Family & Friends of Bipolar Support Group
This community is dedicated to parents, siblings, grandparents, other relatives and friends of someone who is Bipolar. The purpose of this community is to help families and friends develop greater patience and understanding, as well as maintain a positive, caring relationships with those diagnosed as Bipolar.
Anyone here go through marriage counseling only to find that it did no good?
I had such a horrible time when I would go with my wife for counseling several years ago. She convinced me that I would need to keep a journal of everything that I did to vindicate myself of all the accusations.
She told the counselor that she didn't feel loved by me when she was locked up in an institution. She said that I wouldn't tell her that I loved her when I came to see her and that I acted like I was ashamed of her. I had to respond back to the counselor that I went out of my way every day to tell her that I loved her as visiting hours were over and had to leave. I pointed out that I came there and ate her disgusting food that they served while I brought her daily the food she wanted from whatever restaurant she had a taste for. I pointed out that I showed up each visitation period and was their early and would leave late with the baby. We even talked by phone too when it wasn't visiting hours. I bought her approved items to keep her entertained while there. I said to the counselor that if I didn't love her then I would have showed up late and left early. I had it arranged so that we could come during her meals also instead of visitation time and we did and then my son and I would sit in the lobby after we ate until it was visitation time again (1 hour wait). This hospital too was 20 minutes from my house. I even took care of my son during this time. I took a Family Leave Act for two weeks to be with her and received no pay from work. If I wanted to express being ashamed of her or hate then this would have been the perfect opportunity but I didn't and I told her that I loved her each time I went there. She didn't come out and tell him that when I went back to work she would call threatening me and calling me names. She did deny that when confronted and told me that I was living in the past.
I have learned that she lives in a reality of her own where she is convinced of things in her own paranoia. This was what made counseling so difficult. I would be accused of things and doing things that I never had done. I was made to be this rotten guy that mocked her illness and I never did. Instead of feeling that I was in counseling, I felt more like I was on trial being accused of horrible things that I never have done. I was even defending family and people that I knew as things they had said were terribly twisted and I am racking my brain trying to remember exactly what was said that day and how because my wife altered the meaning of something they said or did and made it to be something horrible.
Anyone else with this problem here? I do not think I ever want to do counseling again because it made one thing clear to me and that is, my wifes perception of things is distorted and she really believes how she perceives things is correct. How can you get help when the other person only perceives that it is you that needs help and not them and will go out of their way to make their paranoia a reality in which you are guilty of even though you had no part of it?
I had such a horrible time when I would go with my wife for counseling several years ago. She convinced me that I would need to keep a journal of everything that I did to vindicate myself of all the accusations.
She told the counselor that she didn't feel loved by me when she was locked up in an institution. She said that I wouldn't tell her that I loved her when I came to see her and that I acted like I was ashamed of her. I had to respond back to the counselor that I went out of my way every day to tell her that I loved her as visiting hours were over and had to leave. I pointed out that I came there and ate her disgusting food that they served while I brought her daily the food she wanted from whatever restaurant she had a taste for. I pointed out that I showed up each visitation period and was their early and would leave late with the baby. We even talked by phone too when it wasn't visiting hours. I bought her approved items to keep her entertained while there. I said to the counselor that if I didn't love her then I would have showed up late and left early. I had it arranged so that we could come during her meals also instead of visitation time and we did and then my son and I would sit in the lobby after we ate until it was visitation time again (1 hour wait). This hospital too was 20 minutes from my house. I even took care of my son during this time. I took a Family Leave Act for two weeks to be with her and received no pay from work. If I wanted to express being ashamed of her or hate then this would have been the perfect opportunity but I didn't and I told her that I loved her each time I went there. She didn't come out and tell him that when I went back to work she would call threatening me and calling me names. She did deny that when confronted and told me that I was living in the past.
I have learned that she lives in a reality of her own where she is convinced of things in her own paranoia. This was what made counseling so difficult. I would be accused of things and doing things that I never had done. I was made to be this rotten guy that mocked her illness and I never did. Instead of feeling that I was in counseling, I felt more like I was on trial being accused of horrible things that I never have done. I was even defending family and people that I knew as things they had said were terribly twisted and I am racking my brain trying to remember exactly what was said that day and how because my wife altered the meaning of something they said or did and made it to be something horrible.
