r/family_of_bipolar

I am new to this (F42). My Husband (M44) got diagnosed with the last 12 months.

When he is a having a really good day he is an amazing Husband but in his dips and low moods he is aggressive, cold and angry. This is alway directed to me and no other person.

He gets paranoid if I say something or do something what he says is wrong.

I have told him I would never leave him but my cracks are appearing and it’s now affecting me more than ever.

I feel lost.

I want to be there for her but I don’t know what else I can do. She started having a manic episode maybe two months ago and has managed to lose ALL of her friends and destroy her entire life.

She was doing so well and within two months she lost every single one of her friends. She lost her jobs and go new ones and lost them again within a week. And she hasn’t been paying rent and I think she’s about to go homeless. She lies about literally everything, but I know everyone in her life so I found out through them that she was fired because both her bosses called me and told me. I found out she was getting evicted because her neighbor called me. She lied to her family that she was on her meds and she hasn’t been, and she’s done some terrible things to them too and now she’s lost them too. She’s sleeping around a lot as well.

She has said and done some horrible and hurtful things to me, but I understand that she’s not fully understanding the consequences of her actions and I’m not taking it to heart. And it’s nothing compared to the insane things she’s done to her other friends. And after 10 years of wonderful friendship that she gave me, I can take this.

Before this nobody in her life besides myself knew she had bipolar and now she’s been banned from so many places for causing scenes, she’s getting several restraining orders against her, I know the police have been called on her many times too. I helped call them once because she was doing something terrible to one of her friends and I had to intervene.

I’ve known her longer than anyone else in her life, and it’s devastating spending any time with her. I love her so much but it’s like I’m seeing someone else walk around wearing my friend’s face. I’m giving as much as I can without hurting myself, but even seeing her is painful. It’s like my friend died. And I can’t cut her off because she really doesn’t have anyone. Even if she call me fat or ugly, I know that it’s just pain and confusion.

She doesn’t seem to understand the consequences of any of her actions at all. The friends that she hurt, she doesn’t understand how she was in the wrong and was furious when I helped them. She genuinely can’t comprehend where she went wrong and is practically in denial about everything that’s happening. My sister has bipolar disorder, but I’ve never seen someone progress this fast and so far down. I want to be her friend, I don’t want her to be alone when she comes out of this. But I’m not sure there’s anything I can do. Is there any advice or anything I can use to help this situation?

I (F21) have been with my boyfriend (M27) for a year. Everything was fine, I knew about his illness from the beginning and tried to help him. However, lately he has been getting cold more and more often. Like yesterday, for example. He came back from work, didn't say hello, didn't give me a kiss, and is ignoring me. It hurts me and I don't know if it's something wrong that I could have done or if it could be one of his episodes. I'm afraid that if I start talking to him, he might get angry or take his anger out on me.

I have no idea what to do. I left the house to give him time to himself. Usually when he's like this, I stay silent, trying to be a ghost in our own home. Practically hiding away so as not to give him a reason to get angry, but it's starting to hurt me more and more. Sometimes I feel like he doesn't care about me. When I have my own emotional breakdowns (I have depression and social anxiety) he doesn't care. He doesn't pay attention to me, only focusing on games and asking me only when he wants something. Today he ignored me too, he didn't care that I had another nervous breakdown during which I left the house alone late in the evening. He wrote 'where are you going? The shops are closed' (where I live, shops all close at 8 p.m., I left after 9 p.m.)

I really love him and I want to plan a life with him, but I'm afraid that if it continues like this, I won't be able to handle it mentally.

Hi everyone, I am just looking for some insight and better understanding around delusions during a mixed episode and mania? My ex fiance 37F, broke up with me last year when she started cycling into a mixed episode after needing emergency surgery and the hospital never contacting her psychiatrist, they didn't give her anything for sleep and also didn't dispense her meds while in the hospital, the pharmacy also never ordered her Latuda so I couldn't even take her some meds. She is medicated and in therapy.

