Katie Perttunen is a bipolar mom and writer and she writes today’s piece. Considering how people have been crucifying me over my decision to not get pregnant, in large part, because of bipolar disorder, I thought this would be a good time to share some tips on how to parent with bipolar disorder; because, while I don’t plan on doing it, others certainly do.
Parenting with bipolar disorder is not an easy thing. What do you do when you are a mom with bipolar type one with psychotic features? What do you tell your children, and how do you cope? These tips for how to parent with bipolar disorder might help.
My Diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type One
When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type one at age 28, my younger daughter was two and my older daughter was 11. I didn’t understand the diagnosis fully myself, let alone have the wherewithal to know what to tell them about it. All they knew was mommy was very sick, and their dads (yes, two dads), stepped in to assist with their daily lives.
Looking back, I have learned some bipolar parenting coping skills along the way, and have also learned the words to share with my daughters about my illness.
Bipolar Parenting Tip 1: Lean on Others
I am divorced. This means that my younger daughter, now nine, shares her time with her father. We split her time roughly 50-50, but one of the bipolar parenting coping tools that I have found to be really useful is to keep a strong friendship with him so I can lean on him when I need to.
While this might not be ideal for you, in your situation, for me, it really helps to have the other person who loves my daughter as much as I do in my corner when times get rough.
For example, if I am ill, and she has sports practice to attend, he pitches in. A natural athlete himself, he has coached her teams and stepped in for practices more times than I can count.
When I am feeling better, I am on the sidelines cheering right along with him. But my daughter understands that I am not always able to handle a crowd because of my bipolar disorder. She knows this doesn’t mean I love her any less.
Bipolar Parenting Tip 2: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Another bipolar parenting coping tool I have learned is to not sweat the small stuff. I get a lot done, when I can. If I am not up to keeping our apartment up to “magazine worthy” standards, I don’t. Visitors come to see us, not our apartment. If they are coming for the wrong reason, shame on them.
Bipolar Parenting Tip #3: Self-Care Matters
Another tip I have is to fill your own cup first when parenting with bipolar disorder. Mom needs to take care of herself, so she can take care of others. I get plenty of sleep, see my psychiatrist, and follow my medication schedule rigorously. Mostly healthy food and an active lifestyle add to my self-care regime.
Bipolar Parenting Tip #4: Reach Out for Support
Knowing who can support not only the kids, but you, is imperative. Keep reaching out to those who care about you, even if it’s just a quick text or phone call to keep the communication lines open. While many people who have mental illnesses can feel isolated and like a freak, or not normal, or [insert derogatory statement here], staying silent and isolated doesn’t help you, or your kids.
Getting out and active does help you, and your community. Not only are you de-stigmatizing mental illness, you are helping yourself and others.
Something as simple as volunteering for a few hours can help you to feel good about yourself, and by extension, your life, including your kids.
Bipolar Parenting Tip #5: Your Self-Worth Exists Outside the Family
It’s normal for parents to base a lot of their self-worth on their children; however, you have to develop outside interests so that you can feel like a well-rounded person, separate, but part, of the family as a whole.
If your entire self-worth is based on your children, every mistake they make or sass that comes out of their mouth can feel like a sword to the spine. Don’t put that kind of stress on your kids, for your sake as well as theirs.
Bipolar Disorder and Parenting
I am no Dr. Spock, and this list is by no means exhaustive. This list is a simply some bipolar parenting coping techniques I have learned to be the most successful at the most important role I have in life, that of a mother, with bipolar.
Katie Perttunen is a writer and mother with Bipolar 1 living in Hurley, Wisconsin. She serves as Poetry Editor at Literary Orphans Magazine. Her memoir, Bits will be released June 9th from Black Rose Publishing. It will also be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. She is currently working on her first novel, about Lotta Morgan, a local madam whose murder has never been solved.
Banner image by Flickr Wilson X.
I am not a parent. I actually did choose not to have children; however, I was the bipolar child with psychotic symptoms.
My advise to anyone, is to get your child into therapy.
Nobody has to make decisions on medications immediately. I understand how difficult that choice must absolutely be for a parent. Putting your growing child on medications that are designed to essentially alter your personality? I can only imagine what it would be like to make that decision.
However, therapy is your biggest tool.
I wish my parents had done that for me; instead I grew up in the Era where right before they made many medical breakthroughs about mental illnesses, which left me untreated and lost in the world.
I remember I was alone, confused, angry. My mind hurt and although it appeared I was just a “problem child”, I was only screaming out for help. I didn’t understand.
