervention there has to be presentation that within the disease, especially these days, there is a possibility of managing it from the end of the one suffering.
Also at a certain juncture in education of the bipolar overcoming denial, they will discover that some family members, a grandparent, a sister, a brother, or a parent, also has either bipolar lite, or full on bipolar, and the FAMILY has to be equally OPEN and not in DENIAL that BIPOLAR RUNS IN FAMILIES (or at least variations on a theme).
