@Powderfinger
Sorry for the delay, things settled a fair bit and I was neglecting to check this forum..
"Anyhow, what I want to say is what the heck are you really doing here?"
Looking for advice I guess of how other partners deal with this stuff on a day to day basis, somewhere to talk of the strain on me being a carer had been. hearing other stories that I am not alone. etc..
"Look at the facts. You have been diagnosed with PTSD. You are seeing a psychologist and have been for quite a few years now. You are going to couples counselling. Various professionals have challenged your thoughts and feelings. "
Well there are some more facts to add, i.e. we had our ups and downs but NOTHING like what was happening for those 3 odd years that eventually caused my PTSD. We also have more facts that make it hard for me to compeltely blame my partner. i.e. that she spent 3 years saying she had bipolar, I came into her psych sessions saying the same thing, her psych then put her on a drug that says on the box NEVER to be given to someone with bipolar and that drug was the catalyst for not just a hypomanic episode (as we had seen before) but full scale mania with halucinations (which the psych still denies and said she thought it just brought out "her big personality")..
It got to the point that she was damaging her relationships with friends and family (not just me) and the psych just continued to justify her behaviour, all this continued until my own psych confronted hers (after she had an interaction with my partner) and I had called the CAT team and they had demanded the psych take her off the meds and do her friggen job...
So there are some extenuating circumstances here that make me feel this is not so black and white... She is well off the drug she was never meant to be put on and on a mood stabaliser now, it has taken a while to undo the damage that psych caused putting someone with type 2 bipolar on a mono treatment of SSRI, maybe it will never be completely healed (for both of us), but she is no longer in the same mental state that she was (it didn't just turn off quickly when they stopped the SSRIs though).
"Some have even seemingly told some truths which caused you to feel angry. Did you feel angry because a part of you felt it was the truth or did you feel angry because you felt they had it wrong and were putting her down or was it both?"
I felt angry as with the exception of my own psychiatrist (and even then only after she had her own interaction with my partner) no one was taking seriously that she was hyper manic (well maybe other than CAT team) and what the trigger for the behaviour was (i.e. the medication and her psych).
I have suffered depression and would hate it if she had left me because of that, or because the psych put me on the wrong meds that had made me worse and then continued to justify that nothing was wrong even though it was plain as day to me, her family and some of her friends (that talked to me about it) that she got far worse on it.
"I agree you are do focused on her that you seem to forget a lot about yourself. Are you looking for specific answers that will provide you with some temporary relief from a permanent situation?"
That is true I tend to be a very loyal person and put up with a lot more than most people would, it is a personality flaw that mostly hurts me.
Well I guess I was holding out hope that the effect of that drug would eventually be flushed from her system and things would calm down again, so I was never certain if it was a permanent situation but it took a while so I certainly had my concerns that it was..
"I feel you need to do some soul searching. Do you see yourself going through this for another 5 years? "
The way it was, hell no, in fact if it ever got back to what it was at or even near it's peak I wouldn't last 6 months I don't think, let alone 5 years.. For my sanity I would have to walk away.
"What are you hoping for with her and your future together?"
That with proper medication (mood stabilisers rather than enhancers) things would improve, even beyond what they were before the wrong medication (i.e. beyond when she was unmedicated).
"do you think overall that this is truly possible with her?"
Not sure, time will tell, though I doubt anyone with bipolar would do well on a mono treatment of SSRI for 3 years, hence the warnings on the box.
"It hurts to see something for what it is. It hurts way more to live a lie."
true enough