It triggered a massive episode which seems to have lasted 9 months in total. She was desperately asking everyone for help but they let her down. She begged her psychiatrist to up her antipsychotics, he didn't. She told her therapist that she has a paranoid mind and she keeps on thinking that I am deceiving her and that she is being lied to. She told me she doesn't recognise herself anymore, she's so on edge the whole time but she just knows one thing, that she wants to be with me with hope and love in our eyes. She said she doesn't trust her perspectives and she needs to work on it but does not know how.

She wrote me a poem, saying that when she is lost in the sandstorms of her mind, I need to know that she is searching for me and searching for herself and she begged me to remember her.

Anyway, when she broke up with me it was not her. I could see her fighting to get back in the driver's seat but the episode took over and I was erased. She never said hateful things, just that she constantly thinks I am manipulating and using her and that she thinks she is bad for me and that I have a beautiful soul. I just went quiet and never pushed back. I didn't want to add to her struggles and obviously the delusions were exhausting her.

I was just worried because she has been in psychosis twice before and she ends up with guys who use her when she is manic. Anyway she rebounded with an ex and broke up with him after 3 months and now she is just very quiet. She blocked me on socials and whatsapp even though I respected her wishes for no contact. Seeing her struggle and seeing her strength and how she fought for our engagement just made me love her more, not less. When she left she said I healed a part of her and always saw her as whole. Anyway, if anyone went through something similar, how long did it take you to regain clarity? I just want her to remember that she was loved. I hope she does.

My friend (calling her B) is bipolar and I think she's having some sort of episode. Not educated on it but from the little I know she seems manic. She's becoming extrememly irritable and suspicious and is acting like she knows everything about everything. She's way more rude than usual and says strange things.

- She accused one of my other friends (calling her T) who is extremely anxious about remaining on good terms with the group of being jealous that she is friends with someone they both know (A) and that she is going to a 4-year college while T is going to a community college. T chose this because she wanted to stay close to home and is content with her plans, as well as being extremely close friends with A, much closer than B is with A.

- B also is extremely skeptical of religion and frequently sarcastic about gods and superstitions, but recently began speaking of her college decision as fate and an act of god. When I asked if she was joking, she tried to explain all the reasons it was a divine action. This is really strange to me.
- B is suspicious of every teacher she dislikes as being a pedophile, which is a serious yet not unplausible accusation for our school (it has been true before). However, she thinks that because these teachers talk to her in the halls during passing period asking if she did her work it means she's getting creeped on. She refuses to acknowledge the creepiness of older college guys she talks to (all mid-20s, she is 17).

- She gets mad about a lot of things now, and the intensity is turned way up. B brings us food to school and then gets mad that we eat a lot of it because we should have done better meal prep. She gets pissed about stuff that happened a long time ago out of nowhere and refuses to budge on her theory of why someone did something last year. She gets super angry over little disagreements that mostly boil down to slight wording differences. She is just way more intense.

- B keeps trying to convince me to apply for this and that internship and summer program and I don't know why but she is very very invested in fixing my life, even though what would actually help me is if she remembered anything I've ever asked of her in terms of being an emotionally aware friend. (unrelated issue)

- B is moving very fast paced and intensely in decisions and projects and it's just very strange to the rest of us. She is making a lot of plans for summer but also changing directions alarmingly.

All that leads me (not an expert so i dont actually know) to believe she is in a manic episode. I want to help her learn to manage he velocity but she "doesn't believe in therapy" and acts hostile when I bring up that her behavior is a bit abnormal. I want to be there for her when she inevitably crashes at the end of this but she's being a huge jerk to T and kinda to me too. Any advice on being able to call her attention to the fact that she's getting irrational and intense and hurting her friends without me seeming like an asshole? I want her to listen to me but I'm worried she will just explain my concern away with "jealousy" or something else weird.

My sister (29F) is currently in a manic episode and I’m at a loss for what to do.