I believe getting your child into therapy as soon as possible can help your child not only gain coping skills and understand as early as possible that they are essentially like a child with say, diabetes, and unfortunately for the rest of their life they have to manage it. However, it absolutely can be done.
My belief is also founded on my experience as an adult.
I was alone and had all my “wires crossed” when I made the decision to go in. Nobody gave me input on whether or not to go in to get treated. Not a single sole was there for me. I looked around and realized I was simply “different”, thus I sought help.
If I had the opportunity to go through therapy as a child, I truly believe I would have had help growing the wires that were all crossed up by the time I sent in as an adult, to help prevent them from getting crossed as much as possible to begin with.
It was a struggle to gain control, accept I was bipolar, find it within myself to have a reason to struggle through dealing with it all at that time.
That was because I was already an adult. It was harder. Learning about myself and teaching myself new “tricks” I sincerely believe was more difficult than what it would have been if I was a child with help in at minimum understanding that I have bipolar.
When someone asks me for an opinion, I implore them to get that child into therapy to have a professional help keep those wires uncrossed add they grow up so it isn’t such a struggle when they’re an adult.
A “theme” I am noticing… mothers who had Severe Post-Partum Depression.
I went into a full blown mania after the loss of my first child (mis-carried) and ended up IP for 28 days… put on Thorazine and a host of other meds.
I went into a full blown “mixed” mania after my daughter was born and, again, ended up IP but for a week… also put on a host of meds (wasn’t diagnosed Bipolar until nearly 10 years later)….
The Psych (IP, my last so far, in 2006) who diagnosed me with Bipolar had asked me about births and whether I had PPD? He also asked, of course, about other Psych IPs and what they were for primarily? It helped that the 28 day IP was at the same hospital as that one… so the doc could get my old records easier.
It seems that I’ve had Bipolar I with Mixed Features for a long while… even while being mis-diagnosed time and again (cause, again, no medical diagnostic tool to determine).
Yet… this common theme of PPD upon or after childbirth (cause sometimes it creeps up later)… and having Bipolar and/or being diagnosed Bipolar later… is interesting, to me.
Perhaps Natasha would do a blog post on that aspect….
Thank you so much, Katie, for sharing your tips on parenting as someone with Bipolar. And thank you so much, Natasha for sharing this in your blog.
I think it is important to be able to see both sides of the parenting decision when it comes to Bipolar Disorder because it -IS- about choice. OUR choice.
I didn’t know I was Bipolar until after I had children – in fact long after my oldest son was 13 years old. I was raised a Latter-Day Saint…. I have three sons and there was some pressure and some prodding to have more children. I’m not having any more children. I went through postpartum depression with all 3 of my sons – the last time I wonder even now if it wasn’t really postpartum psychosis instead. That last time nearly did me in. My youngest is 6 years old now and I’m still struggling to reclaim full functionality.
Would I have chosen to have children if I had known I was Bipolar in the first place? I don’t know exactly because they are my world and I can’t imagine my life without them now. And hindsight is 20/20. I would like to say if I had known and made the choice to have them anyway I would have made sure that I had the full psych supports in place during and after my pregnancies that should have happened but didn’t.
The best I can do now is just make sure I have a great medical care team and a support network behind me.
Katie, thanks for writing! The detoxing sea salt and lavender bath sounds AMAZING – I want one now!
take care & have a great day – you rock! (And so does Natasha!)
Dyane
I am a single mother to a 20 year old daughter.
When she was younger and witnessed me, her mother, going through horrible Bipolar Depressive cycles… she noted “mommy, you do not smile anymore. you are so pretty when you smile mommy. why don’t you smile anymore?”
I explained, cause she was about 5 at the time… that like when she would have bouts of the tummy flu… I was very sick with sadness. So, my daughter coined these episodes as “sad sick” and she knew what it meant… she still knows what it means.
While in school; her class took a class on mental health. Most of her classmates have or were diagnosed with some form of MI and many of them took meds or went to therapy during or after school. So, MI was not foreign to my daughter while she was growing up.
I want to take a different approach to Tip #5 regarding your self-worth exists outside the family. The different approach to this would be “Your self-worth exists outside of Bipolar.”
Bipolar is not the same to each person living with it. Many are mild-moderate whereas others are severe to critical. In my opinion, because there is such a large swath of differences between one to another person… Bipolar cannot always be the reason for all and every going on in (or not going on at all) one’s life… be it you agree or disagree.
Hi Tabby,
I agree with you that your self worth does exist outside bipolar.
