Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.
Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Bipolar, a Healthline Media Podcast, where we tackle bipolar disorder using real-world examples and the latest research.
Gabe: Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I live with bipolar disorder.
Dr. Nicole: And I’m Dr. Nicole Washington, a board-certified psychiatrist.
Gabe: Dr. Nicole, I think that you would be surprised to know that “Managing Marriage and Bipolar” is our most popular episode ever. It came out around Valentine’s Day in 2023 and still to this very moment, it ticks off lots of listens. People are still discovering it and by far it’s our most popular topic. Now, we always ask at the beginning of the show, email [email protected] and send us your thoughts and ideas, etc. and that is where that topic came from. People were like, how are you married with bipolar disorder? And I think they meant it kindly. And I’m so glad that episode is popular. And that’s why we decided, okay, let’s address some marital conflict with bipolar disorder. And I’m curious, Dr. Nicole, do you think it’s the weirdest way I can ask this question? Do you think that people with bipolar disorder have a harder time in marriage?
Dr. Nicole: Ahh! Do I think you have a harder time? I mean, I tend to think that marriage is pretty tough, anyway. From someone who’s been married almost 25 years like it is, it is not for the faint at heart. It is. It is. It’s not. It is not this very easy thing that you just jump into. And then it’s all, you know, unicorns and rainbows. It just isn’t. But I will say, I could see how if you are also then trying to manage an illness like bipolar disorder, that that could add a layer of complexity to being in a long-term relationship with somebody.
Gabe: I’ve been married for 12 years and it’s exceedingly difficult. I don’t I don’t think it’s exceedingly difficult because I live with bipolar disorder. I just think that marriage is hard. The thing that we’re doing is just difficult. But you are absolutely right. Doing something difficult and managing bipolar disorder, which is also difficult, is a is a little extra.
Dr. Nicole: It’s a lot extra. I mean, I would say it’s more than just just a little extra. I mean, you’re having to manage your moods and deal with your stuff that you’re carrying around. And let’s face it, even if your partner doesn’t have bipolar disorder. Everybody’s got something. Everybody’s got something in their backpack of stuff that they are carrying around. And we have to figure out how to maneuver around each other with our stuff.
Gabe: In the last episode, I used Kendall. My wife is really inspiration for a lot of the stories, a lot of the ideas, and I really approached it from a very positive way. You know, I talked about our challenges, etc., but there was a lot of positivity towards my wife. So in this episode, I wanted to really use my two divorces. My analogies, my my talk, it’s all going to come from the conflict of those two failed marriages. So I don’t want anybody to think that I’m negative, because I learned a lot from those things that ultimately did lead to the good marriage that I’m in now. But for the rest of the show, all of my examples are going to trend very negative because obviously those marriages ended for a reason. But especially my first marriage ended for, for many reasons; it’s a quagmire. But being a person living with bipolar disorder who was untreated was a huge factor. And the older I get and the more I reflect backwards, I realize just how much of a burden being married to somebody with untreated bipolar disorder must have been for her, and how erratic and irrational and toxic my behavior was, and how that would spill on to my spouse. So, and I just want the audience to know I was never diagnosed until after the divorce, so she never really got to see doing well, Gabe. She never got to see in treatment Gabe. I know that she has heard that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I’m doing better, but we have not had like intimate conversations on it or discussed it at all.
Dr. Nicole: So, yes, as hard as marriage is, and we encourage people who live with bipolar disorder to live their lives to the fullest and to do all those things. I think very few people would recommend for someone in that phase to be married. You didn’t even know you had bipolar disorder. You didn’t even know what this thing was. I just can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been for both of you and that person to try to function in a relationship with so many unknowns and so much instability.
Gabe: The instability was incredible and my behavior was completely erratic. She couldn’t make any adjustments because I was all over the place, which again is a hallmark of bipolar disorder. One of the reasons that I wanted to ask.
Dr. Nicole: Untreated bipolar disorder. Uncontrolled bipolar disorder.
Dr. Nicole: Like I want to make sure like, you know, once you’re in better control, it isn’t so much or we don’t expect it to be so much up and down. Like, it’s the hallmark of bipolar disorder, especially when you’re in an unstable phase or in a, you know, not being treated and things aren’t managed well all over the place up, down, all around.
