Question about Bipolar

[recoveringenabler]

My sister is bi-polar. There are often constellations of mental illness, it is challenging to put it all into one diagnosis. However, if there are other components in addition to bi-polar, like schizoaffective disorder, it can create delusions & illusions. My sister has an extremely different perception of our past and has blamed every member of my family for various events that never took place. She is not manipulating, nor even an unkind person, she has an illness which prevents her from being able to see reality.

Having said that, I do believe that those struggling with any kind of mental illness can manufacture events in order to get their needs met. Having grown up with mentally ill parents & siblings, it's extremely challenging to find answers and have it be absolute. Many folks are helped by medication, but others are not. I've learned in the world of mental illness, it is not black and white, 'always this way, never that way'.....none of that can be said, it is fluid, it can change, it's individual and it's far from exact.

My best suggestion is to really trust your instincts when your son speaks to you. I've trained myself to listen very carefully (over a lifetime of this stuff!!) and when it feels weird, it usually is. If you feel your son is manipulating you then he likely is. Either way, you don't have to allow another to disrespect you or be manipulative or nasty. Unless someone is psychotic they have some ability to know right from wrong. Take good care of yourself.

 

[Copabanana]

But Goneboy was going to completely cut out his father too.

I refused to beg and grovel. I suspect ex did along with mentioning how much money he had inherited.

All of this stuff about Goneboy, SWOT, reminds me of my SISTER. This push-pull business. This making people grovel. These threats. Making all decisions about people who are close to her OR NOT based upon MONEY or ulterior motives.

But I think it is defensive. Not in the main malicious. I think these people are so FRAGILE and so LIMITED that this is the structure of their personalities. I think you are right to not personalize what Goneboy has done. This is about him and his life before he met you. His extreme limits.

still calling me an F--- b----ch, whore, selfish, stupid.

Beta. This is horrible. I would try to do anything to not hear or read these words. This is de-humanizing. You should not be a target. Or a better way to put it is: he may target you, but you need to remove yourself so that it does not touch you, reach you.

 

[BusynMember]

Bipolar diagnosed say twenty years ago is way different than today...for one thing, borderline didnt exist then. They are often confused with one another. Back then borderline was almost unheard of. And my bipolar diagnosis was called manic depression it, the name changed later for a reason. And even then they only had bipolar I and II. Now I recently read there are eight types. Not even sure schizoaffective existed back then and in the very early days of my seeing psychiatrists, autism was considered an incurable form of severe schizophrenia that was definitely by cold mothers (NOT the fathers) who were called called "refrigerator mothers." The kids were deemed hopeless and often put in mental hospitals, which existed back then. How wrong could psychiatry be then? How wrong can it be now??

And your peeps, if diagnosed back in the day with bipolar, may be the bipolar of today or something else entirely. What we now call borderline? Schizoaffective? What will these all be called in five years? Not trying to argue. Just that paychiatry keeps changing but there are STILL no blood tests and we never know for sure what is going on. So I really hate blaming things like reciting wrong memories as a part of a now enormous spectrum called mood disorders. Bipolar was less understood then and we still arent sure what causes any mental illness or why certain medications do this or that. Done my homework.

But I do believe there are all sorts of mental differences ( some probably are not yet in the DSM) and each problem causes other problems in different people. And the fact is that some people who are not considered mentally ill remember the past differently than others who are not considered mentally ill. It is the human condition to see the same event our own way. I do not consider my birth brother as seriously mentaly ill and since our mother worshipped him while despising me we both have different memories of her and feelings about her. For her treatment of us, which was night and day, we are both right.

Then there are sneaky people who gaslight on purpose to manipulate us...a means to an end. We see this here sll the time. We ask why. We look desperately for why.

But we dont ever know for sure why somebody says something false on purpose or has s false memory, if indeed they arent just lying. We can guess. We can say the person is mentally ill. We can say the person has a faulty memory. We can say it is gaslighting. We can say its the drugs. We can take guesses.

One thing we cant do is know why for sure. We are not in their heads.

I think, and this is just my worthless .02, that it is more important for us to learn how to cope with these wrong, hurtful perceptions than to try to pinpoint why they are spoken because we can control OUR reactions, but we can't know for sure why they seem so forgetful. And we cant stop their behavior.

 

[Nomad]

I think so.

Our adult child does this thing called “confabulation.”

She partially remembers something and fills in the blanks with fantasy, which is largely related to her mood, which is often crummy. Therefore, it comes out in a negative manner...a twisted, negative, distorted memory.