Friends and Family

You may think your friends and family are not professionals, but if they profess to want to support you, we can help them to play a more informed and effective role. Family and friends have a critical role to play, because they are there with us. We can lie to our therapists, but we can't lie to our family; they see it. Our relationship program includes this critical component and helps all involved to learn the communication skills that help in many ways.

For someone with bipolar disorder, having an informed and confident family member or friend can mean the difference between living a full life or living a diminished life. Family members and friends may sometimes go to the psychiatrist and therapist with you, but more importantly, they go home with you and hang out with you in the evenings and on the weekends. They chart your moods more carefully and in more detail than you probably do. They see the times that bipolar is in disorder and those times can freeze them in insecurity, fear, and helplessness. They can fear helping and intervening and they can fear letting go and not intervening. Bipolar disorder affects every member of a family and, as alone and frightened as you sometimes feel, your family members have the same experiences when they want to be helpful but don't know what form that help should take. Family members often feel left out in the cold and that doesn't help them or their loved one with bipolar disorder.

In our integrated program, family involvement is not a one meeting or one weekend event. Family members and significant others have opportunities throughout the program to learn about bipolar disorder, to address relationship issues that are critical to them, and to work with their family member with bipolar disorder to build nourishing relationships that work. Nourishing relationships that work require learning how to address issues specific to bipolar disorder, such as medication adherence, substance misuse, the experience of intense emotions like anger and rage, and learning how to regulate one's own emotional reactions. In addition, the Bipolar Advantage Program provides the platform for general relationship growth and enhancement by promoting improved communication skills, increased trust, learning how to become more emotionally connected, and increasing the quantity and quality of enjoyable times together. The Bipolar Advantage Program helps families and friends to stop walking on eggshells and to fully embrace their relationships with their loved ones with bipolar disorder.