BIPOLAR DISORDER: Mother & Son Interview

[Music] welcome back to polar warriors the world's largest video support community for bipolar disorder i'm so excited today to have my first ever special guest on the channel she's known me for over 40 years and is literally the reason why i'm here today making these videos without further ado i'd like to introduce you to my mom sandy hi everybody over the past few weeks members of our patreon community and facebook have come up with some incredible questions to ask her in fact there were so many that we couldn't include all of them if you haven't joined polar warriors on patreon yet you're missing out on some really good stuff there's a direct link in the video description below if you'd like to check it out raising a child with mental illness is hard to say the least there's no user manual for it no one plans on it and people still aren't talking very openly about what it's like i was diagnosed with type 1 rapid cycling bipolar disorder in my 20s that set in motion a chain of life-altering events that not only impacted me but my family as well i really hope that this video helped some of you out there to not feel so alone if you have any questions after watching the video i now offer one-on-one coaching through polarwarriors.com all that being said let's jump right into the interview questions we have nearly 30 of them to go over so we'd better get started question number one how did you react inside when you found out that your son was diagnosed with mental illness did you blame yourself or feel any regret at first my first reaction was just i felt terrible i felt like you had to go through so much ahead and you had so much to work through but it was also relief because it had a name this mystery thing that had been driving you and so i knew zoe was only forward and so we started talking about medications and that gave me huge relief it was like okay we're gonna have to fix in a pill and then it ended up when you reacted to everything lots of side effects yeah so that was kind of frustrating but i just knew that there was not any going back i had to accept where we were and go forward awesome very good answer if i must say so myself uh number question number two my 29 year old son has no interest in taking medications or looking for help he's pulled away from the family for many years were you ever estranged and what did you do to keep the relationship with rob alive basically what helped and what made it worse oh boy there's a couple different lines of answers to this and one is me at 70 years old and one is the me at 40 to 50 years old when we were going through it i remember when i was going through it that it was horrible rob had pulled away and probably by the time he was 16 or 17 and i could no longer really reach his heart and i thought okay well that's normal he's a teenager and then there was he was in two more drugs and into more drinking and was living on his own and then there was the time a friend called and said he's in a bad way he's high he's cutting himself and he wants to die and so i i was terrified and he lived an hour and a half away but i got in the car drive there and i we called for help for the police and an ambulance and at that point rob was hospitalized and totally blamed me and just completely pulled back and you know would say mean things and hung up on me he said you've lost your son and hung up when she called the the the facility where i was being held on on a 5150 i remember that she the the pay phone rang and i i think i i said some kind of expletive and and hung up the phone i i just was at a place where i in no way could take accountability for what was happening to me it felt um i i didn't understand the concept of mental illness so i felt just like a giant victim and everybody else was victimizing me in some way or another or that it wasn't my fault that i ended up in that predicament you know it's not my fault that i cut myself and took a bunch of pills and scared the crap out of my mom and had her have to call for you know an ambulance but but there were times like that where you know she would try her best to intervene as a parent and then i would pull away so we would become estranged for a period of time or stop talking and i have a lot of regret for now looking back a lot of regret on the times that i cut her off because we can't get that time back but it was all a very necessary part of the process for both of us to kind of grow and get to where we are today so um yes we were estranged and as far as keeping the relationship alive for me it was the little things like little cards you'd send in the mail or little text messages that just just said i love you you know it's even if i i didn't hear it at the time it stuck like i remembered that and i didn't respond or you didn't respond some of the time and i just knew it was out there that i loved you and that was enough yeah yeah awesome um oh and then what made it worse as far as um you know while we were estranged what kind of things made it worse when we weren't talking i think what made it worse and made the estrangement more was me trying to fix you and control your choices like i wanted you to eat healthier or not drink or whatever um i never said it really directly i was not a nag in that way but what i really had to come from a place of my own growth where i had to let go of him and agree with myself that i was going to trust whatever choices he made bad or good and let him own him i it's like i gave him his life with a bow i couldn't keep owning all of that and survive myself and that helped a lot once you let go a little bit it then then i kind of started going hey i haven't heard from you in a while what's going on it kind of changed that dynamic surprisingly letting go sometimes can allow some healing to take place and to build that or rekindle that relationship not always you know not everybody has the same relationship as as we do um all right so moving on to number three um the person asks says we have a family history of mental illness and believe our young daughter is showing