She was diagnosed with bipolar I at 24 and did really well on medication for years—stable, successful career (managed a $1.7M book), married 10+ years, two young kids under 3, just bought a house. She was doing really well.

About 3 months ago, everything changed. She had a lot of stress at once (new house, kids, job changes), started smoking weed for the first time, and secretly stopped taking her meds. She then had a severe manic episode—hallucinations, delusions, violent behavior, completely out of touch with reality. Her first ever episode.

We had to call a crisis line. Police came, she was briefly jailed (charges later dropped), and then she was hospitalized on a 5270 for 32 days.

After she got out, she wasn’t fully herself but was improving. She went through a couple medication changes and was probably 90% stable at one point.

Then about a week ago, she stopped all medication again. Now she’s spiraling hard—screaming for hours, talking to herself, hallucinating, completely disconnected from reality again.

She refuses help because she believes her reality is correct. There’s no reasoning with her.

My spouse and I moved back in with my parents so she could stay somewhere safe, and we’re trying to support her, but nothing is getting through.

Meanwhile, her husband has decided to file for full custody of their kids and is essentially giving up on the marriage. He hasn’t told her yet. He told us first.

I’m terrified of what happens when she finds out, but I also don’t know if I should be the one to tell her.

I’ve tried gently explaining that she’s at risk of losing everything if she doesn’t get help, but she doesn’t accept that anything is wrong.

I guess my questions are:

How do you help someone in severe mania realize they need help when they don’t think anything is wrong?

Is there any way to get through to her without escalating things?

Should I be direct with her about losing custody, or will that make things worse?

Has anyone successfully gotten a loved one back on medication in a situation like this?

I feel like we’re watching her life collapse and can’t stop it.

Any advice or experiences would really mean a lot.

My mother (50) doesn't take care of herself me and my grandmother are struggling. we really can't do it| anymore we rarely sleep now because she talks to people who aren't there, falls all the time, gets violent, Everytime we go to the hospital she just complains about pain or talks herself outta a psych consult. it's like once ppl are questioning her psych she locks in, we are poor so we can't really get a lawyer, I'm only 20 my brother has fled, I love my mom but she is killing me she's supposed to be on oxygen full time but when she gets mad at us she rips it off and threatened to smoke a whole pack a cigarettes, her counselor doesn't help us at all just tells us to take her to the hospital, we can't care for her anymore I need suggestions

My mom, who was diagnosed bipolar 1 last year, has been on olanzapine and depakote until she abruptly stopped taking them a month ago . Her main reason is that they have caused her to gain like 80 pounds over 7 months. Which - fair. I’m wondering if anyone here has had a family member who gained weight on these drugs have success losing weight with a weight loss drug while still being on the bipolar meds. If so, what was the weight loss drug? I’m just grasping at straws trying to convince her to re start her medication because she has already started to spiral and I really don’t want to have to hospitalize her again.

I have been friends with one of my guy friends for almost 15 years, he has bipolar disorder. I always thought he was empathetic and caring until this one example.

I had a distressing situation at work where a male colleague harassed me. It was so stressful that I had to rant to him and wrote 5-6 sentences about it(not a paragraph). He won't respond at all, because he thinks my paragraphs are too "long" and I'm just being emotional. There is that popular meme: "sorry that happened/I'm happy for you, I ain't reading all of that" and he seems to take this stance, which is quite annoying and rude. I'm being considerate because I know of his extreme mood swings, but is it common to switch from empathetic to cold/unresponsive?

My mom is currently starting an episode early. Less sleep, hyper ranting and not wanting to go home. I am driving down tonight and need any advice how can I get her medicine recalibrated without triggering her.

I’ve been dealing with this since a child, and it’s not as bad as it usually because I caught it early. She’s been doing so good but something triggered her recently. I’m running off no sleep just worrying and don’t have a strong support system since I’m the one who takes care of everything. Any advice?

