My wife is on a manic high and she won't admit to being bipolar. we have been together 5 years and it constantly is getting worse. her mom is bipolar and she refuses to be "like" her mom. i am scared to death of what is happening to her and us. i have spent hundreds of dollars this week on counselors alone trying to see if i am right on my feelings. everyone agrees that she is but she won't admit it. she has had about all 15 symptoms listed. increased sexuality towards me (thought this was good at first) at the least emotional affair(internet) she quit eating, started smoking, drinking caffene by the gallon, she died her hair black(at work),pierced her eyebrow(at work),bought a dog, lost 20 lbs,doesnt sleep, and wants a divorce because i am so terrible,you get the point.this has been just in the last two weeks and less.
i have read more books and talked to so many people. it has eased my mind that someone actually finally believes me that something is wrong. i have spoken to her dr. and he has agreed to set up an appointment and reevaluate her(family dr. tho) she takes lexpro but nothing else this seems to help on depression but not this episode.
any help on how to get her to admit she needs help. i am hopeless and i am losing my best friend. thanks in advance
Andy sorry you are going through this and I wish I had an answer for you but my husband is in denial too. I can relate to how you feel because it does feel hopeless. I don't think anyone can make another person get help especially when the nature of the illness is often a lack insight to the illness. I just wanted to let you know I can understand how you feel maybe someone else can be more helpful.
Andy, I feel for you. My (ex?)bf is currently manic (it's been two months) and also having an online/phone affair/relationship of some sort. It is pointless to try and get through to him right now. I have given up. He won't admit that he is bipolar although before this he did. He is becoming increasingly mean and unbearable.
I feel all I can do currently is to wait, keep some emotional distance to protect myself, tell him that I am here for him and love him, but that I won't put up with being pushed around and treated badly and to wait for him to cycle out or crash...and remind myself that it's an illness. This is not really hard to do given that he is so different now: from sweet, caring, and loving to mean, angry, hurtful, and uncaring.
You might just have to roll with it for now somehow and wait for the episode to be over. Hang in there!
my wife is to the point she wants a divorce she doesnt want me in the house. i caught he 4 times in the las t2 weeks talking on her cell phone(over 8 hours) and on my space(her conversations were 5$ aminute ones) she doesnt care and got mad at me for catching her. and then lie and say it over. then all over again.
i keep telling my self that its not her, believe me i know its not her. but she started talking and making new friends and they only hear what she says, they say she is doing GREAT. but they dont know,just dont know. they are giving her terrible advice. i am worried she is going to crash hard and we have 2 kids in the house. she refusesto let me stay there.
i know that it is not her but it breaks my heart to see her like this and to put me down so hard is killing me.
her mom said she will have to crash hard before she will see she needs help, o God how i miss my wife.
I am so sorry Andy! It has been such a nightmare for me, so I cannot imagine how hard it must be for you with the children and to be kicked out of the house by her.
You know, I have stopped making myself aware of what is going on with the other woman/women. They are part of the illness and there is nothing I can do about it. I would rather not know because it was truly truly killing me. It did take a while to get there though...I will sort it out when he is back.
I know what you mean about the friends. It kills me that we both researched his condition and wanted to work on getting him treatment and now he surrounds himself with people who think he is the greatest and there is absolutely nothing wrong with him. There is no point in talking to them. He mentioned to one of them that I think he has bp and the friend thought it was ridiculous...Have you tried talking to her friends to let them know how serious this is?
So the children are with her now, right? Is there any way they could perhaps stay with grandparents/relatives to spare yourself that worry (which must be terrible)?
Hang in there, Andy, she will be back. Dont worry too much about the divorce talk. Perhaps this episode in itself is severe enough for her to realize that she needs help. Especially since you have children.
thank youfor all that have responded.good luck to you all too. grandparents ect cant watch the kids cuz there is "nothing wrong with her". to many bipolar are diagnosed with depression instead of bp. so they only get anti dpepressents, it helps on her depression but not on her manias. this is the worst i have every saw. before a day or two and it would be over. good luck to all of you who are bp and love a bp. it is tough for both. i have read a book called loving someone with bp. but unless she gets help the book wont help either of us much.
does one with bp remember or realize what they did when they have these manias or do they feel justified for their actions? will she always come back to thispoint and relive it over again?