Anyone else with this problem here? I do not think I ever want to do counseling again because it made one thing clear to me and that is, my wifes perception of things is distorted and she really believes how she perceives things is correct. How can you get help when the other person only perceives that it is you that needs help and not them and will go out of their way to make their paranoia a reality in which you are guilty of even though you had no part of it?
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I have been here before, a long long time ago and now I am back.Forgive me for not just saying what I want to say,even under a triple dose of antidepressants it is still raw and seeping and I am hesitant at revealing it as at least under the bandages around my heart I don,t have to look at how raw and wounded.My child was cleaved from my heart by his own actions. my child of ten,turning eleven...
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theatre and I are there already. I'm having a very berry tea with crackers, cheese and cherry tomatoes and she's having a joint with some beer and we're both on really comfy recliners on thick pile carpet. we need some help with the decor if anyone is around??
With that being said I do not see how marriage counciling can even remotely work under the conditions you are talking about.
I strongly suggest that you call he PDoc and have a discussion or better yet make your own appointment with them to explain all this. After you descibing all the situation I am wondering if she actually has BP w/psychosis. I would not let your wife know under the circumstances what you are doing but it is fairly clear her medications arent working and she really isnt in a situation in which she comprehends what is going on.
I am dead serious taht you have to talk this over with her PDoc. Has she been a danger to yourself, herself, your son, or anyone else recently as well? If so you really have to let the PDoc know.
It's hard to explain her to you. She was convinced that my nephew who was laughing with his friends were laughing at her. She was convinced that they were calling her weird and things and that he was saying, "That's my weird aunt" and so on. This crap still happens.
My sister who is older than her wished her happy birthday and goofed around with her and said "So how does it feel being old?" jokingly. My sister is almost 10 years older than her and my wife was bashing her to the world that she called her old. I said that she was kidding and my wife said, "No she was not!!" I mention this one because she used it to the counselor as proof that my family disrespects her.
I had two friends over one time and she was convinced that they were talking about her medication that she was taking back then called Klonopin. I had no clue why my wife just instantly became silent and had an angry look on her face. My friends left not knowing what was going on. She told me later screaming at me that they were talking about her medication. I told her, "There is no way they were talking about it since they don't even know you are on any meds." She heard something in the conversation and thought it sounded like Klonopin and was convinced from then on that is what it was about. So I was the bad guy mocking her to my friends about her meds back when we were dating.
This crap continually happens. I will be in the kitchen washing my plate and if I say quietly, "OK, I'm finished" then she will start yelling in some cases, "What did you say in there?" And I am thinking "Huh?" She will then ask, "Did you call me a bitch?" I will reply, "Where did you come up with bitch out of what I just said?" She always mishears things and will always hear something negative from it. This is still very common and will experience this weekly.
I can't talk to anyone on the phone without her listening to my and psycho analyzing everything that I am saying. She starts drilling me on what did I mean when I said this or that?? She convinces herself that it is about her. I have to run downstairs or shut a door to talk on the phone.
Just the other week, I order Mexican food to be picked up that she called and requested that I do. I took out a phone book and called the number from the business pages and not from the yellow pages. She came home and went through some of the numbers on that page and found some odd practice on that page and was demanding to know who it was I called and why. I can't even leave a phone book open. Now, if we were to go to marriage counseling then she will forget that I revealed who it was I called and will say that I look up clinics and call and say bad things about her is how this crap starts and this is why I need a freaking journal.
This is what I am dealing with when seeing a marriage counselor. I have a wife rapid firing a whole bunch of crap that never happened and I am sitting there racking my brain trying to remember what the situation was that day and what was actually said and it gets difficult.
When she does get full of rage, she claims to literally forget what she has said or who she was yelling at. She will call me a "f**king loser" in front of my son and then 10 minutes later claim that she never said that. There are many things that she has said and done that she will call me a liar when I bring it to her attention as though she has never done that.
She has it arranged with her psychiatrist that I cannot talk to her. She even told me to go ahead and try as she has her doctor convinced that I am a psycho path. They say that if you throw enough dirt then some of it will stick.
