Parental Bipolar Love

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I inherited my amazing bi polar (oh gosh) from my mother, I believe. She is undiagnosed and was practically homicidal for most of my childhood. We only now have a relationship because her rage is not as bad now that her primary care prescribed her Zoloft. He never diagnosed her with anything or referred her to a mental health professional. Now she sees me diagnosed with AS and about to be diagnosed with bipolar.. and she thinks I am crazy and on too many meds. I take one medication. I really am unsure of how I am supposed to continue this relationship while still being blamed for everything always. I tip toe around her and she is a bull in a china shop every day. All I am trying to do is help this person and I am met with opposition. I also provide her with a job at my business and she calls me 45 times a day complaining about everything. HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

The more I know bipolar or bipolar-like people, the more I start to see the signs a lot. Due to this, I think I can find the best solutions.

They blame you for their own problems, they make what is a molehill to you into Mount Kilimanjaro for them, they play the martyr a lot, they often reject help thinking nothing is wrong with them, sometimes, their conversation is nothing more than a line of nonsequitors [sic]...mine just uses conversation as a chance to make a lightning rod or a sitting duck out of me. Whether or not this is due to the parents they grew up with or society's doing, they could use positivity as a way to get over the hump, but the ones I knew never could or thinks it is pointless to try.

The truth is she knows good and well that everything isn't your fault. If there is anything I have learned about them is that they like to put the blame on good people just so they won't feel like s**t about all the trouble they can cause for themselves. They think that it will make them feel better if you shared the misery, and it just doesn't at all. It makes things worse. From experience, it sucks ass, when either you have or you feel like you have inherited their disorder or their tendencies. Not saying I have, but I try hard to keep my head level and stay away from all the drama. Anyway, I am not saying that from all this that I think the relationship cannot be helped, but I don't know if there is a way it can be helped while keeping your own sanity or self-esteem intact. Everyone knows that blaming someone for everything does nothing but paint you as a tragic martyr figure or makes you look like a child who can't handle their own mistakes. It drains people. Rather, it turns them into you, so you can have a version of yourself to blame and due to that, nobody wants to hang around them.

If you are a Christian, all I can say is pray.

Me, personally? All I do is stay away from people who like to use me as a scapegoat for their problems, or if they bring it to me (which some tend to do), I tell them to take a look in the mirror and see who the real problem is, and if they punch the mirror, I'm not paying for it. I guess that is my supposed "lack of empathy" talking.

Unfortunately, I think sometimes bipolar gets misdiagnosed in people who have extreme anger problems. If a person is truly bipolar and has no anger issues to begin with, their rage should be under control if their mood ever gets stabilized.

To the OP, your mom sounds toxic. I would say, set boundaries. Unfortunately you might have to act as the adult.

wow, some serious stereotyping going on in this thread.

i am bipolar and i don't fit this description at all. some of us have been working all our lives to get better, see our psychiatrist/therapist regularly, take our medication, and generally don't f**k with other people. you know the saying "if you've met one aspie, then you've met one aspie" that gets tossed around a lot on this forum?--it applies to other diagnoses, too. not all people with bipolar disorder are the same--some are as*holes and some are not, just like the non-bipolar population. please stop generalising. there is enough stigma attached to mental illness as it is, you don't help anyone by adding to it.

I'm bipolar, and i don't blame others for my problems. In fact, it's often the opposite - I blame myself for their problems. I'm on another board specifically for mental illnesses, and I can't think of any of the bipolar clan on that site that are like as charcoalsketches describes. In fact what c/s describes sounds more like narcissism to me. But none of us are doctors, so who are we to diagnose.

To the OP, I agree that your mother sounds toxic. Boundaries are going to be very important to you if you want to maintain a relationship with her, which it seems like you'll have to do on some level since she works for you.

Bipolar people can vary. Unfortunately some (not all, but some) are toxic, especially those who refuse treatment and won't accept responsibility for their condition (or a subset those who cannot be treated - I think approx 30% of bipolar people don't respond to medication, who have severe/psychotic depression/rage issues/delusional depression). You need to avoid toxic bipolars if humanly possible, but if you can't I think the best approach to take is primarily to try and get them to seek treatment, and if that isn't possible (which it often isn't if they are strong-willed/play mind games with you to seek control/are controlling or dominating, and if it's a parent it's much harder as they come for a position of control) or secondarily try to reason with them in as logical, calm, and non-emotional a matter as possible (explain why they are upsetting you, and why they.

They probably won't listen to logic 99% percent of the time, and it will probably feel like you're banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall, but if you manage to get them on a good day it can make a difference.

I understand what you're going through; my mum has what we believe is undiagnosed bipolar, and she went through an episode of "psychotic"/delusional depression for several years, during which she was verbally abusive and almost impossible to live with/reason with (especially because her natural personality is very domineering/controlling). I spent years trying to talk sense into her, but eventually it actually worked and now she has good insight into her condition. I found it was necessary to be extremely logical, calm, and not clouded by emotions in order to get through to her and to protect myself, as (in her depressive state) very good at emotional manipulation and mind games.

I also have bipolar myself (onset of which happened either during or after my mother's depressive episode, but I was diagnsosed after) and now I understand much better from the perspective of the bipolar person.

If a person is bipolar and they are experiencing a severe mood episode then their entire sense of reality can be completely warped. To the outside observer, it's obvious that their behaviour is completely irrational and inappropriate, but to bipolar person that same behaviour may seem to be a rational/sensible response to their perceived reality.

although what charcoalsketches said may sound discriminatory, unfortunately in some instances (especially in severe psychotic depression) this can be the case. The actual reason behind the behaviour is different though - to the outsider the bipolar person is blaming other people for their problems to make themselves feel better, to the bipolar person - they truly believe that the outsider is the cause of their problems. This is something that is almost impossible to wrap your head around until you experience it yourself. Once you come out the other side, it's like your entire reality shifts back again and you perceive your behaviour in a completely different way. It can be quite horrifying, especially as during the time your thoughts and behaviours seemed so sensible/rational.

Anyway, my advice to the OP (if the mother is out of control and impossible to reason with) would be to try and reduce contact with the mother until she is in a better mood state, and then use that window of opportunity to calmly and rationally discuss the mother's behaviour with the mother and come up with a preventative plan of action for when the mother experiences another episode.