Marriage and Bipolar: What One Couple Has Learned by Staying Together

hello everyone and thank you so much for being with us we are very pleased today to have mark and Julia lukács talking about their personal journey together they met at 18 were married at 24 and today they will share how they have learned to make their marriage thrive mark is a teacher and the author of the best-selling memoir my lovely wife in the psych ward he has also written for The New York Times modern love column and again in a piece for Pacific Standard magazine which happened to be the magazine's most read article in 2015 Julia is a marketing director at an American corporation and of course they are both mom and dad to their son and we welcome you mark and Julia thank you again for being with us and sharing with us today Maureen Debbie thank you so much for having us today thank you so much such an honor so we're going to jump right in as Debbie Sandra intro we're mark and Julia I want to sort of start with a caveat to the audience that we are not experts we're not researchers and so our presentation is mostly about our personal narratives so it's a lot of pictures of the two of us as compared to charts and data also we're focusing our talk around the our relationship between the two of us and how Julia's bipolar diagnosis has impacted in how we learn to work through it there's a couple things you won't be talking about too much we're not going to talk a ton about the specifics of medication we're also not going to be talking too much about parenting which is I think another huge topic that we could be addressing but we really I think one of the reasons that people have resonated with our book so far and also with some of the articles I've written in the past is because the question of how mental illness impacts of a romantic relationship is something that so many people face and experience but there's not a lot of discussion around it and so that's really what the thrust of our talk is today so to jump in this is us on the weekend we got engaged when we were talking three years old babies basically Julie and I met the first week of college we went to school in DC and kind of fell in love immediately and very easily and I think it was already within a few months of being together that we kind of saw that we were probably going to be part of each other's lives for the rest of our lives we graduated I moved to Baltimore to Lee moved to New York we did long-distance for two years after one year I said this stinks I want to get married to this girl and like live together and start our life together and stop commuting up to New York every weekend so this is again the photo from the weekend where we got engaged and we got married and we were 24 and literally the next day got on an airplane and moved to California and there we kind of spell we kind of established what felt like a fairytale life together where we really had been already living a lot of happily Everafter moments and and just sort of hoped and expected that that's what it was going to be like the rest of the way you know I was teaching high school history usually it was in a job that she loved and then after three years out in California we were 27 things took a pretty unexpected turn now I'm going to hand it over to Julia to sort of narrate what that sounds like for her and then yeah great so it was actually July of 2009 when I started a new job so exactly eight years ago and it was hip local San Francisco company where I really wanted to impress my boss and press my peers and I knew I could do a good job I was very much an overachiever I was always a straight-a student at Georgetown and I knew I could kind of walk in and do a killer job well that's not exactly what happened so I remember going to work and within just the first couple of weeks like the second week I was reading email but it would take me almost like two to three hours after response this is very much you know I'm Ricky and I remember calling mark and being like hey can you review this email for me and it was a really basic hema like yes I'll be working on the budgeting this week something very simple and yet I could not hit the send button I remember waking up in the morning not wanting to go to work like this had never happened before just the constant pacing and thoughts that kept coming in my head that I wasn't good enough for this but I couldn't succeed at this and slowly by the end of July and early August I stopped sleeping I was so anxious that at night I would just be awake for the entire night hours and hours days after days I couldn't sleep I would put listening meditation tapes on and nothing would do the trick I lost my appetite and that's when I got really scared and I went and saw a psychiatrist and they let me know that I have to go on antidepressants to put in perspective at the time I had no history of mental illness I didn't even know what depression was I thought it was a weakness to take any sort of medication to poor the mind and I was really against it at the time but I went home with these tails and I remember getting on skype with my mom and telling her mom I have this feeling that I want to take all these pills like I want to kill myself I don't want to I don't want to deal with these feelings that are coming up for the first time in my 27 years of life like I am not comfortable I need to end this now and that's when my dad threw out from Vienna you know it's a big deal when you're a new father flies across the world to make sure his baby girl is okay and I wasn't okay um I actually ended up getting hospitalized for 23 days in the psych ward in early September and it was the most terrifying experience of my life I've never been in the psych ward before and that experience changed me really