symptoms her behavior is extremely hard to manage i've been to therapists school counselors and even county classes on parenting the schools want to know what i'm doing wrong they keep asking what's going on at home my daughter is fine at home but when she goes to school everything falls apart can you relate to this and any suggestions boy i can um you were not fine at home not that it was awful but very intense young man and i and at one point i became a single parent and you know of course it was all my fault i had left his dad and you know everything that i had done was you know it had to all be my fault and the only thing i would say is i never stopped seeking knowledge reading um talking with counselors about child rearing trying different techniques i was never an aggressive parent in the sense of spanking and punishment and that sort of thing i would always try and talk which was a problem kind of because then you know the kids eyes glaze over but really just had to keep learning keep trying and not giving up at this point i had no clue what was going on i had no clue of a diagnosis just to remind you and it was it was hard to have the schools or counselors insinuating blame or basically making you feel like it was because of the divorce or it was because of bad parenting or something when it's it's really it's there's an impasse with a lot of the schools and educators that when it comes to that and i get it they see squirrely kids that don't have mental illness that do have disciplinary issues at home so it's kind of like a go-to of what's going on at home you know we're doing our jobs at the school so what's wrong with you so there's just some reverse it's not the school's work to raise your kid so i mean it's a complex issue yeah yeah absolutely um the question number four a person asks um how do you deal with the fear that your child might not survive living with mental illness um by then i had to get really into the serenity prayer really deciding can i control this do i really have control over whether he survives and i did not he was an adult in his 20s at that point um when he was a teenager there was a lot more fear that he would do something crazy and well you were legally responsible for me and so well true but when he was an adult i really had to work on letting him go which it's really a form of respect of respecting another being on the planet just for being here and they have a right to that space and they don't make the choices maybe i would but you still have to give your blessing to it and it still doesn't stop you from worrying no no that fear of getting that phone call someday but that was a constant background noise yeah especially during the hospitalizations or when i was cutting and stuff like that it's just i i can't imagine how hard that is i didn't think about it i was so ingrained in my own suffering that i couldn't i didn't have room to even consider how it was impacting other people in my family so um question number five have you ever had to call the police or have your son hospitalized against his wishes how did this impact your relationship and would you do it again oh boy this goes back to the estrangement and um yes i had to call the police one time and they scooped him up and put him into the hospital after that i don't think he showed me very much reason to do that i don't think you would allow me to know enough going on oh yeah i guess i became a little more shut down or not not communicating when i was struggling so much so that i wouldn't end up in a situation like that again that was kind of part of my withdrawing um but yeah that i remember that i took i swallowed i'd been cutting myself and swallowed enough pills to to really do the job and and woke up with you know ambulance and police at my house and and i felt i was so upset again i felt like it wasn't it couldn't have been me that put me in that circumstance you know it was everybody else's fault it was you know the inconvenience of being woken up out of bed and taken to a mental health facility and all that i just i couldn't take responsibility for my own actions back then and so the blame went right to my mom and family and that was hard i know that was that was hard on both of us it really was um next question is uh what is one of your biggest regrets when it comes to raising a child with mental illness there's not enough resources i mean i could read all the how to raise your kid and how to deal with tantrums and all the books and there was still kind of more to it um they don't you know when you break a bone you go to er but there's not an er for mental illness there's not a resource there's not knowledge out there not known publicly it's better now than it was 30 years ago but it's you know got a long ways to go that was before internet you know you couldn't google your child's symptoms i mean i'm glad so yeah resources that's a that's a really good one well i'm glad a lot of families have resources like even this channel you know it's if i've only had that yeah um question number seven what are some helpful things people with bipolar disorder can do to help maintain healthy relationships with their family well i read that and i thought wow that's more your question actually but well for me it was learning over and over again to let go to respect him as a separate person not make judgments not go like well i mean you really were a little late or don't you think you could have worn better clothes or forget all of that you become blind to little stuff and just have to accept fully accept them right where they are that minute to get the get across that no judgment i think that's huge because that that that shift in acceptance where i didn't feel so on edge i guess made me open up a lot more or more comfortable to to tell things if if you berate your child over something you know whether it's their fault or not or something they did some stupid thing they did when they were manic or something depending on how you go about talking to them about that it could you know really cause them to shut down and not tell you things