A couple of months ago, I was having a discussion with one of the women from my bipolar support group. We were going over some of the ways in which bipolar disorder has actually improved our lives, and I said something like, “I think it can make us a little more accepting of other people.” She looked at me and responded, “It makes us incredibly accepting of other people.” Continue reading →

I’ve been a bipolar husband for almost six years now, and a bipolar father for just over five. Being a bipolar husband and father has been a real challenge in a lot of ways, but it has also been an incredible experience and opportunity. It has really taught me a lot about myself, my condition and relationships in general. In this article, I thought I’d share some of the things that I’ve learned. Continue reading →

The social media has exploded in the last ten years. Millions if not billions of people spend hours online every month, catching up with people, updating their status, and looking at the latest viral images, stories and videos.

A someone with bipolar disorder, I’ve noticed that social media has some positive and negative effects. After all, I’m engaging in it right now :). Overall, I think it is a very positive thing for people with mental illnesses, as I will discuss below. However, social media carries with it some dangers for people with bipolar disorder that are difficult to prevent. Continue reading →

For me, one of the most frustrating symptoms of bipolar disorder is social anxiety. In conversing with other people, I often find myself running a constant check on what it is I am saying and how other people will respond to it. After conversing with people, I often find myself going over every little thing I said, hoping that I didn’t offend anyone.

Unfortunately, since my mood tends to influence (*cough* distort) what I think people think of me, this experience can be very taxing. This can lead me to avoid social situations and to feel very uncomfortable in those situations. Even when I do pull myself up by my bootstraps and do it, it can make the experience of interacting with people far less pleasant than it could be. Continue reading →

Disclosing one’s bipolar disorder to family members can be very difficult, because we never really know how people will react, and once we have disclosed, there is really no way to take it back. My own experience with disclosure has been a largely positive one, but not everyone has such positive experiences. For this article, I wanted to talk about some of the possible positive and negative reactions that we can get, and how to deal with them. Continue reading →

Having a romantic relationship with bipolar disorder can be challenging, and I have discussed some of these challenges before. In this post, however, I want to discuss something very specific: the bipolar experience of love. Love, as an emotional state, can be extremely powerful, even for people without bipolar disorder. For people with bipolar disorder, it mixes together with our mood episodes in various ways.

At the end of the day, this creates some special challenges for those of us with bipolar disorder when it comes to love. Continue reading →

I may be a little controversial with this post, but bear with me. Part of the reason for stigma around bipolar disorder is that we can be a little different when symptomatic, and people aren’t quite sure how to talk with us during those periods. I know for myself, irritability, depression and especially effusiveness can create some socially awkward situations. As a result, we can be ignored or even disliked in some cases. Continue reading →

My wife, Kathy, has written this week’s blog post. Please enjoy. -Daniel

My husband has bipolar disorder. I knew this before I married him. However, I don’t think I really understood what that meant for his life until after we had lived together for some time, after our marriage. . I remember reading somewhere that in a marriage, you see both your partner’s weaknesses and strengths as if through a magnifying glass. You see them at their very worst, and their very best. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago was Mental Illness Awareness Week, which gave me a lot to think about. For the most part, I’ve considered my bipolar disorder to be something essentially private, much like if I had asthma or some other disease. As a result, it didn’t warrant any public revelation, not so much because I was ashamed of it (I’m not), but because I don’t normally discuss any of my other illnesses, so why would I discuss this one? Continue reading →

This post is long, so I’ve decided to break it into two parts. This is the first part, while the second part is here.

I’ve only really become active in what one might call the mental health community within the last couple of years. Like any movement, the mental health community has its own vocabulary. Since I already had my own vocabulary that I was perfectly happy with, some of those uses struck me as strange, to the point where I don’t even want to use the terms. However, I’m well aware of my linguistic conservativism and that it’s probably a bad habit. Continue reading →