The disease is so different for so many people, that it is almost like several different diseases rolled into one label. But when we can get through even one day, where our thoughts are not taken up by the disease, and we can find joy, we are winning.
Bipolar is almost like a demon to me. When I was on the wrong medication, the depression was so bad I seriously considered suicide, numerous times, because the pain was unbearable. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that my daughters and family would feel horrible. My family already felt horrible, watching me and interacting with me while I was severely depressed, and I know they wondered if they would ever see ‘me’ again.
Thank God my doctor finally switched my medication. It took years. Sometimes it seems like psychiatrists think that if you are not dead, or trying to die, you are just fine. However, if you are miserable, and I mean miserable, with depression, that is not really living either. That’s hanging on by a thread. The only reason they changed my medication, was because I became psychotic, and ended up in the hospital. The events leading up to that commitment are an entirely different story, which I have detailed in my forthcoming memoir, “Bits.”
I consider myself to be in ‘remission’ from bipolar, since I am on my new med regime. I haven’t needed to be hospitalized in a long time, no depression, no psychotic thoughts. At this point, I feel like I am “winning” over bipolar, but I know that every minute spent feeling sane is a blessing and if I should become resistant to this medication, I could easily be back in the throes of depression or psychosis.
Last night I talked to my younger daughter about bipolar again, and she does have an understanding of it. She knows that sometimes I am really sad and I take medication. My older daughter knows more, and has actually had to call the police for welfare checks on me when I was depressed. If I could change anything about my life, this would be it. She is 19, but the guilt I feel as being her parent, someone who should be her rock, turning into someone she has to check up on and do that for is really hard to deal with. I wish she didn’t have such a good understanding of bipolar.
Sorry if that was a ramble,
Katie
Dear Natasha,
Thank you for adding that extremely important cautionary note re: light boxes & the link.
I should have included it, and I’m VERY grateful to you for mentioning it! We all have different sensitivities and what works fine for me could send someone else into mania.
I should also take a moment to mention that essential oils can be used in very unsafe ways, and there are some bizarre false claims out there. I believe that essential oils cannot “cure” bipolar disorder, and my former employer (an internationally renowned essential oil expert) would say the same thing.!
take care & thanks again,
Dyane
I agree with my good friend Kitt O’Malley! This is a great post.
As a mom with bipolar, peripartum onset (postpartum bipolar), I’ve noticed it’s a particularly rough time for moms with bipolar. I run a free support group for moms with mood disorders (mostly bipolar) and we’ve had a flurry of new members lately. Something is in the air. I shared a few tips with them last weekend that help me be a better parent with bipolar. They are small things, but they all add up to help us be better parents.
1) I use a bright light (Sunbox DL) for 1/2 an hour every morning before my kids get up. I’ve used it for 15 years and it never has caused hypomania and or mania.
2) I use essential oils to help boost or mellow out my mood when the kids are pushing my buttons. I used to work at the College of the Botanical Healing Arts, an essential oil practitioner certifications school. I learned about the efficacy of using high-quality essential oils. I use lavender and citrus essential oils the most. Visit a reputable website or book (my former boss Elizabeth Van Buren wrote a good one) to learn about this modality and how to apply the e.o.’s safely and effectively.
3) Pets: Ever since I brought my Scottish Collie into the house, I’ve been a much better and happier parent. Having a pet, whether its a cat, dog, bunny etc., is a big, big responsibility, but Lucy has brought both me and my girls tons of happiness in the short time we’ve had her. I wish I didn’t wait so many years to have a pet but I had to wait until I found effective meds for my bipolar depression.
Thanks again for an excellent post. I love reading memoirs, especially ones written by those with bipolar disorder (my memoir will be published next year) and I’ll definitely check yours out this summer!
I wish any parent with bipolar my absolute best!!!
take care,
Dyane
Hi Dyane,
I’m not against the use of light boxes in any way, but before anyone uses them, they should know that it _can_, in some cases, cause mania, mixed states, or make those states worse. Please see here: http://psycheducation.org/treatment/bipolar-disorder-light-and-darkness/light-therapies-for-depression/
– Natasha Tracy
Thanks Dyane! I think the light would make a big difference up here, this far north.
Have you ever tried the detoxing sea salt and lavender bath? I have yet to, but I have heard it makes you feel amazing!
Have a wonderful day,
Katie
Thank you, Katie, for an excellent post. Great advice. Much like you do with your ex, I rely on my husband to help me with parenting my son and with managing the household. He brings take-out, helps with grocery shopping and meals, and often does the laundry.