I have a bipolar friend who in his good mood period floods me with many voice messages in a row, 5 to 10 seconds each. These messages are not communicating anything, it's just him telling him "GOOOOD MORNIING QUEEEN!", "Time to drink an EsPrESSsoooo!", and anything stupid that makes me genuinely laugh.
The issue is that when I send voice messages he barely finds time to play them. Sometimes he even leaves them unplayed for weeks.

Well 4 days ago I sent him a 14 seconds voice message just to ask him if he made a decision about going to an event together. He replied: "Voice messages are stressing me at the moment. If it's important, text please." Not a "Hello", not an explanation, really just said message.

I'm starting wondering how much bipolarism is the cause and how much is the simple "I don't give a fuck about you" because (he's always been very egocentric). Can somebody help me? I'm not very familiar with bipolar disorder, and I'm starting getting tired of a friendship where he always sets the rules.

My husband and I are in our 50's and he has always been in control of his meds and his moods, for the most part. Recently he had a manic episode and was doing better for a while. However, he has become increasingly disillusioned with his career. What he used to enjoy doing he seems to dread now. He hates his job and his boss isn't a good person, so I thought he would be happy to change jobs but he is acting like he is so scared of change that he is stuck. He does nothing but work and watch tv. He even stopped taking some of his other medications and doesn't seem to care.

I am at my wits end. I can't keep doing everything for him. His bad decisions are starting to affect my life and my vision of the future. I see myself living in a studio apartment alone if he doesn't stop being apathetic towards his life. I can't motivate him, and he doesn't even seem to care that I am losing my own mental health trying to keep him on the damn rails.

Any advice for someone who is about ready to give up on him, since he is giving up on himself anyway? I'm so tired. I don't want to lose him but I am so fucking tired.

Trigger Warning: Sexual assault. Not done to me, but to my mother.

Also, this is really long.

She's been dead for 9 years now so I'm not sure if it counts, but she passed when I was 17 so I've still spent a majority of my life under her roof. I'm asking if this is usually what happens when a parent is bipolar. I was also diagnosed as autistic as a little girl so maybe that might give some context for why I did certain things that I'm going to say I did. My mom was also like 40 to 50-ish when I knew her, if that helps.

The most notable part of living with her was from about 12 to 17 where her screaming at me was at its worst. She had gotten off her medication when I was about to start high school to work a taxi cab again, because taking it put her at risk of falling asleep at any time, even in her car on the road. She said she "did it for me" and so she could "pay off the house" so I'd have it as an adult (I live with another family now and I haven't gone to that house in years).

I was expected to clean while she was gone, but when I did I'd get yelled at for "rearranging shit" and when I tried to ask her where things went when she was home, she'd act pissed off that I was bothering her. I remember once I said "I don't know what trash is!" because sometimes there'd be these random thingamabobs I'd never seen her use and she literally called up all her friends to make fun of me saying "I dOn'T kNoW wHaT tRaSh Is!" But if I did so much as put random crap in a plastic grocery bag because I didn't know where they went that she later found, she'd still yell at me for "throwing shit away." Sometimes she'd accuse me of trashing stuff when I didn't even remember cleaning that day. It made me feel like maybe I had been so bad up to that point that I didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt anymore.

Even when she was right there to tell me what to do, I'd usually do it wrong somehow. Like I remember a few times my mom told me to text a bunch of stuff for her all at once using her phone, then she'd get angry that I "shortened" it when trying to read it back to her because I couldn't remember everything she told me to write. Or at least once she'd tell me to do a bunch of things all at once, then add more while I'm the middle of the first batch, then complain and ask why I hadn't already done anything from the second batch, and I remember once saying I hadn't even gotten done yet, she laughed and was like "I'm sowwy!" and called me her little "gopher" while I cried. She ended up doing the same thing again at some point later, though, getting just as mad, as if it never happened or it never mattered.

