If she is struggling and is ignored, even for a few minutes, then she is ALWAYS ignored. All other times in our history when she was ignored come rushing back and are added up to create this huge block of being ignored. There is no doubt that being ignored is not a good thing, no one likes it. The trouble with the bipolar patient is a single incident is magnified one hundred fold. If a person was ignored all the time, they would become angry too. The anger as an outcome is not unreasonable. The anger to an innocent incident is what identifies a bipolar sufferer.
If she is struggling and she is left alone, even for a few hours, then she is ALWAYS left alone. It does not matter that she is more than welcome to come along and SHE chooses to stay at home. This is not important. What IS important is that she is left alone. This is the part of Bipolar Disorder that is very difficult for the support group has great difficulty in understanding, myself included. If you don't want to join in, but become very upset when you are not included, there is nothing that could have been done to keep your emotion positive. The situation is LOSE-LOSE.
Bipolar sufferers always struggle to maintain a strong support group because the support group, spouses included, want to have traditional measures of success to apply. If I try to be positive, to do positive things, the patient will be positive and have upbeat feelings. The truth is that NO MATTER what you try, the amplification of emotions may make the outcome negative and there is nothing you can do about it.
To the many members of bipolar sufferer's support groups out there, many of you as spouses, I say this. Keep your chin up and keep being positive. Sometimes the support group needs a support group...
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