It fell off the shelf

I was sorting donated books in the bowels of the downtown library again this morning, it being the second Tuesday of the month, and a book fell off the shelf and into my hands. It's called The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide - What you and your family need to know. I'm on page 40. So far it hasn't said much that I don't already know but it's a clear summary.

The first of three sections is on diagnosis and there I find my sister-in-law's behaviour described in detail. She doesn't have the very worst version of it but it's up there. I can't help but wonder what my life would have been like if I had suspected that this is what she was dealing with when I met her in the late 80s, when I could have understood why she reacted to me and to change the way she did. I can only suppose that I wasn't meant to and that now is the right time.

So far the book is doing a good job of describing how the different players may see the behaviour and what it means: the doctors, therapeutic community, social workers, spouse, family and employers. They mention that it is difficult for everyone involved to isolate the disorder-induced behaviour from the personality from the reactions to the ordinary and extra-ordinary stresses that life throws at us periodically anyway.

The doctors line up ticky-box lists of what experiences the person has had, in order to make an accurate diagnosis and therefore line up the right specialists and the right treatment. Unless they have known the person for years, how would they know what is 'normal'? Gone are the days when we have the same family doctor all our lives. The person who has the disorder is helpful and not-so-helpful at the same time because they have lost a lot of their perspective. In many cases they can't even tell if anyone in their family has suffered from the same thing because it was considered shameful. If it was ever diagnosed, it would most often be shushed because it was and still is unspeakable. Prejudice was and is rife and the consequences could and can be devastating. Great Aunt Bessie was described in the family history as just 'odd', and Uncle Fritz had an accident on the bridge one night, and Gramps took to the bottle. While he may have taken to the bottle, that isn't to say that he wasn't using booze to self-medicate.

It seems that it's rare for the disorder to be diagnosed during the first episode. We wouldn't even know it was an 'episode' unless the person were cycling in and out of behaviour that was out of character. And once they've cycled enough times, it begins to look like the behaviour is part of their character. In the case of my sister-in-law, I can now see these patterns going back for at least fifteen years. In that time, she has wreaked some considerable damage on our family.

Without knowing what caused her surprising reactions to us, we were left believing that we were so diametrically different from her that we just couldn't find common ground. Offence was taken on innumerable occasions, and the misunderstandings piled up so high and got so complicated that I now can't figure out where they began. Who keeps a running list anyway? I don't have a filing cabinet with dates and times and who started what so that I can refer back and be accurate in any way that might now be helpful. Instead, I'm left with an experiential list of generalized dos and don'ts that I used to try and keep myself out of the proverbial hot water of family life.

Add to the mix that just because a person is bipolar doesn't mean that they can't also have experienced family traumas, have legitimate beefs with bosses, neighbours, colleagues and family, and aren't just plain quirky or ornery. It doesn't mean that they aren't ever defensive or exercise poor judgement or make bad marriages or have low self esteem. They can be bad parents or good parents, just because they are, and not as a result of the disorder. It may be that the disorder causes these things or it may be that it just makes them more so.

Life isn't just a series or events strung together in a sequence. By the time there are years of incidents knotted into one another, everyone in the family ends up reacting to reactions which are caused by earlier misunderstandings, until we don't know where to start to unravel the whole thing. I am clear that I can't discover that one person in the family dynamic has a disorder and expect everything to be fine now, or even clear. By this time there is a whole climate that requires a meteorologist to give us a report, even before we start to look at prognostications for better weather.

Furthermore, my brother brings all of his own issues to the relationship. With his own set of recognized and unrecognized issues, he has been reacting to his wife, accommodating, denying, getting angry and in some instances making it worse. He may even have accommodated so much over the last fifteen+ years that he has become battered and reactive in the process. And his wife doesn't want all of this laid at her feet just because she's the one with a diagnosed 'disorder'. For his part, he's been struggling under the burden of a wife who's grown increasingly difficult to deal with, and kids who have been reacting, and he doesn't want it all laid at his feet either.

At the moment, he would rather pretend that my mother and I are unsupportive and judgemental. That puts the problem, temporarily, outside his own four walls - a version of kill the messenger. It means that any support we offer is rejected because we're seeing the truth of the disorder and acknowledging the unprocessed mess. I suppose that's where things have to sit for a while at least.

And all this thought, just out of 40 pages! I think it takes a community to heal a person and their family. Right now, you're helping by being my community. I'm sure I'll have many more thoughts before I ever say anything that is heard by my brother. I need a sounding board while I sort out what I feel and what to do next.