Sometimes it felt impossible to do what she wanted correctly. Like one time she wanted to get me a "red dress" that was hanging, and then I did and she just huffed and got up and got a visibly less red dress on it, and when I pointed this out she said "Well, it has red on it, so it's a red dress!" If I tried to ask for clarification on a task she just gave me, she'd get mad, like the time she asked for a "red bag" and we had a recyclable grocery bag, and a red flexible material lunchbox, so I asked which and she yelled "THE RED BAG!!!" and it was apparently wrong because she threw it at me. Two different times she wanted me to get her up for work, and one time despite her groggy protests I did and she got up yelling "You think I can work forever!" and the other time I listened to her protests, and let her sleep, and she woke up yelling "You want me to sleep my life away so you can play on your [devices]!" It made me think if I didn't know what she was talking about, then I was stupid or careless for not paying enough attention to what she "really" meant.

Sometimes I wonder if I really was causing problems on purpose like I was accused of. She once told me directly "You LIKE it" and another time telling me I had a fetish for women crying, but then did this weird turnaround of "It's okay/understandable for you to find crying sexy." She'd do these weird turnarounds a lot, like suddenly switching to calmly while smiling telling me that I need to put more effort into cleaning because it's really important, or the time I said I thought I was depressed and she screamed at me because I didn't know what real depression was and then suddenly doing a 180 to show concern when I was crying. Or the time I was in the car crying and she said they were crocodile tears, then I tried stifling them and then she suddenly acted like it was serious because "If you're trying to hide it, then it must be real." She always said I was pulling "poor pitiful me shit" whenever I cried, which was every day, and would often like to tell a story about how an annoying toddler relative was crying, and me mom told me to cry to prove to that child crying is easy, to make the case that I'm good at faking tears therefor my current tears are stupid.

When she wasn't screaming at me when I was home, she was usually on her phone talking super loudly, typically about whatever dramas she got into recently. She was constantly having interpersonal conflicts with other people, that I ended up hearing about all the time due to simple proximity. I don't think I ever heard her express remorse or regret for anything she did to other people - the closest I saw her get to that is when she'd start crying when it turned out her friends died. It seemed like if a friend didn't die, they'd either fade into obscurity in her life or she'd have a fallout with them. One time she had a crush on a store owner, and she eventually had a hissy fit in his store so big he told her to never come back, and she'd get these weird unknown calls and answer them and taunt whoever was on the other end because she thought this guy was "stalking" her via this way. I also remember being in the car with her when she couldn't find one guy she never interacted with before, and after the ordeal she made comment to me how she thought this guy was in cahoots with a completely different person she had currently beefing with for weeks. I wasn't in the drama, though, so I don't know.

She often didn't seem to understand why anything she did was bad, and would even get angry if called out on it. One time she told me directly and to several friends on the phone that she sent a picture of herself in lingerie to a coworker and his partner got mad, and she didn't understand why the woman was making a fuss because "It's just a picture." Another time we somehow got into a conversations where she smiled and said "Men can't be raped!" I even tried pushing back against this but she just said if I kept it up she was going to "beat my ass." Even though she also liked to tell a story of how she hit me once as a toddler and I got angry about it so she "never hit me again" like she was prideful of it, but would also often say she would "beat my ass" if I did or didn't do something up into my teenage years, even though she never did it, but I didn't want to test her by trying too hard to resist.

This is a good time to bring up how once my mom cried to me about how she was molested by her own father as a child, and was raped as a young adult, and after crawling home after the latter incident, her own mother told her "If you insist you were raped, I won't love you anymore." As a preteen my mother for a period of time for some reason had me visit my grandmother, this same woman who told her that, every month, until one day she got into an argument with my uncle and her mother where he called my mom a cunt and we never went back.