Hi it is very hard to actually admit you have bp in some cases because then you have to look at yourself. The ups and downs that she is going through effects everyone and it is not easy for you to handle. What happens is you spend all your energy helping her and somewhere along the way you lose youself. The main thing for you to do is make sure she doesn't empty your bank accounts while being high. You really have to just look afterself and as time goes by she will come down back to reality. It is always the people closet to us that we hurt so much and that is so sad. Just keep remembering you !!! are not the problem. Good luck kind regards ok2day.
as stated in my original post she is/has acted out almost if not all of the 15 signs of mania. i have talked to alot of people,counselors her mom ect. even one of her good friends came to me. and told me of her concerns(she is bp) she would describe what she has done and that my wife is the same way. she said she is a totally different person.
like i said there is no diagnosis to her, she refuses seek help. i have dealt with this for 5 years and i wasn't sure myself what was going on but i had a feeling, now that i look back i can remember more and more signs,
my best friend was her boss years ago when we started dating, he told me that she was very unstable and would cry in his office, call in sick alot,jump all over coworkers,very promiscuous at times and one time went yelling and screaming through the store like some one had died.
i hoped she was not bp in denial i geuss but now that i have seen this full blown episode i know, i want to educate myself,see her get the help she needs and be there for her and understand her. being a caretaker, as one book put it, scares me, but seeing her this way scares me more with out possible treatment
My mother is a bipolar and it was developed 'cause she was suffering many years from polyarthritus in a worse form. Main thing she does is crying and blaming everybody around, especially father. Medications seems helping her.
She was in denial until we told a doctor and she is still very unhappy about it and blaming us for that, since he changed medication which was helping her main illness but affect psychic.
She is doing nothing like wanting more sex or dying her hair. Is it really bipolar? What she is doing sounds immature and strange but how can you prove that it is sick?
I know a good guy who's wife ( a doctor herself) in order to divorce him ( I don't know what she could possibly be not happy about) started calling police and telling them that he was abusing her until they asked him to move out. After divorce she moved with kids far away. She never was diagnosed with anything, although everybody thought she was sick.
Mania Symptoms (when one is experiencing these they are said to be "Manic")
Increase in energy cleaned house,dusted everything,cleaned rearranged office busy busy busy
Heightened mood (excessive happiness, perkiness, humor)extremely happy with friends got new friends constantly looking on ******* for old friend,taking lots of pictures with kids,dogs, friends with a huge smile. constantly on phone with friends laughing
High degree of optimism and self-confidenceshe feels she is in control of the office and everything is great(work is lacking tho,we work in the same office i am her boss)
Excessive irritability and aggressive behavior she is very irritable to me and to people she doesnt know, but extremely nice to her friends
Decreased need for sleep without experiencing fatigue she satys up hours after her normal bedtime and goes all day an into the night,she didnt sleep hardly for a week, she brags that she doesnt sleep
Grandiose delusions, inflated sense of self-importance her being a boss she is pulls her rank and even made someone to quit yesterday
Racing speech and thoughts when she is on the phone you cant keep up with her conversations
Impulsive behavior she bought a dog,died her hair(she had to do it then and did it at work)she pierced her eye brow (and left work right then to do it) she bought new makeup, she wants a tattoo,she has bought lots of new clothes but lacks on food for the house
Lowered inhibitions (yep, just like when a mentally healthy person is drunk)she started a relationship with a customer she just met and had a 2 week phone and internet romance with him (dirty dirty talk)
Poor judgment she has qit eating and she takes heart and thyroid medicine as well as the above mentioned,she atrted smoking and drinking cokes
Distractibility she will stop at the drop of the hat if someone or something is possitive towards her,she constantly checks her my space over and over and over
Poor concentration (which greatly effects cognitive abilities)same as above,she coulnt even remeber her password to her ******* and she checks it over and over
Reckless and/or inappropriate behavior the affair and all the other physical changes
Delusions and hallucinations (Thinking, seeing, and hearing things that don't exist or are not true. This is also known as psychosis)her conversations with me are out there, she believes what she is saying while i sit there with a dumb look on my face
Nervousness, anxiety, or panic she ran out of the office the other day screaming and crying when she found out her flings wife found outabout her affair , people thought someone had died in her family
Hypersexualityshe was all over me for a few days constantly (this is one of the first signs that i notice,i thought it was great until it led to all the rest
i have seen her clean at all parts of the night and then her not clean for weeks. lay in bed for days,go off on me for no reason,and snap at the kids(the look on her face scares me i can only imagine what the kids feel) i have to tell her to stop buying things so we can pay the bills,we make more than ever but we still live paycheck to paycheck and have nothing to show for it.