forever so I'm going to pass it on to Mark who's going to speak about the first episode and visiting me in the psych ward those 23 days yeah I think that Julia kind of she said I think she did a good job of explaining just how unexpected this was for us you know and this is there was at this moment that I felt like Julianne my path started to diverge a little bit because she was the one experiencing the feelings but I was the one who was I was trying to help like while she's up at night with these medic these meditation tapes on I'm up awake with her and I was trying to like do massage and say comforting things and you know kind of Troubles troubleshoot these issues together and like I was really trying to UM to help but I didn't know how to help and I felt really frustrated and I felt really scared I mean hi Julia to give you some context Julia was 0.01 her GPA was 0.01 away from being the valedictorian of her high school and all throughout college she had these incredible internships and me well I was like going and living at the beach and waiting tables and like surfing all day and so she was the really ambitious successful one and I was the more just like dreamer let it be just kind of float along enjoy the ride kind of guy and and yet here she was all of a sudden her ambition and her confidence came to a screeching halt and I was just like you're tired just go to sleep you don't want to write the female to do it you know and I realized looking back that I wasn't especially patient because I didn't know what was going on I didn't know how to support her and so this slide into what we learned was psychosis was really rapid I mean between Julia starting her job it was only six weeks later that she was in the hospital on an involuntary hold where they held her for three days and then extended her hold for a duration of 23 days and those that time was just I don't think I've ever felt more alone in my life I've never felt more uncertain and scared I did not know what was happening and I think hardest of all I didn't know what was going to happen next you know I was trying to just focus on where we were in the moment but my mind kept racing ahead to like well what does this mean for our future like is she going to return to help or is this what it's going to be like for the rest of our lives I mean we're only 27 you know we're still super young is this what the next 40 years are going to be are we ever going to be able to have kids she ever going to be able to return to work I think one of the hardest parts about it all was that if you're married or in a serious relationship when you go through your biggest crises your obvious instinct is to turn to the person in that relationship right like if for example it was a sibling in mine who got sick then I would be processing that with my wife Julia but since it was my wife who was sick and she was so delusional and psychotic and anxious that I couldn't talk to her about any of this stuff I just kind of had to wrestle with all these questions on my own and kind of and they definitely haunted me and it was really really emotionally difficult to get through that but ultimately after being you know filled up with a lot of antipsychotic meds when Julia was discharged from the hospital and our lives once again changed pretty dramatically because as lonely as her time in the hospital felt for me I was only allowed to visit her for 90 minutes a day now the sudden her and her illness were my 24/7 because she was at home with me and pretty much only me and it was pretty much up to the two of us to try to make it through each day so and that's where the depression side of her bipolar really came out the the hospital was when she was psychotic which is how Julia experiences mania but then post hospital is where the depression settled in so Julia's going to kind of talk through what that first episode of depression was like for her so having been a psych ward for 23 days and really feeling like you know it was a place where I couldn't really get out like I couldn't leave that was my main goal was to leave the psych ward get out of here like I can't be in here and it was the scariest times in my life and I come from a Catholic background I do believe in God and these were actual I had spiritual delusions where I really believed I was the root of all evil and I needed to be destroyed ultimately and and for someone to think that about themselves to really feel like they shouldn't exist it is so heart-wrenching to the soul to my to my being but when I was released I didn't want to live I I told mark so many times like after that experience I can't go on I can't go on with my life nothing will ever be the same I was expelled in a way like like my old self was destroyed and this new person was created and I wasn't ready to face this new life having known what the psych ward is and what mental illness is and what and what psychosis is and and so I I dive into a deep depression where I was attending it's called IUP intensive outpatient care it was from 9:00 to 12:00 every day and I would go and it was usually a four to six week program and I found myself there for nine months because the doctors and the psychiatrists were just not seeing the improvements and they wanted to keep me safe ultimately and keep me going there every single day for nine months so I really felt like that time was when I was most suicidal when I would talk to mark and and really picture my death and telling him look you have to move on you have to find a wife after I kill myself um you have to basically get the Vespa keys from the Vespa after I leave the scooter at the Golden Gate Bridge because I'm going to jump you know it was it was really a scary time for us at the couple and as individuals and and it took a lot of