Going back to the sexual stuff, my mother was extremely promiscuous before and after my father passed. Since being a teenager, I remember her sometimes telling me stories of her sexual experiences, and said stuff like if I ever wanted to know anything to just ask her, and if I needed to release my "urges" that she'd buy toys for me. But I never really asked her to tell me those stories. She'd even put stuff like that on me, too. I remember being as young as about 12? 14? and I just danced in the living room and she smiled and laughed as she told me "If you dance like that in front of a man, you're going to get raped! :D" and I froze up but she just kept her smile on. She even told me wanted to be a cam girl and had me sit at our computer and read out all the options for each question and click everything for her, and getting angry at me several times when trying to take a picture of her ID was too fuzzy. She also said something when I apparently jiggled my chest around, about how she could have me wear a mask and shake my chest for money, but I genuinely don't know if this was supposed to be a joke, since we never pursued it, but I don't know if this is because I never said yes.

But there'd be times where she'd make me do something anyway. When we did do things together, I hated it because I didn't like being around her, and I often felt forced to. When she was still on good terms with the store owner guy, she basically pressured me to go in there and give some sort of "original" "cute" message when I didn't want to, and tried to be like "Hi! My mom [said this] and by the way I was forced to say that! :)" because I didn't want to do it at all. She also had this tree she decorated on public property between these two other places, and was in legal battles with them over whether it's their tree or if she could touch it. She made me go over there to clean trash around it. One time she painted a wooden cross white, and put Christmas lights on it, and forced me to walk with it up and down a sidewalk alone at night a few feet near the tree for some reason. I tried putting the cross away from the road so maybe it wouldn't get seen, and she didn't seem to notice.

She'd never try to make anything more comfortable for me or do anything I wanted or thought we should do. I remember her putting the music up super loud in her taxi when I was in it with her sometimes, overwhelming me, and I'd dread the sound of loud music coming up to our trailer because then there was a risk of her being upset the moment she busted through the door. I remember I was just trying to make conversation once, and talked about something a lunch table mate said at my high school, and she just laughed and said "She must be the daughter of [one of the people who own a property by the tree I mentioned!]" I don't even remember what the girl said. I also remember I couldn't speak for myself. I remember being put on the phone to talk to someone and told what to say to them (I don't even remember what I was made to say) and I complained about not being allowed to just say what I wanted. She just accused me of having a crush on the guy on the phone. I don't even remember who it was on the phone. I also couldn't do anything more efficiently. Like one time my mom wanted me to be the one typing and clicking on everything on Google to find an online complaint form for a fast food place, and I was so tired of going nowhere that I just decided to type and click stuff on my own out of frustration, and the second the form we were looking for pops up on the screen, she literally goes "AAAAAAAA! AAA! AAA! AAAAAAAA! I DON'T EVEN WANT TO DO IT ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU DID WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO!!!'

I remember I spent my days when I was home alone online, but I never actually talked to people because stranger danger was ingrained in my head. I never snuck out, and I'm genuinely not sure if it's because I was scared of it, or because it never occurred to me because I took this state of life as a given. I knew of what other kids were probably doing with risky behavior, and a part of me wanted to believe I was morally superior to them, but at the same time I wondered if it would be better to do the kind of risky crap they did, and if I'd be happier.

I even wished she would die or something, which I guess worked. She did say in her last months of life she thought she was dying, and said she "couldn't" go to the hospital because I "wouldn't clean" and because social services would take me since the house was falling apart. We were living part time in a hotel on weekends because of this and the hotel also got dirty and while I spent the weeks at home, she got angry at me for not cleaning the hotel room properly, too. She had arthritis which is why she said I had to clean everything, which she medicated with BCs and marijuana.

Sometimes I feel like I must have been as horrendous as she made me out to be due to some horrible adult decisions I made, and also the way I feel about everything, including the world in general. Or if I still deserve to be called out as horrendous even if my past caused me to be that way, because I'm the only one left who can still be punished. There's a lot more that happened before her death but I think you probably get the idea.

TW: mention of suicide

My mom has BP I with psychotic features, at least that's what she was diagnosed with and said she had at my own mental health appointments years ago. She doesn't think there's anything going on but C-PTSD and ADHD now, therefore is unmedicated aside from stimulants. She's very smart, well spoken and doesn't share her delusions with providers.