she gets into projects and events that she cant handle and keeps piling more on for herself. then she drops everything and does something else.
we have spent thousands of dollars on her craft projects just for her to change her mind a few months later and start something else.
she might rearrange the living room once a year or 3 times amonth.
she is very mature for her age but she is very immature when she goes through these changes.
i also feel that at least 3 of the last five years she has been similar to this at this time of the year.
i could go on and on, we work together,she never wants to go out and socialize and now she wants a girls night out.
this is a whole nother person than a month ago. she said the old me is gone this is the new me.
If she looks and talks normally most of the time it is hard to prove anything. With my mother we have to call arthritus doctor and he told her that he won't prescribe her any medicine until she will come to an appointment, so he could see that she is not looking and talking as a normal person. Also she was writing "crazy" letters to relatives and they called me and asked me if she is ok.
In case of your wife I don't really now if you can prove anything. My mother is still in denial and blame us for telling doctor that she is not ok.
galinaqt I know what you mean because one pdoc my husband and I went to said he didnt think he was bp because he never saw a change in his moods. I thought that was crazy after I had told him all the other symptoms he had. Sometimes it is hard to get a diagnosis. We went to two tdocs and they both said he was bp/borderline personality. Of course he went by what the pdoc said and never went back and still believes he is fine. I would like the pdoc to try to live with him for a while.
hopefully with the weight loss and the "new" look and the smoking ect he will see something is not right maybe just enough to justify himself sending her to a psych
my councilor said unless the dr see them on a manic high they just prescibe antidepressent, i called her dr and told his nurse that her refill was due and could they stop it and have her go in to make sure it was working. they have agreed to set up an appointment for a "thyroid test" and see if they can possoibly work in her seeing a psychotrist. i am to talk to the doctor monday morning and tell him more about this last month. her friend said she got her antidepressants filled yesterday and she will probably blow off the appointment until later.
i hope she isnt bp,but if she is i want help for her.
all signs indicate, but she was a psycology major and i was told she would have the "right" things to say if asked.
. I would like the pdoc to try to live with him for a while.
i know what you mean, this book i read said that family and freinds support was needed and if anyone said that there was nothing wrong then to ask them to live with them for a while!
i know what you mean, this book i read said that family and freinds support was needed and if anyone said that there was nothing wrong then to ask them to live with them for a while!
When my bf was still willing to see a psychiatrist, he actually wanted me to be there because he said that I know more about his condition than he does himself (it started only a few years ago). We always talked very openly about his mood swings and he had to agree that I have a very good idea of what the pattern is and what can trigger depression/mania. Plus he does not remember everything that happens to him.
Now that he is manic and we hardly talk, I write down everything that might be of interest for a pdoc in the hope that my bf will be willing to go again when he is stable. So yes, I really think that those who are close to them and have witnessed the illness and kept track of it should be taken seriously and their input can really be invaluable. Nobody would assume there is anything wrong with him when he is stable and he himself only agreed that his condition is serious when I pointed out to him what all is going on...
I lived and worked with abusive crazy people and it was always my fault. I should be able to handle them and take care of myself, I can't stand up for myself, it is my burden to carry. I bet it sounds familiar to you guys.
I know for a fact that same people who like to critisize are not any better if not much worse when they get in similiar cituation but it doesn't change anything.
In my experience with doctors they don't want to be in the middle, it is your family.
the nurse said the dr wont try and handle it he will send her to a psych, the counselor i have seen said that once i say that i think the meds are wrong he will do whatever it takes to not diagnose her illness and pass it ti a psych.
she was very angry that he prescribed her medicine 6 refills at a time also.
well she went to the dr today and he told her that i called him, he was not supposed to do that. needless to say she has totally flipped out on me now. she said if i loved her i wouldnt have said anything to him. and that i am a @#$%$# and to get the rest of my stuff and get out and file those @#$%$ divorce papers.
Re: i need help,wife in denial 