I don't believe it for a minute that she has it arranged with her PDoc. Thats just bunk. Do you want to know how many PDocs are totally appreciative of hearing from the spouse? ALL OF THEM! Just pick up the phone and call and make an appointment to see him. Call today!
I repeatedly asked my Pdoc for Dialectic Behavioural Therapy to address my borderline personality disorder issues which are cognitive rather than chemical and therefore not being mitigated by my BP medication. He ignored this specific request and referred my other half and I for generic couple's therapy.
With the best will in the world, we only stuck it out for one session. The problem was, this therapist - effectively just a marriage guidance counsellor - knew nothing whatsoever about bipolar/BPD or the insidious issues that are part and parcel of these conditions and the unique way in which their distortions impact on intimate relationships.
She appeared to side with me readily because I have a capacity to articulate things in a convincing and compelling way. I should have been a defense lawyer! She somewhat antagonised my partner in the process of her interrogation - rightly or wrongly, he was starting to feel like he was on trial - while I think I could have told her the grass was pink and still elicited her empathy.
We both tried to explain to her that during the session, I was not "me" (just someone who looked and sounded like me) and therefore anything I said while "in a BP moment" had very little relevance or validity to our situation. She just plain didn't get it, continuing to talk about niggly little relationship issues that would appertain to "normal" couples but are the least of our worries!
In her written summary of our session, she concluded that my partner and I are "not a match made in heaven" and that he is not the love of my life - based on her erroneous observation of me when I'm not myself. These misplaced notions could have been powerfully damaging if I took them at face value. I am grateful that I can be objective enough to see manipulation for what it is and try my best never to exploit my illness - I could have had this therapist bending to my will like a performing monkey. But my feeling is that progress needs to be based on total honesty - there's no victory in this game for cheats.
Every discovery, we have made for ourselves. Every time we avert a "combustion", it's because one or both of us is being super-mindful and nipping the comfortable familiarity of negative behaviour in the bud.
Has anyone learned anything ground-breaking from marriage/relationship counselling? If so, please do throw us any crumbs from the table as we'd love to be able to take advantage of some second-hand coping mechanisms, rather than learning all our painful lessons the hard way!
Our marriage counselor NEVER offered any good advice. He was only good at being a parrot repeating everything we just said in his own words. I just wanted to know at what school do they teach them to talk so fruity. The way he was talking was so distracting to me. He would talk so soft and so slow that you wanted to smack him on the back of the head to get the words out.
My wife and I both had a psychological evaluation because both parents are required to go through one for some reason when DCFS gets involved. I was forced to go to all the same classes as my wife. I had to go to postpartum classes, parenting classes, classes on anger, classes that dealt with bp disorder. I had to have my own counselor in order to teach me how to cope with her condition.
Anyways, the psychological evaluation revealed that we were just opposites. So I guess you can view me as water and her as the earth because together we make mud is what I am gathering the evaluation revealed about us. So we certainly are not a "match made in heaven."
Personally, I hated marriage counseling and the other counseling crap we went to do. Have you had to do this counseling where you play opposite roles in front of others? It is where I play her role and she plays mine. Wow, was that a mistake. She made me out to be a raging lunatic. I was so tempted when it came to imitate her CORRECTLY, I would loved to share with everyone, "I had thoughts about killing you (me), my son and myself and it is your fault that I was put in a psychiatric ward!!!!"
My wife doesn't display any of those psychotic thoughts today. It seemed to be directly tied to when she gave birth to our son. The only thing that bothers me is that to this day she doesn't believe she should have been hospitalized. I didn't have her admitted but her own admission of her thoughts to a counselor at the hospital had her admitted because of her thoughts. I mention this to my wife that she herself was the reason she was admitted, but she said that I didn't even put up a fight to keep her from being put in there. She said that other woman experience these thoughts and do not get hospitalized but that their own doctor prescribed medicine to get them through it. She still to this day will only say that she had a bad case of postpartum but never postpartum with psychotic tendencies. The physical assaults are excused on the basis of postpartum and that I deserved it too. This still has me concerned because in her deluded thinking, she sees herself as OK. I'm just glad that I do not hear about it much anymore because any time she is reminded or thinks about it is when she starts yelling and calling me names.