Anyway she's had this paranoid delusion since I was 9 (17 years) that doesn't go ever go away whether she's manic or depressed about how people are contacted to mess with her so she "seems crazy" and eventually ends her life. It was her boss at first, then the Russian mafia, gangstalkers, now my grandma (her bio mom) is somehow behind it? She has like 5 or 6 phones because she thinks they're all tapped. It's really sad but it's hard for me to feel empathy for her because she hasn't got any at all for me or anyone else for that matter.

She takes no responsibility for being verbally/emotionally abusive toward me and says rather that my grandma "poisoned me against her". Everything is always everyone else's fault. She is incapable of self reflection and projects a lot of the things she does onto others. I don't know if all of this is due to her being bipolar because I am as well and we're vastly different, but I know no two cases are exactly the same.

I just wish we could have a normal parent/child relationship but I know that won't ever happen. I have strict boundaries with her now because she's been pretty awful to me but I miss her. My biggest fear is that she'll die alone thinking the world is out to get her when in all reality she is just sick, and could lead a much happier life with therapy and medication.

I need your help or advice. My mother has entered her manic state and I have been trying to manage it with her doctor. She got into mania due to her brother being diagnosed with stage 2 B-Cell Lymphoma, and she just flew back from the middle esst escaping the war over there. I am sure it given her some unwanted PTSD as well.

Her brother’s first chemo session is today. I am not sure what we will expect tbh from her and how she will react in the next couple of days and weeks.

I’d appreciate any advice on what to do and expect, she is on 1500mg depakote and Olanzapine 10mg. She does have an NP that we have been seeing and has been helpful.

Im dealing with two sick loved ones at the same time, and Im trying to figure out what to do as the days go by.

Need help to support sibling with Bipolar

Hello!

My sister (36 F) had a baby in India last month. She was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder while she was pregnant.

Looking back at our childhood, she always had manic episodes where she would hit my mom and me a lot. We thought it was anger.

When she moved out, she tried some for of therapy but it never worked for her. After she got married to my BIL, they also had fights when she got manic and hit him (he also hit her). She got pregnant around Jan 2025, miscarried the baby. She then got pregnant again and had a baby boy in March 2026. As mentioned earlier, her manic episodes peaked during pregnancy, she said she would attempt suicide, or kill my BIL. My parents went to live with her to support her during the pregnancy. But nothing seemed to work.

She went to a psychologist who diagnosed her with Bipolar disorder and ADHD. She was started on medications while pregnant but she wouldn’t take them.

After the baby was born, her episodes continued. She attempted to kill my BIL multiple times while threatening suicide. We all told her to continue with therapy and have medications but she refuseeverything.

We are all lost now, and we are desperately searching for answers to make this better.

Does anyone have advice, thoughts or pointers that will help my sister? We all are very helpless right now.

Hi,

I (34f) don’t even know where to start. My sister (25f) has been diagnosed with bipolar for probably 5-8 years at this point but we had suspicions long beforehand. Most recently she’s been struggling quite a bit- really since the new year and it came to a head a few days ago when she drunk drove her car into a telephone pole in the middle of the day. She and everyone around her is luckily fine, but I’m struggling with the decision making. Is this her mental health to blame? Am i enabling her bad choices by saying it’s her mental health that led her to make such a selfish and terrible choice? I feel like i can’t be honest and express any type of negative emotion towards her because it immediately goes into a spiral of SI and crying/yelling that no one supports her. My family really walks on egg shells around her and is very careful to not “set her off” but then i feel like it just gives her an out every time. She will likely lose her license, she has no car and will either lose her job or have to quit because of transportation. She works in the MH space and while she’s good at the work it’s too much to handle with her own struggles and she ends up spiraling every 12-18 months and quitting her job only to find one very similar and repeat the pattern.

I want to be a support to her. And i want to have my sister in my life but her behavior really affects my own mental health when im worried she’s at risk of hurting herself or someone else. I’m rambling- but when she was in the ER after the accident my mom said she was threatening to leave AMA so i was up half the night checking her location to make sure she didn’t escape and wander off alone. She was being so nasty my parents and her bf had to leave. Sigh. Thanks for reading.