Gabe: All over the place. Yeah, you are absolutely right. Thank you for jumping in there on that one. And I didn’t even know. So I thought I was being rational, which of course adds another wrinkle to this. Right? In some of those times it’s just word salad, right? I believe that I have made an articulate point to, to move the discussion along so that we can get to the promised land of agreement and reconciliation. And she’s like, did you just say fork, coke, cup salad at me? And I’m like, no, that’s not what I said. And now I’m angry at her because I feel like she’s mocking me. And also the reflection points of living with untreated bipolar disorder.
Gabe: I would reflect back to the argument to try to learn from it and memorize it completely wrong. And especially if I was, you know, manic or delusional. I might remember entire arguments or discussions or even agreements that never took place. But now I believe them to be true. I wanted to bring all of this up, because if you’re in a marriage right now where you’re like, look, I remember that conversation, but your spouse is looking at you like that never happened. You might be wise if you’re managing conflict in your relationship to think, maybe I’m wrong. I think that could be a good place to start. But of course, that’s difficult because you’ve got to have a lot of trust in your spouse, because I can I can hear my brain already saying, but what if the spouse lies to take advantage of you? Well, that’s a whole other problem that we’re not going to cover in this podcast. We’re going to assume good intentions moving forward.
Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I mean I think most people marry people that they fundamentally trust. You marry somebody that at the foundation of your relationship, you trust them, you married them. You. You said, I’m going to be with this person forever. There was something there that made you think, I can be with this person for the rest of my life? There was something there. But then all of a sudden, when you’re in an episode, all that trust goes out the window and all of a sudden you can’t trust anybody. So, yeah, I think you’re right. You know, being able to just step back and say, could I be wrong like I did marry this person. I did choose this person to be with for the rest of my life. Could I be wrong? Could they be telling me the truth? And my brain is, for whatever reason, kind of not remembering things appropriately?
Gabe: It’s super important to understand that one of the hallmarks of marriage is that you have faith and trust in your partner. If you don’t have faith and trust in your spouse, I don’t think bipolar disorder is your biggest issue. I think that’s your biggest issue. And I do want to reiterate something that we said in the in the other episode, which is all of the rules of marriage apply. Whether you live with bipolar or not, you don’t get to skip over any bipolar disorder may be a bigger component. In fact, it may be the biggest component, especially in different issues or circumstances or time periods of your relationship. But it’s never going to be the only one. And you have to pay attention to all of the little things that keep a good marriage going. So I highly recommend anybody listening to just go check out a marriage podcast. There are lots of licensed marriage counselors out there who are doing podcasts, who are doing ways to have better marriages, and I think there’s a lot of information that we can learn. But swinging back to our topic, living with bipolar disorder and handling conflict in your marriage, one of the things that I think about and remember, I’ve got the advantage of two divorces. Dr. Nicole, one of the things that I think about is I really realized a lot of the mistakes I made in my first marriage that were caused by untreated bipolar disorder. So I did what I felt was the rational thing. And tried to fix them in my second marriage. The problem
Gabe: Was, is I wasn’t married to the first person, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no. This is what wives want. And there was a little bit of ego and misogyny mixed in with my theory that all wives were the same as well. So that was coloring my thinking, my own immaturity, my own age, bipolar disorder. But the core mistake that I made was I really was trying to fix problems in my first relationship and my second, and that led to me creating them. I do think that bipolar disorder leaves a trauma trail, and I think that there’s a lot of people that might be having fights with their current spouse, that their current spouse didn’t start and doesn’t care about.
Dr. Nicole: So you were you just picked up where you left off. You thought I’m just going to fix it and I’m just going to pick up where I left off. And that just did not quite work out for you.
Gabe: I think it’s critical to make sure the audience understands my motivation. And my motivation was I behaved poorly in my first marriage and I got a divorce, and that’s a problem. So I don’t want to lose my wife. I don’t
Gabe: Want to lose her. I want to make her happy. So now I’m gripping the stick too tight. Now I’m causing all of these problems for no other reason to assuage my own fear. Now, I wasn’t stable yet. In my second marriage. I was treated but wasn’t stable. I was
Gabe: Heading to recovery, but not in recovery. I was I was making great strides, strides that I am proud of to this day. But I wasn’t there.
Dr. Nicole: And I will tell you, I have never seen anyone with a I guess what you would consider a healthy marriage when they’re in that phase of unstable. Untreated. I mean, even, like you said, I was in treatment, but I still wasn’t stable yet. I have yet to see a marriage not be affected by that. I’m not saying those all end. Sometimes people are really able to pull it together and to to resolve, you know, the things that they went through. But there’s no way that having unstable bipolar disorder can’t negatively affect the relationships around you. There’s just no way.