in the future so i think um yeah having a very uh letting letting go a little bit and letting your your kid find a little bit of their own direction in the world is i think that's great if i were to answer that question as far as maintaining healthy relationships with family for me it would be just education you know learning as much as you possibly can about it and sharing it with your family and i know not everybody out there has a really good relationship with their family members so if you have a family member that isn't interested in learning about your illness don't let that stop you from progressing and making your own growth so you know i know my mom and i are super close and we have a very awesome family dynamic but not everybody does also now we are now we are yes it wasn't always like that that's true so that hopefully that gives a little hope for some of you parents out there too that we we were bumping heads and not talking for years and now i run a mental health channel so it's quite the turnaround um question number eight uh rob said that he was in denial for a while when did you learn about the bipolar in relation to when rob found out we learned that at the same time i finally found a psychiatrist who was known for being incredibly skilled with mental illness but also pharmacy she had a huge background in pharmacy issues and medications and so we met with her and she explained a lot of this to us actually i drove him there but she explained a lot of it so we basically found out at the same time and he was totally willing you know to work with it and so we were working on it together awesome yes and then did you know that he had bipolar before he accepted it and if so how did you approach trying to help him so so that would be no i had no idea that it had a name yeah totally i mean this the symptoms were there but we didn't know you know we didn't have a name for it or why one week you were in the bottom of the pits and the next minute high as a kite and everything was okay it was so easy to assume it was oh he had a relationship breakup that's why he's so low oh he's excited about a new hobby so that's why he's running circles around everyone it was hard to it it was awesome to get the diagnosis for both of us i mean but it raised just as many questions as it did answers you know to have a name for it was amazing but then it was like well where do we go from there and that's that's been a whole different journey also um but i think as far as you approaching and trying to help me when when things did start getting bad there was you were really good at planting tiny seeds of pointing out hey you know you notice the the lows and the just or the inconsistency kind of in in emotions and and encouraging me that it doesn't have to be that way you know she kept saying that you know all of the suffering it doesn't have to be a part of your life we can do something about it you know it really helped encourage me to go do something about it we didn't know what could be done or or what the result was going to be but but we we did something about it and and that that was where things started to change in a lot of ways and speaking of denial though i mean we did get that diagnosis and i wasn't warmed up to it at first i mean i remember you bought a couple of books and sent them to me and i ended up ended up having a book burning party and burnt the books before i read them i just was um i i had to do things on my turn it wasn't so much in denial i mean i knew something was wrong and and and needed to move forward with it but it had to be i i couldn't have somebody else plop a book down in front of me and say read it i had to be the one to find it at the bookstore and say i think i'll read that book i just i had to do it on my own terms um for me that's really important for people to hear because you know sure we got this diagnosis together and this was awesome and we were going to work it out and then there was a low and debt reactions to medications and then the barbecue pit got the books i sent him the reactions to meds i'm so glad you brought that up because that was a huge discouragement in me moving forward with treatment because we all have this illusion of when we're little kids that we go to a doctor and they give us a band-aid or they give us a pill and they make it all better and and and they do it fast so when you go to a doctor and they say here's what you have and here's some treatment for it and the treatment makes you 10 times worse or you know the side effects are 10 times worse it almost feels like you know that the almost just a lot of resentment towards the doctor resentment towards treatment resentment towards trying that whole process of medications all over again um i didn't get it at first that there was going to be a lot of trial and error she said that to us but i didn't get that i didn't hear it just a passing thought until you really see the side effects come into play are we willing to take this medication and then go off for two or three weeks and then try another one so that that denial that i had it was it took a long time of slowly subsiding and a lot of that was slowly proving to myself of little improvements small steps along the way of finding one medication that provided a little bit of relief and then i was like oh okay well maybe there is a little bit of hope or find one therapist that's just amazing you know and gives me some new ideas to to think about the situation a little differently than i have in the past it's just a total journey to go from you know being in denial and um and and reaching a place of accepting it so um yeah other parents out there i would say just stop and have a cup of tea and don't think you've got it figured out at any point and just be grateful for the good times yeah yeah one day at a time absolutely um the next question is a good one it's uh what differences have you noticed in rob since he started the polar warrior youtube channel that's the biggest change of his life um i'm married to a teacher and he's always told me that teachers learn more than their