How To Cope When A Spouse Has Bipolar Disorder

“My wife and I are in our thirties. Everything was going well for us until about a year ago when she was diagnosed with bipolar. Now I am having a hard time coping with her illness, all the medication, all the strange emotions. How can I turn this around?” 

Your concern certainly applies to anyone dealing with a loved one who suffers from a mood disorder.

First of all, have you and your wife been involved in any individual or couple’s therapy? Do you attend NAMI or DBSA support groups? If so, great; if not, you need to consider these meetings. You will have the opportunity to be with others who share the same concerns. You will gain new coping skills, and you will further realize that you are not alone.

Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder and Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder: A 4-Step Plan for You and Your Loved Ones to Manage the Illness and Create Lasting Stability are two books written by Julie A. Fast and John B. Preston. Both books are of particular relevance to anyone in your situation. They are widely available and relatively inexpensive.

The symptoms on the part of your wife are probably mirrored by your own feelings of hopelessness and isolation as you attempt to deal with her severe mood swings, erratic behavior, effects of medication, and strange emotions. Fast and Preston write of the extreme pressure felt by loved ones, and they offer a number of suggestions for coping without drowning in anger, frustration, and guilt.

General suggestions of Fast and Preston include the need for agreed upon goals and expectations. However difficult it may seem for people with a mood disorder to deal with acceptable behavior, it can be anticipated that they will try. For example, keeping a record of tasks for the day written the night before, can be very helpful as a contract. The person with the mood disorder is expected to consult and follow the record of tasks. If the person does not, there must be suitable consequences such as the loss of some pleasurable activity.

Your wife also needs to understand her own responsibilities and that there are consequences to her behavior. Another book, The Bipolar Workbook by Monica Ramirez Basco is an excellent resource for your wife, providing a number of activities and much direct help for her own involvement in dealing with bipolar disorder.

In addition to daily written plans and the use of the workbook, both you and your wife can keep journals of feelings and share them from time to time. Keeping lines of communication open also is of major importance. According to Fast and Preston, without open and honest communication, partners often feel gravely misunderstood.

It is also important for you to set boundaries in order to take care of yourself. Otherwise, your own negative feelings will engulf you, and you will be of little help to your wife or yourself.

Take time off alone, go out with friends, take in a movie, or buy yourself an ice cream cone. You need not feel as if you are abandoning your wife. Quite the contrary, you are simple taking a much needed rest.

Dr. Manuel S. Silverman, PhD