My mid-twenties daughter is bipolar and has diagnosed autism. Mix in some ptsd from being late-diagnosed autistic. She has had little control over her reactions (self harm, punching walls) since a young age and has been hospitalized several times for her own safety. She can’t keep a job and often has suicidal ideations. She’s been on various cocktails over the years and we finally found a combo that was mostly working (nothing will ever “cure” her depression). She has been unemployed for several months and has had zero luck finding work due to her lack of job history and skills gaps.

Cue the failed IUD. Around 8 weeks ago she realized she was pregnant and against my advice, decided to keep the pregnancy. She had to quit the mood stabilizers that were providing the most benefit.

She’s become more volatile and hard to be around since then. She’s now 3 months pregnant and we have an appt with perinatal psych coming up but I worry there isn’t much they can do.

Not only are the moods/outbursts hard on her loved ones but I know it’s worse on her and bad for the baby.

I know from deep experience there is no reasoning with her so I try not to problem solve every issue that sets her off.

I’m at a loss. I’m worried this will end her and I worry that my “support” is mostly enabling her. I need to find a new therapist and work on boundaries but I don’t know what that looks like with her. There’s nothing I won’t do. And I worry that’s a problem too.

My sister at times enjoys staring and doing some sort of yoga and meditation, so she would state at something and would not want to be disturbed. She has been like this for 2 years and has progressively gotten more addicted to it, she starts to be delusional like she would say the patterns are not nice etc, they are xyz.

She is into astrology which makes her think about symbols etc, anyway,

two days ago she opened her eyes every wide and said something delusional - my husband is trying to do xyz and that he is a virgo or something, she wasn't making sense, she had such a fit that she ended up biting her own tongue and started bleeding.

I managed to get her to stay in a hotel, but since then she has been checking in and checking out, she refused to go and get treatment from hospital and when the ambulance saw her after I called them yesterday, they said they can't force her as she is not attacking anyone in public etc.

I am not familiar with any of this but these are what she is experiencing:

-walking up and down, pacing around.

-started head movements where she looks around, her eyes get fixated onto something, she stares and then goes closer, then snaps out of it.

-sometimes she follows different types of 'light' around the building, like she analyses light bulbs etc.

-Due to her being into symbols etc, if she sees something, she stares for a long time.

-she is not making sense, yesterday she wanted xyz so badly, today not a word of it.

- She apparently slept 3 hours last night, but over the previous 2 days before, she never slept much.

- She keeps wandering into places and gets in trouble, she went into the hotel laundry room etc and the security had to bring her and say look after her.

- She is alone now in the hotel, I don't know what to do next.

She has never been this delusional, out of touch.

It is so hard to see someone you love being in such a state.

She doesn't work and doesn't have any responsibilities, she is 27 and during her life she is a happy go lucky girl who just wants to enjoy the little things in life like crocheting, sewing, she isn't into social media etc, she is more into grounding etc.

My husband and I are in our 50's and he has always been in control of his meds and his moods, for the most part. Recently he had a manic episode and was doing better for a while. However, he has become increasingly disillusioned with his career. What he used to enjoy doing he seems to dread now. He hates his job and his boss isn't a good person, so I thought he would be happy to change jobs but he is acting like he is so scared of change that he is stuck. He does nothing but work and watch tv. He even stopped taking some of his other medications and doesn't seem to care.

I am at my wits end. I can't keep doing everything for him. His bad decisions are starting to affect my life and my vision of the future. I see myself living in a studio apartment alone if he doesn't stop being apathetic towards his life. I can't motivate him, and he doesn't even seem to care that I am losing my own mental health trying to keep him on the damn rails.

Any advice for someone who is about ready to give up on him, since he is giving up on himself anyway? I'm so tired. I don't want to lose him but I am so fucking tired.