students that they learn more on how to express and the depth of understanding that's exactly what he did and over the time that he's had this channel his personal growth is just these climb mountains and then he has names for things so he can say i'm in this place or that place and i get it because i've watched the channel and he's educated me too it's made a major difference i mean 100 difference not that everybody's going to go start a channel it's just you know that it's made a huge difference in your life i i think the the biggest things for me was of course like learning you know about everything as i research all this but the accountability of having a community that looks forward to new videos and is like hey when are you going to come out with a new video can you talk about this on the channel it's like i can't just stop when i have all these people that that it's really enriching their lives so that accountability of starting a channel even if you start a small facebook group or a small blog or anything that you want to do if you feel like advocating in mental health it's it's incredible how transformative it can be when you teach something you really embody it so so teaching anything in any capacity with mental health even if it's teaching your family what bipolar disorder is about it's just gonna help you to know the illness a little bit better so absolutely and i've met some amazing life-changing friends through the channel some really neat people all of you guys that comment and interact with the channel i love you to death that's that's don't want to say love you to death but i love you guys that's it's awesome i really enjoy the community um all right so moving on uh did your mom get involved in any did your mom get you involved in any outside activities that helped my son has difficulty making friends i saw that question and i was like oh boy that is as different as every child on the earth some you could get instruction for or into sports and activities and they would find that they just loved it i was lucky i thought okay discipline is the issue i didn't know he had bipolar so we experimented and ended up with karate and it happened to be a very strong teacher and he would demand rob's presence in practicing and you know so that was a really big part of his reigning it in as a young kid um but there's a lot of activities out there someone may love football or love whatever other sport or computers or you know anything but it what's important is to get some sense of focus if you can the karate was it was transformative for me i was probably i think in sixth grade to write around adolescence when she got me into karate and i think the appeal of the martial arts specifically is it's such a mindful activity if you get your kids involved in something that's mindless where it's not mind and body working together it's easy for the mind to wander you know the kids playing a video game their mind can wander off on you know but if if you have a very specific focused activity like uh that that develops motor skills and confidence and things like that um gymnastics martial arts anything that involves the the mind and body and those team-building characteristics is just it's incredible i mean if on days when i was manic i had an outlet for my energy on days when i was depressed i was around a group of energetic martial artists that would pull me out of that depression i was it was i i don't know what i would have done in my life if i didn't do karate it helped with behavioral issues in school i mean just about everything and not everybody's kid is going to want to be a ninja so you know if your kid doesn't want to do karate you know then then you might have to get a little bit a bit creative but emphasizing you know activities or hobbies that keep the mind and body going and and very uh a certain level of intensity you know i think is are just amazing for any child that's struggling with mental illness well that helped you and i just encourage parents to keep trying yeah keep trying different activities until your kid takes to one yeah or if their manic takes to 20 of them um all right moving on question number eleven uh does your mom feel like she failed you that's kind of a hard question um yeah off and on through the years i would just i didn't have answers the books weren't helping and at points i would just feel like i was a total failure as a mom you know i had the mom that raised had held at daycare and had lots of activity with kids and i was like i don't know what i'm doing and then i would we'd go another step further and grow a little more and i wouldn't feel that way so i moved in and out of feeling failure and blame and regret and success and hope it would go back and forth it would not just stay in one place i'm wondering if some of that failure that that feeling of failure just comes from the sense of helplessness that you know exactly it's like i can't help my kids so i'm a failure as a mother i can't control a totally out of control bratty robert so so i must be a failure yeah i can yeah i could see that so that's got to be hard what what helped you kind of overcome that nothing but the next step not giving up um trying something else after feeling so helpless i would well i've got a real stubborn streak in me of who i am and i don't give up easily i might fall down and want to suck my thumb for a while but then i don't give up i kept asking questions and trying more things and eventually things slowly started slowly started to come around over 20 years yeah yep um question number 12 what can i tell my teenagers and nieces to make them aware of bipolar disorder before they suffer from it without knowing i don't think you should put fear in people's kids kids heads you know it's so every time someone is a little blue they're going to go oh my god i've got this mental illness i really don't think that's necessary at all i think if you see a kid struggling then you might talk with them but you can't prepare someone to look for symptoms because we all have symptoms of feeling blue and feeling high and excited