Gabe: In some ways, I feel like this could be a really short episode. Pay attention to bipolar disorder and conflict will resolve itself, and there is a little bit of truth to that. And I want to say directly to my people living with bipolar disorder, obviously we set ourselves up for success when we are controlling bipolar disorder, but that’s easier said than done, right? That’s a little bit like saying, oh, well, if you if you exercise more and you eat better, you’ll lead a healthier life. There’s nothing inherently false about that. But that doesn’t inspire everybody to join gyms and start cooking lean meats and sauteing vegetables. It’s a difficult thing to put into practice, but I do feel that us controlling our bipolar disorder, us learning about our illness and how it impacts us, and understanding that innately is step one. But here’s
Gabe: Where it swings around to the marriage. Step two is making sure that you communicate that to your spouse. The thing that I did terribly in my second marriage is basically I was like, look, it’s not my fault I have bipolar disorder. Deal with it, lady. And she she sort of absorbed those messages for a while. She was like, well, it is true. He is sick. Marriage is in sickness and in health. So this actually hurt me a lot because it worked for a while where she was like, well, he’s sick. That’s his excuse. He’s sick. That’s his excuse. But I want to let everybody know it only worked for a while because after a while she’s like, you know what? No, no. Now we’re
Gabe: Caught in this rut. You’re blaming everything on bipolar disorder. You’re not getting any better. And I don’t want to be in this marriage. And ultimately, I lost my wife. So if you’re listening right now and you’re like, well, my wife accepts that, she understands that it’s not my fault or my husband accepts that he understands. That’s not my fault. I don’t know that that’s a long-term plan. It might be for your marriage, but I think in general, eventually they’re like, look, I gave you a pass the first ten times. Now I’m not. And now you not only have to fix it, but you have to make up for all of the all of the times you didn’t fix it.
Dr. Nicole: Yeah. And marriage is in sickness and in health. But when there is a sickness like bipolar disorder, for example, where the person with the disorder has a lot of power and a lot of influence over the direction the illness goes, that’s where it gets tricky. Yeah. It is. It’s an illness, sickness and in health. I said I’d be with you whether you had bipolar disorder or not. You know I’d be with you either way. But I didn’t say I was going to put up with the fact that you have bipolar disorder, but you’re not doing your part. So. So there is a bit of responsibility on your part. If you are living with bipolar disorder and you make the decision to enter a marriage relationship with somebody or even a long-term relationship with somebody, even if you aren’t married, you kind of owe it to yourself self and to that person to do everything that you can to keep your illness under control.
Gabe: I think about just some common things that happen in a marriage, like where you snap at somebody. You know, you walk in the door from work and you snap at your spouse. And I think that that we as people living with bipolar disorder, we have a tendency to catastrophize that, oh my God, did I snap at my spouse because of irritability? Is it because of major depression? Is it because of anxiety? Is it because of a mental illness and/or a mental health crisis? No, it’s because you got cut off in traffic and your boss was a jerk. And because you’re a human who didn’t get enough sleep because you were up all night with the baby, the hobby, the television show, and you just made a mistake. But I want to point that out because I do see the other side happening as well. Oh. My spouse came home and snapped at me. It’s an episode. And then I want I wish I had, like, sound effects on the show because I want episode to like echo episode episode episode episode, episode. No, we we’ve got to allow space for people with bipolar disorder just to frankly, be irritable to,
Gabe: To to be jerky to, to make a mistake. I mean, I again, my wife does not live with bipolar disorder. And she snaps at me all the time, and I don’t think it’s part of an episode. And I want you to I want people to know I’m. I live with bipolar
Dr. Nicole: Hmm, I mean, hmm.
Gabe: And I snap at my wife all the time. Not part of an episode. I just snappy.
Dr. Nicole: I was gonna say, if I lived with you, I would probably snap at you a lot, too, so I? [Laughter].
Gabe: Do you have bipolar disorder? Is it because of bipolar disorder? Do you have a do you have a mental illness, Dr. Nicole?
Dr. Nicole: No, no. It’s because, it’s because you’re Gabe.
Gabe: It’s because I’m Gabe.
Dr. Nicole: It’s because you’re Gabe, and sometimes you might make me want to snap at you. I don’t know [Laughter]
Gabe: I can’t decide if this is like an endearing, loving, you know, jab or if this is a hey, we’re going to be in HR at the end of this episode. I,
Dr. Nicole: I don’t know.
Gabe: I’m choosing loving jab.
