The inheritance of loss (and gain)
It’s no secret that Bipolar Disorder is genetic. It was a “surprise” that I was the first person in our family to be diagnosed as bipolar, though. I’ve long felt inadequate, intellectually, compared with my parents the Ph.D.s, but I was the one who was proactive enough about her dysfunction to make thrashing overtures toward diagnosis and treatment. Since my diagnosis and miraculous recovery of the person I’ve suspected I could be all along, I’ve been trying to nudge both my parents along toward getting themselves checked out, with little success. But I’m convinced they’re both bipolar, given what I now know, and I’ve been trying to get them to see the light.
My mom’s resistance ended dramatically, with her psychotic (but happy! oh, so happy!) episode this spring, after which she was hospitalized and diagnosed as Bipolar, and her crippling depression (lasting my whole life) at last yielded to a combination of antipsychotic and mood stabilizers. Amazing– but not really. When your depression’s affected you for so long, no anti-depressant makes a dent, and you used to have pretenatural spurts of productivity when you were in grad school (did I mention bipolar often most obviously manifests itself in the late teens and early twenties?), why wouldn’t you believe your daughter when she tells you that maybe you should see a shrink to reevaluate your depression, given your daughter’s diagnosis and resounding response? But all’s well that ends well, and now her meds seem to put her in to a receptive frame of mind, and she seems to be doing her homework, reading up and meeting with her care team regularly.
My dad’s been more stubborn. Granted, he was functional in his dysfunction for much longer than my mom was– it took him until I was 12 before his alcoholism cost him not just his job for a few weeks but also his driver’s license. At that point, he took sobriety seriously, and made up his mind to stop the self-medication he’d been indulging in since he was in graduate school (that whole teens & twenties thing again). After he became sober, his moods didn’t change minute to minute, but he was still bouncing between talkative, charming, funny, and reticent, snappy, shy, disinterested, apathetic, inactive. He wasn’t able to find a shrink he liked in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, and made do with the talk therapy at AA. And then the blood pressure meds came along. (Blood pressure meds are sometimes used in combination with antipsychotics to assist/speed the effect of an antipsychotic when someone’s in an acute episode.) He’s on a serious dose of the bp meds, and they dial down what he calls “the jiggies,” but they also make him very slow in the morning. And in the meantime, he’s still sad. And lonely. He seems resolved to believe he’s just a naturally melancholy person with too much distemper to successfully live with someone else, but I see someone whose long and deep depressive episodes aren’t being appropriately managed, and who could be a lot happier.
After having such amazing relief of my own misery, I want the same for them. I know I inherited it from them, but nobody wants to acknowledge they’re “mentally ill,” even though the failure to acknowledge it can be so disastrous. Even with the proof in front of them of the success of appropriate medication and talk therapy, though, they continued to be stubborn. My mom would always say, when I was being hyper, or in a raging, nasty, irritable mood on the downturn, “you’re just like your father.” And my dad would always say, when I’d burst into tears at the littlest thing, “you’re just like your mother.” Um, yeah. But I’m like you, too– that’s the point. Too bad you’re too blind to see it.
Republished from BipolarLawyerCook.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I have only met my biological mother (i am adopted) and I see much of me in here. The anxiety, the need to keep moving, although she doesn’t get the soul crushing morning fatigue that I do, from (I assume) it the mood stabilizer or maybe the anti anxiety? who knows anymore. Even though your father is not fully on board, it must be satisfying to see some progress. Even after the childhood trauma of living with two undiagnosed parents.
xo
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 pm
It must be frustating for you to know relief is available and not have your parents seek it. You sound like a pretty amazing person to have gotten this far.
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I recently had a conversation with my uncle where I hypothesized that the reason his sisters were sometimes annoying or mean to him was that they in fact wished for a better, happier life for him (and sadly lashing out is the only way they know of sharing their love).
As it happens he was just admitted to the hospital this weekend, and like last time, there really is no hope of him following through on things to get the help he needs (which includes following the regimen a dr may set up for him). His current diagnosis is borderline personality disorder, but I wonder if he’s not bipolar.
I hope that your dad will eventually get to a place where he can get the help that will give him a happier life.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
i suspect my mom has bipolar tendencies. and i’m pretty sure my son has them as well. we’re just a long line of fun in our family.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:51 am
My dad is *something* undiagnosed, untreated. I’m bipolar too, and I can’t help but look at him and say, “you did this.” He gave me a genetic marker, and he treated me roller-coaster my whole life. I’m not good enough, I’m a precious gift, he’s happy, he’s angry. It’s all a bad mental soup for me. I work hard on it–as hard as my insurance will let me. I’m making progress, but I still die inside when I hear his voice telling me “no.”
I tried to get him help by trying to talk my mom into marriage counselling. I thought that if he saw a therapist, the therapist would see his problem and find a way to help him repair it. My mom won’t do it. Even though diagnosed mental illness does run in my family, they’re in denial about me. “You’re fine,” they say, not knowing how much they’re insulting me. Neither of them agreed to the marriage counselling trick.
I guess this kind of turned into a post of its own, but the pain and damage of undiagnosed parents is as much a pain as treating yourself.
September 25th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
I know mental illness runs in my dad’s side of the family. I see signs of it everywhere, now that I’m better. My dad is most definitely bipolar, my uncle schizophrenic, grandma bipolar, etc, but they’re all in denial and think they’re fine and all these symptoms are just normal and everyone feels the same way. It’s stupid really, but I know nothing I say will make a difference. They think I’m the flaky one and there’s no reason for me to be on the meds as I’m perfectly fine, or else that meds are okay for me, but they don’t need them themselves as they’re fine. I don’t know. I really can’t imagine choosing to live the rest of your life like that and not get help when they see how much the treatment helped me, but I guess denial is a pretty strong thing. I just hope that there isn’t some awful psychotic episode that finally leads to their treatment and that they’ll realize it before then. For some reason, when I mention my symptoms they just say, “Oh, I do that, too” meaning it’s normal, but not realizing that that means it’s NOT normal if I’m diagnosed as bipolar. What can I do? I really don’t know. Just try to be there for them if and when it happens, I suppose.