A consistent routine allows for better mood management. People with bipolar disorder may benefit from establishing a daily routine for sleep, diet and exercise. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The focus is identifying unhealthy, negative beliefs and behaviors and replacing them with healthy, positive ones.
All relationships require empathy, communication, and emotional awareness. These qualities help a person be a supportive partner to someone with bipolar disorder. People with well-managed bipolar disorder can build healthy, long term relationships.
Being in a Relationship with Someone Who Is Bipolar
Those with bipolar disorder may also engage in risky behaviors such as unprotected sex or extramarital affairs while manic. During episodes of depression, your partner may avoid sexual contact altogether.
You can absolutely have a healthy, happy relationship with a partner who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The condition may bring both positive and challenging aspects to the relationship, but you can take steps to support your partner and to help them manage their symptoms.
Mania in particular tends to trigger aggressive emotions and anger. The racing thoughts and high energy levels you experience can leave you feeling angry, irritable, and frustrated. Those angry emotions, in turn, can cause aggressive and inappropriate behaviors.
A stressful circumstance or situation often triggers the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Examples of stressful triggers include: the breakdown of a relationship. physical, sexual or emotional abuse.
We're all responsible for our actions, and we must all be able to control intense emotions, regardless of where they stem from. Remember, there is hope. The symptoms of bipolar disorder — even rage — can often be effectively managed so maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships is possible.
Communicate openly.
Open and honest communication is essential to coping with bipolar disorder in the family. Share your concerns in a loving way, ask your loved one how they're feeling, and make an effort to truly listen—even if you disagree with your loved one or don't relate to what's being said.
Factors such as stress, poor sleep, and even seasonal changes can play a role in triggering your bipolar symptoms. Learn how you can reduce your risk of bipolar episodes and better manage your condition.
With people with bipolar disorder, you have to give them the choice to be social. If they're going to be in their room, infiltrate them with an activity they can do in their room. Don't let them in there to be alone and suffer.
These mood episodes cause symptoms that last a week or two, or sometimes longer. During an episode, the symptoms last every day for most of the day. Feelings are intense and happen with changes in behavior, energy levels, or activity levels that are noticeable to others.
“Bipolar anger is impulsive, intense, erratic, and explosive. It is being asked a simple question and responding with irrational anger and/or irritation. It is lashing out, for no logical reason, on those that love and care for you.
Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness. People who have it go through unusual mood changes. They go from very happy, "up," and active to very sad and hopeless, "down," and inactive, and then back again. They often have normal moods in between.
Bipolar disorder and marriage can be toxic to a relationship. That's when a relationship fails or is failing. It can trigger negative reactions that could lead to self-harm, self-loathing or worse. Relationship issues need to be watched and positively regulated from our youth onward.
When Is It Time to Walk Away? In some cases, the decision to leave is obvious. If physical abuse is present to any degree, and especially if the individual fears for their own life or well-being or that of their children, it's important to leave as soon as possible. Safety is the number one priority.
Bipolar Disorder and Marriage
But when one partner has bipolar disorder, simple stressors can reach epic proportions. That may be why as many as 90% of marriages involving someone with bipolar disorder reportedly fail.