There is a big difference between you and my wife. The difference is, you recognized a problem and asked for help. My wife sees no problems and seeks only to blame others as her family does as well. This makes it very difficult for me. I truly think that counseling with her has been a huge mistake as she has gone through great lengths to make her counselor think that she is just working and improving herself and people like me is only here to knock her down and treat her like dirt only seeking to control her.
The first thing that I must do is get her back on her meds as she has quit taking two of them. I just wish I knew how to approach her psychiatrist as she is as rude as can be when you call her by phone. I also fear her psychotic rage that I will see when she finds out that I did call her psychiatrist. It seems that after you get your head kicked several thousand times that you start preferring to keep things as quiet as possible without stirring things up. I just don't know if I can deal again with the onslaught of her and her family and all the name calling and mudslinging that goes on because to be honest, I think that would simply end the marriage for good on my part. I have my own way now that I deal with her and it is a sad way but it seems to work at keeping peace in the house and me from experiencing too many migraines.
Basically, with my wife, if you get too close (loving relationship) then she will receive it at first and then turn on you quickly. If you get too far then the same results seem to happen. You just start learning to go with the flow of things. You don't get too close and you don't go wandering too far either. It's basically a dry and boring relationship on my end but it keeps the peace better for some reason. I still do not know why that is. You would think that someone paranoid would want me to be very close to her and she even complains about it but doesn't realize what it seems to do to her. She seems to find that closeness she seeks with her family as they all practically live on top of each other but others on the outside she takes offense with. Nobody is allowed however to be close to me. She would get offended and even yelled at my mom before because she was checking up on me when I was sick and my wife felt that my mom was babying me. Her family however does it on a regular basis but that is OK. This is a very different family that I belong too. They love to share their opinions on how you are to run your life but don't you dare offer your opinions. They are afraid to offend each other (not me) but if you are a waitress (or anyone else in public) then don't you dare cross them or you will experience the full force of their wrath. I never was made to feel a part of this family. My wife doesn't want me calling my family with questions concerning my son and what to do in certain situations. She tells me that I should call her sister instead and get her opinion. If my family says something then my wife fights against it but if she hears it from her family then it is the gospel of good tidings and I am suppose to agree with it.
Sorry, I complained enough.
Actually, on that note, I've heard in the US there are specially trained therapy dogs who can detect the onset of mania and depression. You undertake a year's training with your mental health dog to attune him to your specific triggers and responses and he has the same status as guide dogs for the blind in public places.
Got to be better than the nodding donkey counsellors!
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I think it sounds like she has false ideas of what takes place. Im surpised you dont consider her to be psychotic...
If couples therapy is not working, because she clearly is not dealing with reality, maybe you should have your own counseling, just for yourself. Its hard to be strong enough to not lose perspective yourself. Also, whether for yourself, or for marraige counseling, shop around for someone who IS experienced with bipolar disorder. You try so hard, yet it seems futile. You hare entitled to be relatively happy and peaceful within yourself. Keep trying!
i am so sorry that you are going through this. I wish there was something that i could say that would help to change things for you and your family. The best i can do is to offer you my ear. If you ever want to talk, i'm here.
These are my thoughts regarding this post and some of the responses that i have read. PDoc's and counselors are just ppl. Some are better then others. She may have grown attached to this one b/c he does not challenge her ?
The best piece of advise i can offer you is this story:
i knew a father who was in a situation similar to this one. He was a cop. He began collecting evidence and information on his families situation. Recording her threats, outburst and anything he could. Via tape recordings and such. I think he kept a journal as well. I think i mentioned this to you before... but i would also like to say.... some lawyers are better then others. Maybe it would be good to get a second opinion. Purely for the idea of protecting yourself and your son. Should a problem ever arise.
Also, have you thought about seeing someone on your own? A good therapist might have some more solid advise for you. At least it would give you a place to vent and some good support.
You are a very strong person *hug*. With a great sense of humor and a big heart. Do not listen to the bad things she has said about you. She is sick. You are a good person, do not doubt that. You are doing everything possible to hold your family together. Pls don't discredit yourself there.
Find doctors who specialize in these kinds of cases. A little experience can go a long way. You and your family deserve a healthy and supportive home-life.