Dr. Nicole: Sometimes, I want to snap at you. Sometimes I want to snap at you on this show.
Gabe: I love it when you snap at me.
Dr. Nicole: No, no, no, but you’re right, I think. Yes, for my loved ones out there. I know you’re listening because you’re the ones who messaged me all the time. I know that it can be scary when you are snapped at, or that person sleeps in just a little bit, or they they don’t eat dinner that night. They say they’re not really hungry. All those little things that remind you of previous episodes. It is so easy to jump to. Oh my God, I wonder if this is another episode coming, because I know that loved ones live with this in the back of their mind, they’re always worried about is this an episode? When’s the next episode coming? Just like the person with bipolar disorder is worried, the people who live with you and do life with you day in and day out, they have a little bit of worry to somewhere in the back of their mind there is that thought. So it is important for everyone in that marriage to remember we’re just people. And sometimes being people is complicated. Sometimes we’re angry, sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we do snap, sometimes we don’t feel like being bothered and we want to sleep in a little bit. But those things don’t necessarily mean that you’re back to another episode, but you do still kind of have to be on the lookout for what the signs are that we are approaching that point. So it is not a simple it’s just not a simple thing. It’s not just cut and dry, it’s not black and white, but loved ones. You know, I always have to remind you, just don’t ask the dreaded question first. Just step back, take a breath, assess the situation, but don’t let the first question out of your mouth be have you taken your meds? Have you been taking your meds? Just don’t ask the dreaded question because I have seen plenty of marriage fights play out in my office over that one simple question.
Gabe: And we’re back discussing marital conflict caused by bipolar disorder. Handling conflict is both people’s jobs. It’s not just the person with bipolar disorders job to handle the conflict. Both people have to handle the conflict. So thank you for talking to the loved ones. Now I want to talk to the people with bipolar disorder for a moment. In that conversation, the person asked the dreaded question, have you taken your meds today? Are you having an episode? Is this to do with bipolar disorder? And that sparks something in us and that that thing that it sparks is, is usually resentment and anger, right? It’s like how you are reducing me to an illness. And I can see why your knee jerk reaction is to fight. I get it, I get I want you to I want to make sure before I say this next part that’s about to erase all of this, that you know, that I know as somebody who lives with bipolar disorder. You have every right to those feelings, and I understand them 100%. But you’ve got to love your spouse more than you hate the question. That’s really what it boils down to. You’ve got to try to take that second count to ten and say, listen, it really upsets me when I do anything. And you don’t think it’s me? You think it’s bipolar disorder. I know that sometimes it might be bipolar disorder. I know that we have been traumatized by the things that bipolar has done. But if we’re going to live together and coexist together and go through life’s ups and downs together, I need you to see me as more than just bipolar disorder. And I really need you not to think that that’s all I am.
Gabe: And when you ask me questions like that right out of the gate, that’s how I feel. That’s what I believe, and that’s why it hurts me and do that in a nice time. Maybe that’s not the right moment. Maybe the right thing to do is to just walk away and say, look, I need to take ten. Maybe it’s to. It’s to wait until things are well, you know, handling conflict is probably not best to do in the moment because everybody’s heightened, everybody’s upset. Everybody has emotion. You got to be, you know, doing like a postmortem on this conflict and saying, you know, I was thinking yesterday when we got in that huge fight about me being irritable because I had a bad day at work. One of the things that really set me off is that you blamed it on bipolar disorder and asked me about my meds, and I felt infantilized by that. I felt less than by that I felt whatever. And I just want to talk to you about that, because I don’t think that was your intention. But I think that is really gas on the fire here. And again, just to go all the way back to the beginning, both of you are going to have to do work on this, right? The person it’s not just, oh, well, if they stop asking that question, then my marriage is fine. No, it’s not that simple. Because remember, they have emotions too. And sometimes they say the wrong thing. And if you love your spouse, we’ve got to do for them what we’re asking them to do for us.
Dr. Nicole: Oh, absolutely. And I think you are spot on with the best time to talk about it is not right then. Wait until cooler heads are in the room, have a discussion. And that’s actually when you come up with a plan. That’s where your biggest conflict resolution plans happen is not in the middle of the fight. It’s not after you’ve snapped. It’s maybe a day or two later when you’ve had time to calm down, they’ve had time to calm down, and you can come together. And that’s the perfect time for you to share with your spouse how you would prefer they approach that question.