and you know that's not something that you can do in advance i think you just need to be in the day yeah i like that all right so moving on to question number 13. uh the viewer asks i'd like to know how she coped with your hospital stays um it was awful now i was very depressed um very unnerved didn't sleep well all of the any if your kid was in the hospital for a car accident is that same kind of devastation and fear in the chest and you know all of those issues it was not an easy time and even after i got out of the hospital actually on that note there was a whole transition period there too because when i was in the hospital they tend to give you a very high therapeutic dose of drugs and and you're in a very foreign environment you're usually around a bunch of other people that are that are mentally unwell and i'm not saying all this to discourage or caught you know make people afraid of being in an environment like that in fact it was incredibly life-saving and helpful for me but there was also a transition period where i was pretty out of it when i get out of the hospital too so it's not like my mom could just rush over and say hey how are you oh my gosh i want to hear about it or something i was pretty isolating and well actually that's when we were estranged i didn't know any of the after yeah yeah that's true trump tough times i'm so sorry for half the crap i put you through it's it's i'm not it's a lot but but that it really did bring us together in a lot of ways so um all right moving on to the next one question number 14. what was your reaction when you found out that your son had bipolar and what was your instinct to do about it oh boy i'm a rescuer i wanted to fix it i wanted to you know drive an hour and a half and pick him up and then drive four hours to the psychiatrist that i had found and i wanted to do all and be everything and rescue him and when things didn't work easily i i also i got very discouraged and went through quite a bit of depression and i didn't give up and i'm so grateful for that um yeah that's that's a that's that's really good feedback yeah moving on to number 15 how do you feel about your son's illness compared to when he was first diagnosed i'm really proud i'm really he's taken it and working with helping others has been the biggest instinct that he's had ever of moving forward i'm just very proud and of the acceptance that you have and the courage it takes to accept what you're working with you know as a person that's big courage i you we still talk and you're way down and frustrated with health and then in a day or so the courage comes back and i see it it's like the courage is rising so no i'm proud of him and you know when i was first diagnosed i there was there was so much um we we both just didn't know have any direction you know you didn't we had to rely on on a lot of the doctors and not outside observations of others and a lot of blind trust as far as kind of what i needed and and what episodes i was having and now i think after starting the channel i've become so much more self-aware of the episodes that i go through so it's more easy for me to to take charge of my own bipolar and to say oh i'm a little manic today or i'm a little depressed today i need to to be a little careful of that so so i think once i was able to start kind of self-managing then you know she didn't have to have that instinct to you know to do so much about it it was it was easier for her to let go a little bit so so i think both of us working together has caused that change of just you know the percep perception of when i was first diagnosed till now it's changed a lot um moving on to number 16 what is the most significant thing that you can do to help your son manage his bipolar disorder two words let him there's nothing i can do i mean i could come over with your favorite food on a depressed morning or something but i really need to let him manage it because it is not my work definitely definitely doesn't mean i don't love him absolutely absolutely well i think that was that bad that we we kind of had that impasse or boundary where we both for us as you know i don't know if it's the same for other mother and son but but we just work better when she lets go and lets me kind of make my own mistakes you know in a lot of ways so that so you know she doesn't didn't let go completely i mean always there if i said hey i'm down and i need to talk to someone i mean always that's different it wasn't like oh i'm just gonna totally let him do his own thing she the love was still there but the the desire to i need to go make you an appointment and you need to take your meds and see the doctor like that kind of stuff is once once that subsided things just everything really turned around a lot right yeah um this next question is a is a good one and i mean this one might take a while but did you notice any signs growing up that were odd where do we start um i had no clue what i was looking at lots of little kids did had different growth types i mean he was walking by the time he was nine months and he had a home he had a vocabulary that made him understandable by a year and you know so that was all hooray and in the years when he was little he had a lot of rage that would be easily triggered you know if he didn't get his way with a toy or something temperature i'd exhaust myself with temper tantrums not simple temper tantrums it was to the point where he would be he would have his fists and scrape his arms and um pretty extreme but the books said that's a temper tantrum so what was i to know i didn't know and but he just he grew up being very intense never taking naps and oh yeah that's right when he was little about my other lamas class moms uh my friends all their babies were like oh they take naps now if they'll sleep through the night well i'm like mine didn't take naps i would put him in his crib in a safe place and i would lay down on the floor in the room and take a break you know and try to rest for 10 or 15 minutes that was just sanity so i didn't crash but you know he was intense growing up and i cautioned