Bipolar Disorder Affecting Your Relationships?

You are not alone!  I often read through my past articles for Bp Magazine. I’m reminded that my bipolar disorder management plan is daily. I just moved to Europe. I’m staying with a friend in a beautiful, quite and very remote English village.  Well, remote in my city girl way of thinking! I planned carefully for this move. I did all I needed to do to prepare MYSELF. Well guess what? The biggest skills I needed when I got here were my relationship skills! What are your greatest strengths as a friend? Julie

Here is the start of the article called Bipolar and the Relationship Trap from Bp Magazine:

Recently, a friend asked me, “Julie, why don’t you write a book about bipolar disorder and relationships?” “I already did that with my first book for couples where one person has bipolar,” I replied. “I don’t mean couples, Julie!” he exclaimed. “I mean friendships. I can’t seem to keep any friends.”

I know what my friend—a man in his late 30s who struggles with bipolar disorder—meant by this statement. Like me, he wanted good relationships, but often found that bipolar got in the way. In the years after I was finally diagnosed with bipolar in 1995, I managed to lose almost all my friends because of my neediness, irritation, paranoia, medication side effects, and more. In 2001, I hit rock bottom when I received a letter from my best friend (I’ll call her “Melissa”) that changed my life forever. While it was terribly hard to read, this letter ,in fact, saved my future relationships.

Melissa and I had been friends since high school; I was always the aggressive force in the relationship. As my illness got progressively worse, I became weak while she became strong. She started sticking up for herself; I, on the other hand, began to sink into a hole of depression that seemed inescapable. I called Melissa constantly and complained about my life. When she didn’t respond the way I wanted, I became paranoid and angry, telling her she wasn’t a good friend.

 An unwelcome look at ‘relationship killers’…… click below to keep reading. 

 

Click here to read the whole article from Bp Magazine.

 

 

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