Gabe: I want people to handle their marriages the way that they are most comfortable with. But for me personally, having everything be open and on the table is the healthiest thing for me and it is what I want. I don’t want there to be secrets with my spouse. Now, I know that some people they’re managing bipolar disorder by well, that’s my thing. You never get to talk about it. If that works for you, you’re probably not listening to this episode or you’re listening to this episode because it has created a lot of conflict. So I did want to bring that up real quick. If you’ve got this general attitude that bipolar disorder is only yours, it’s private and your spouse isn’t allowed to talk about it. The hard stop there is. That’s not a good idea at all. Bipolar disorder is massive. You need support. You need help. We’ve talked about it on this show. Dozens upon dozens of times. But yeah, I imagine that’s a huge source of conflict. It’s something that is impacting you, and the person who loves you has no access to it. Yeah, it’s probably generating a lot of conflict.
Dr. Nicole: Yeah, I mean, it it’s I know it can’t be an easy conversation to have because I see it. I see it in my office. I see people arguing, I see it, I feel like a marriage counselor sometimes. And y’all, I don’t want to be a marriage counselor. I it’s not it’s not my jam. It is. It is absolutely not my jam. But I see it and I see the anger that it brings up in people. And sometimes y’all you loved ones, sometimes your tone is quite just. Just not pleasant. Sometimes. Sometimes the way that y’all bring it up is enough to make anybody want to fight like it is. Have you taken your meds? You know. Oh my gosh, have you missed your meds? Oh, what are you. Sometimes the tone is so just stank. It’s the is the best word I can come up with that. It does bring up a lot. So both ends, I think, do have to step back and think about, like, what is my tone? Let me check my own self in these moments because it can get ugly fast.
Gabe: You’ve really illustrated that bipolar disorder can cause a lot of conflict. But what we really haven’t illustrated is that not all conflict is bad. And I think that sometimes people listening to this, they think that if bipolar disorder causes conflict, it means that something’s gone awry. I don’t necessarily know that that’s true. I struggle with this because I think about what engineers say, which is that you need a certain amount of stress to hold up a bridge. And if you remove that stress, the bridge will topple. I think there’s a certain amount of conflict that bipolar disorder is just going to generate. And if the only tolerance that you have is that bipolar disorder never causes conflict in your marriage, I think you’re going to be unhappy. I think we need to look towards, hey, conflict is sort of inevitable when we’re managing a serious and persistent mental illness, a lifelong illness that takes doctors, therapists, support systems. And yet we think it should have zero impact on our relationships and in our marriage. And I think that might set us up to fail. I think part of handling conflict is handling the conflict, letting it go and moving on.
Dr. Nicole: Yeah, I mean it. You’re right. How could it not? And I mean, I guess I agree that all. I don’t even know. I don’t know how I feel about that, Gabe. I don’t know how I feel about the thought that conflict is good. I don’t, I don’t know.
Gabe: I, you know, that’s you’re right. That is kind of a weird wording. I’m not saying that conflict is good. Perhaps I’m saying that conflict is not unexpected.
Dr. Nicole: Okay. It shouldn’t be surprising.
Gabe: It shouldn’t be surprising, and
Gabe: We shouldn’t use it as an indicator of how strong our marriage is or how much our spouse loves us, or how we’re even doing with bipolar disorder. You know,
Gabe: Here’s a maybe this is another way to think it. Thank thank you for talking this out with me. You know how they say that relapse is part of recovery and that we need to understand that. So that way if a relapse happens, we focus on resolving the relapse and getting back to recovery versus
Gabe: Catastrophizing it. And I think conflict is part of marriage. Hard stop.
Dr. Nicole: Okay. Yep, stop.
Gabe: I think conflict is part of bipolar disorder. Hard stop. And therefore sometimes bipolar conflict is going
Gabe: To be part of it. And we need to learn how to handle that and move on and not let it seep into other areas.
Dr. Nicole: Okay. That I can wrap my hands around because I can fully see how, you know, relapse is a part of recovery. If relapse happens, we don’t just then say, to heck with recovery. I’m just going to go back to using. That’s not how that works. So just like in marriage, if you or someone else in the relationship has bipolar disorder and there is conflict, we’re not saying you should just give up on the marriage and walk away, that the conflict, as hard as it may be, can eventually end up strengthening your marriage and it is just expected. It is a part of being in relationship intimate relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder. Now I can wrap my hands around that. I get that.
Gabe: I see you’re right. You couldn’t be a marriage counselor. It’s not your jam.
Dr. Nicole: It’s not my jam. It is not my jam. Not at all. Not at all. Because I just want to say, stop it, stop it, stop it right now. Stop. Stop it.