even saying that because there's a lot of intense kids out there that don't have bipolar yeah it is not you cannot diagnose little things in your kids growth you just need to accept and keep rolling with it forward um and and also in you know as far as signs that were odd um during the early years there were a lot of behavioral issues i remember that i had during like even in i remember kindergarten first grade getting sent home for kicking the principal and the shin literally i spent a lot of time with my mom at work on days when i was suspended i have very very clear memory of that so do you remember biting the secretary biting the secretary those poor teachers i really put everybody through the ringer growing up that's it's been an adventure but um yeah i think that was a part of it too is just you know there was a lot of stuff going on at home but i think the behavioral issues were were more than just you know parents going through a divorce or things going on home it was there was another level of intensity to it that was more so than than even my other siblings or other kids that just just made raised eyebrows yeah yeah and and even gosh even uh junior high and stuff i was still pretty wild and by the time i got to high school i think i was i was withdrawing and starting to kind of pull away but well i do remember talking about intensity and obsession how old were you when you mowed lawns to get your first computer oh 10 yeah like 10 or 12 years old i i and you bought a mac back in the day when they were incredibly expensive yeah i was working like four or five dollars an hour to save up for that thing but same thing with karate if i ever if i found something that that really catered to my um that got me going you know i i would it would become almost an obsession like it i would make some some pretty intense things happen it's been a blessing and a curse but yeah yeah yeah absolutely um moving on to question number 18 is there anything that your mom regrets about how she dealt with your behavior in light of your diagnosis probably not um i was never an aggressive disciplinarian i would try and talk and i sometimes thought talking was too much and i slowly learned to just say no it's not okay or you know be more simple about it but um yeah i i don't think i think if i had more resources but i'm not sure the resources are there even today for a kid that's intense and throws tantrums when they're young somehow i just you have to move forward and get through all the different phases i i just don't think there's an easy answer yeah well said um the next question is at what age did you see certain traits of the illness in your son um other than the ones we talked about the intensity and the rage and the frustration when he was little i wasn't very aware because he became more withdrawn as a teenager and so i didn't have easy um you know examples of things to be concerned about is that you think yeah i was very i think past those teenagers there was a period there where i was so closed off to the way i was feeling it it would have made it a lot harder to to note to see things as an outside observer you really have to be around the person enough to to be an outside observer and i wasn't very in denial and trying to be perfect all the time so i would hide the way i was feeling you know people would ask me how's it going and i'd say fine even if i was dying inside so it was you know it was a lot harder for people to to see i guess what was going on i you know the i think is as far as like a definitive age where hit the fan so to speak would be you know the mid-20s during the the hospitalizations the cutting the everything was kind of it it was a very it was a progression you know i was in my teenage years i started getting a little more intense and withdrawing a little more in my early 20s started drinking withdrew even more and and i think the combination of probably the alcohol was the worst thing that i possibly could have done for myself that is what probably was the catalyst that really triggered some intense episodes and pushed me finally to a place where i experienced like my first psychotic episode um so yeah it was definitely a progression well another thing is about when you were a teenager teenagers are teenagers they aren't um they can be your wonderful best friend and they can have swings and they can get easily angry with you or not yet that's not an age that i would ever attempt to diagnose bipolar it's hard even for doctors to diagnose a teenager i'm like oh boy those are another set of years that you just kind of get your way through a day at the time yeah yes um question number 20 does your mom have bipolar disorder and have other family members been diagnosed like grandparents great uncles etc i don't think there was actual diagnosis but there were plenty of symptoms to see and looking back i think your dad had issues his was more panic disorder and depression anxiety disorder right yeah and um his dad was i think much more bipolar on that side and i have my swings i have always struggled with depression and found it really refreshing when i was up and getting a lot accomplished so i do have a gentle swing back and forth more like cyclothymic bipolar but not right you know type one or type two right i've just gotten to be real aware of it so it they do say it is genetic but you know we're all still learning all this including the scientists yeah but in my family i mean there's there are definitive um whether it's bipolar or something else it's it's mental illness runs pretty rampant in our family it's just it's harder with a lot of like my dad's generation my dad passed away when i was 18. and that was again right around the time when you know you got mail and america online was you know it wasn't like the information age today where people were so much more aware of all this stuff um so my dad was never you know officially diagnosed and and his his dad of course that generation didn't even talk about mental illness so um so i think with with a lot of my our parents generation it's it's harder there's it's it's harder sometimes to know if mental illness was in the family um you know because there wasn't a lot of people being diagnosed but there's a lot of second-hand information that sure points to a lot of things being off so yeah listen to your family stories yeah yeah family stories around the campfire there's there's some hidden wisdom in there sometimes um uh question number 21 when your son was a baby did he have underlying problems like colic um he had colic for a little bit like a week or two a little bit of it when right after you were born but not really not significantly the big issue for me looking back and i did not see it or didn't know at the time was his lack of sleep i remember i used to have this recurring nightmare of um waking with you during the night and then staying awake during the day anyway my recurring nightmare was someone would come out in the morning and i would be sitting on the living room no you would be sitting on the living room couch and i would be gone because i had just gotten used up no oh god yeah well it was it was a lot it was a handful um question number 22 um was she extremely emotional when she was pregnant with you compared to other siblings that don't have bipolar disorder um no i i have to say i'm one of those strange people that not really strange but i loved being pregnant i had tried a long time i was 30 when i was pregnant with rob and you know i just really enjoyed the feeling of life inside me moving on to uh 23 how do parents differentiate between normal teenage behavior and symptoms of bipolar disorder huh i think that would be hard if i would say that would have to be extremes on a continuum back and forth and identifiable not just a bad mood for a week or five days or three days it would really have to be over time and you're seeing regular swings regular repeat behaviors but even so that's really you're really on a a mystery there with a teenage behavior yeah i'm not sure that you could be very accurate that's that is a tough question and incidentally i do have a video on the channel that does talk about signs and symptoms in teens and kids or pediatric bipolar disorder and it is incredibly difficult for doctors to diagnose because of everything else going on socially and hormonally and everything during that time so um but if you do want to know about that that is a great video it goes over a lot of signs and symptoms and things to watch out for that might give you some ideas of of what to look for so check that video out that'll be a good way to elaborate on that question um okay moving on to number 24 did your son excel in hobbies or work or show a certain determination to succeed yes um for one was the karate that we've talked about and another one was his interest in computers and computer science and computer programming when he was not even hardly a teenager it was just you know when he got onto something then i would quit worrying and kind of get on with my life because i know he would be so focused give you a break for a little while yeah yeah totally that's i that's that's very true and that's kind of one of the i guess advantages so does it if you want to call it an advantage to bipolar mania is that we can be extremely driven people when we do want something in fact every every job every hobby everything i've ever done even the the my heart and soul that i put into this youtube channel everything that has been a passion uh especially if it started when i was manic has just been it's just been amazing i'll always start at the the bottom and end up becoming management or a supervisor and a job very quickly or i'll open up a small karate school and it becomes the biggest one in town very quickly but something i've also noticed with myself is that i get to kind of a pinnacle of a job or something where where i get to the top and and kind of as have taken it as far as i can go and then i i holistically lose interest a lot of the time and then it's kind of on to the next adventure it's very common for people with bipolar disorder to switch hobbies or interests you know like the weather but um the hobbies that i did stick to oh boy i mean i wanted to be the best and and i think a lot of that drive came from uh part of the illness in a lot of ways so so you know one of the not so bad sides of how it's impacted my life it has made me very successful in a lot of endeavors next question is uh my mom wants to keep my mental illness a secret among her circle of friends does your mom feel shameful about your illness and does she feel second hand stigmatized for having a son with bipolar disorder i don't feel shameful i i have nothing but respect for the process that we've gone through to get where we are now and where you are now we've basically separated and he's owned his bipolar now and this was not an easy path folks but anyway second hand stigmatized um yeah that happens i'm very careful about who i talk to people openly about my son's diagnosis and what he's been through in any respect because people that don't know it don't understand it haven't experienced it don't have a kid that has some form of mental illness if there's no way to relate then i just don't go there and when i have it's just been very awkward like oh that's nice you know most people have a very skewed version of what bipolar disorder is you know from some social meme they saw on facebook or something yeah absolutely um and then for the person that did post that question you know i i my heart goes out to you you know for for your mom to keep it a secret among her friends or to feel shameful about your illness that's really tough you know and that's that that really is something that you can't control that has nothing to do with you that is your mom's issue is not yours i was just gonna say that it really was my growth to have to accept that i did nothing wrong i didn't cause the bipolar but that's a lot of counseling and a lot of um personal growth within me and that took a lot of years too that take about as many years as we've been through you know to get to the point where um i just had to be okay