Gabe: It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart skit. You know, he had that skit where he was a therapist, remember, you had to pay him in advance because his advice was always, stop it. You know, just what have you seen this? You haven’t seen this?
Gabe: Oh, it’s an incredibly iconic little sketch. It’s 3 or 4 minutes long, I think of, like, a Saturday Night Live kind of skit kind of deal where he’s the therapist, and somebody walks in and sits down and tells him a problem and he just says, stop it. And just no matter what you bring to him, he says, stop it. It’s hilarious to watch, but it’s incredibly unhelpful as as therapy. Great comedy, bad therapy.
Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I think on a larger scale marriage counseling is not a bad idea for this particular reason. Sometimes you just need somebody else in the room to, for lack of a better word, to stop both of y’all from acting a fool like you just need.
Dr. Nicole: You need a third party in the room where you can get it out. But somebody who kind of forces you to be somewhat respectful to each other in getting it out, and to actually learn how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t have to be long term. It doesn’t have to be like, oh, I’m in marriage therapy for 20 years. Like it literally could be a brief intervention. But to help you all manage this, nothing wrong with that at all. But in the moment, one of the things that I think is valuable is to practice pushing out all of your focus on all the negative, because what happens is you then start thinking about every bad thing your spouse ever did to you. You start thinking about every argument you’ve had. You start thinking about that time he or she did this or that. Oh, you always do this kind of thing. And I would argue with you most of the time. There’s probably a lot more positive things that you could come up with that they’ve done. So I actually encourage people who are married to do kind of a gratitude exercise in general. So when my husband does something really great I kind of jot it down somewhere. I keep it in a place, and when he does something out of unexpected or, you know, those moments you have with your spouse and you’re like, oh, like, this is why I got married.
Dr. Nicole: It might be something big. It might be something simple as this one time I had a really bad day. I came home, my spouse sat on the sofa with me like I put my feet up on their legs and we just laughed and joked about something ridiculous. And you think like, this is why. This is why. Like, this is why people do this. Because they are in community with somebody on an intimate level, and someone gets them and they can come home and just have that person, like, this is why we do this, right? And those moments are the moments I think you jot down and you think like, oh yeah, remember that day? So that when you read it to start World War three and you’re home, you can go back to those notes and you can go back to those moments and say, you know what? This person really does have a lot of redeeming qualities. And I do love them, and I do love them more than this argument that we just had. And that in and of itself can help kind of turn you around a little bit and soften you a little bit because let’s face it, like once, once you’re going, you are crusty and hard and just ready to fight. And so if we can do anything to soften you just a little bit, that can be helpful.
Gabe: You know, I have a list too. And I think if the listeners are being honest, they have a list as well. And that list is negative things. And we remember every time we felt infantilized, every time we felt put upon, every time we felt put down or condescended to, or any time bipolar disorder was used to stigmatize us or discriminate against us, we remember all those things. And I, I think there is a protective factor in that. But when it comes to our marriage, we got to put them in a different spot. If you are one of these people that can come up with five things that your spouse does to tick you off faster than you can come up with five things that your spouse does to make you happy, you need to reflect on that. I would say that for everybody, but specifically with the way that bipolar disorder just makes us ruminate on things that cause us trauma, and the way that things that are negative get stuck in our brains and and the way that bipolar disorder can really trend us to the negative. I think we need to be on guard for this in a very big and meaningful way. And I think that that is a vital importance. And if we’re not doing that, we are going to miss out on having a good marriage.
Gabe: And with that, we have reached the end of our show. Thank you so much for being here. We have a few things that we want you to do. First off, if you have any show topics, email us at [email protected]. Any ideas whatsoever, please don’t be shy. Also rate, rank and review us on Spotify and iTunes. They really help. Leave us a comment. Also share the show. Share it in support groups. Share your favorite episodes on social media. Send somebody a text message. Sharing the show with the people you know is how we’re going to grow. My name is Gabe Howard and I’m an award-winning public speaker, and I could be available for your next event, so I hope you’ll consider inviting me. I also wrote the book “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which you can get on Amazon. However, if you want to get a signed copy and some free swag, just head over to gabehoward.com.
Gabe: And we’ll see everybody next time on Inside Bipolar.
Announcer: You’ve been listening to Inside Bipolar from Healthline Media and psychcentral.com. Have feedback for the show? E-mail us at [email protected]. Previous episodes can be found at psychcentral.com/ibp or on your favorite podcast player. Thank you for listening.