inside myself yeah yep absolutely we are getting close to we got the last two questions here so we're we're getting there uh question number 26 what were the kinds of things your son was misdiagnosed with before he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder um out of control kid when you were little i don't know they were going for adhd and learning disabilities and um i'm i'm a real basic mom i don't i'm not quick to do medications they were suggesting that i put him on ritalin and i just i i didn't in the end um i'm not sure if it would have helped anything or now i know with his medication sensitivity probably not yeah that would have probably been bad but i didn't know that then either i but i didn't do that the diagnosis didn't come until the 20s his 20s yeah so and that there was a long road before we got there in fact my first diagnosis was just unipolar depression i remember i went into a doctor and said doc i'm depressed and he gave me a ton of zoloft which just i it made me so manic i was just high as a kite i remember i called my mom and was like i'm fixed i feel amazing oh my gosh i can't believe i didn't do this sooner this is awesome i love life i mean i was oh my god i remember that and i was like oh cool yeah as a parent you're like finally we found something that works but and then it didn't yeah then then the crashes happen even worse or it pushes you up into total psychosis it's it's it's scary if if um doctors do misdiagnose someone so to prevent that you know researching you know getting to know and get to know an illness before you go in and talk to a doctor if you think it might be bipolar disorder um you know get some mood journals track moods over a period of time learn about this stuff because doctors they unless they live with it themselves there's a there's a an impasse that happens and and also they only spend 30 minutes with us once every few months that's not enough time to make a really good pinpointed accurate diagnosis so um yeah as much learning about it as much as you possibly can is just it's so important so important my channel is a great resource for that yeah yeah and the more you know the more chances you can prevent a possible misdiagnosis you know you can help guide a doctor through not misdiagnosing your child if you know enough about this stuff so the last question we have is what boundaries or self-care does your mom do to make sure that she's still able to offer you support without burning herself out well in the current time it's it's a matter of saying i really hear you and i really hear it's a hard time and i just can't do this right now um let's talk again later or if it's really critical you know call me back but i'm not on my game and just you know it's where i am and in my own life i've dealt with um i'm super sensitive to other people and i've dealt with depression so i tend to be um quiet i don't like a lot of social activity and so i've had i've had to learn boundaries to protect that in my own self not even the differentiation or in our relationship i've just generally had to work on that um [Music] that's taken a lot of therapy a lot of counseling through the years and practice and you know then it would work and then it wouldn't work learning to set boundaries sometimes it doesn't sometimes people take offense but we had to have a having a conversation is what really helped us it's like saying you know there's gonna be times where i might tell you that i just can't be there for you and i need you to know that it's nothing personal that i'm struggling with my own stuff and i need you to make your own food and put yourself to bed you know like like just just to have that if she didn't say that if she didn't it would be so much easier for me to take it personally if she just says i can't handle your today you know i mean she doesn't say it like that but you know it's it's it's if have a plan in place you know if you're setting boundaries say kind of try and explain why say hey i'm i there's going to be times where where i can't support you in the way that you need i'll let you know when that happens it's nothing personal and you know in a couple weeks i'll be right back there you know with you but but yeah it's so important to take self-care to not not bleed yourself don't let you know your family member's mental illness create you know your own kind of struggles and and um cycle your own psychological issues it's just not worth it it really isn't right yeah wow we made it through 27 questions that's pretty darn good um awesome i'm really excited about that i'd like to say that it's not it's sort of clear as much you know a lot of this is just going through it and not giving up and continuing to ask questions and not make assumptions um it's not an easy path it's not you know here's three things you can do and your life will be okay or your kid's life will be okay it's not like that i'm sorry and it's different for everyone every everyone family has different triggers different thresholds for suffering different uh uh family dynamics it's it's it's all just relative so it really um i think the bottom line is just it comes down to education and unconditional love you know learning as much as you possibly can and and unconditional love and knowing when to let go you know those those boundaries yeah unconditional love doesn't mean you're a doormat yeah yeah that doesn't unconditional love does not mean cater to your child's every you know thing unconditional part of unconditional love is tough love you know is knowing when to set a boundary you know an unconditional love for yourself so that you're setting personal boundaries because you care for your own balance it's complicated yes it's it's complicated [Music] you

Channel: Polar Warriors

Views: 93,579

Keywords: Bipolar Disorder, Polar Warriors, Bipolar Interview, Bipolar Mother Son, Bipolar Mother Daughter, Bipolar Child, Bipolar Parent, Raising a Bipolar, Bipolar Disorder Help, Bipolar Relationship Advice

Id: GyI7ofl3Z74

Length: 57min 15sec (3435 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020