time for me to get out of this deep sadness and so I'm going to pass it on to mark he's going to really talk about our marriage after this long haul of depression and the negative impact it really had on us as a couple yeah because um you know Julia said that her depression suicidal was hard on us but I in truth I don't actually she was so fixated she was so consumed by her depression that I think in the moment she wasn't really aware of the toll it was taking on our relationship it was just so personal for her and so those days which as Julie said stressed on for nine months were really it was a very heavy caregiving burden for me I was responsible for keeping her safe she didn't like taking the medication she was prescribed but she also desperately wanted to overdose on it so I would have to hide the pills throughout the house and change up the hiding places she didn't really want to do anything mostly just wanted to stay in bed all day so I would kind of plan out what felt like hopefully a rewarding way to spend our time with stuff like signed us up for art classes for adults and we'd go to yoga sometimes or take our dog for a walk on the beach as you can see from this picture which my dad took of us when we were when he was visiting one from we were this like what one of the thousands of beach walks we did in our neighborhood in San Francisco and you can see from the weather its we lived in a kind of Ocean Beach there can get pretty foggy and it really matched our mood you know that we just felt like we were kind of stuck and wandering around not knowing what was going on and so the sense of loneliness that I felt during when she was hospitalized became even more pervasive when she was home which is really paradoxical because here I was spending all day with her you know IOP three days a week for three hours that's nine hours otherwise the rest the time we were together and yet Julia on her medication was pretty non-responsive and non-communicative so it was more like me keeping a steady stream of just like blabber going on of like oh let's talk about this talk about this just to try to keep her mind engaged in where we were you know and then after this like prolonged science experiment of them tweaking different medications all the sudden the depression was gone and Julia was back and we felt like okay is that it like are we done with this thing it was almost a year it was horrifying and deeply traumatizing for both of us but it seemed like it was over and actually that's what Julie didn't get the bipolar diagnosis during her first episode during the first episode they call it a major depression with psychotic features and it wasn't until her second episode three years after that that they upgraded her diagnosis to bipolar one and then she did have a third episode again two years after the second and so where we are now is that Julia has been hospitalized three times she's gone through three bouts of what feels like this almost predictable pattern at this point where it's psychosis for about a month and then depression for I don't know five to nine months um and after the first episode when she was better I sort of expected yay we're done it's over let's just like have fun now that's what I was anticipating and that's certainly what Julia was anticipating but instead I ended up sinking into kind of like a post caregiving depression of my own and I think that's where we really began to experience just how much of a strain this put on our marriage you know I mean speaking candidly I felt unappreciated I felt like I had essentially sacrificed so much of myself I had stopped working for an extended period of time I had almost no contact with friends I was doing really nothing for myself for almost a year and I didn't necessarily feel like that was validated by Julia I don't think she quite understood the scope of what that was because like I said earlier her experience of her depression was so consuming that's it really could blinders on her you know she didn't really stop and think like what this felt like for me you know and so unfortunately coming out of the first episode I was resentful you know I didn't like coming my way I thought I was like what am I doing here like we're better why am I being so uh not why am I being so needy you know and I saw a therapist throughout this and she kind of explained like this makes total sense you um you basically had to bottle up these feelings for a year and now they're coming on ways you don't want them to come out but I know that me is usually a pretty upbeat happy-go-lucky guy once Julia came out of her depression I I don't think I've like ever felt less in control of my own feelings and so I needed coming out of that this sense of validation Julia meanwhile had a entirely different experience of like how this had a negative impact on our relationship yeah during that time I really felt like Mark you know was trying to control every parts of me I remember like and besides you know hiding the tails or giving me the pills or telling me when to take the pills or not to take the pills I me and my friend who who actually had met at the hospital just one became one of my best friends we did refer to market the pill nasty and at the time I was like a big joke you know and I could see how hurtful that that is now that term to call your husband who's really taking care of you making sure that you're safe you know a pill Nazi but that is at the time how I viewed it there was such like anger that I had towards mark like he couldn't really understand like what I've been through and yet he was trying in every way to control every part of me and my happiness like I wanted to be free I wanted to remember one night I wanted to attend a concert with a friend and he's like there's no way you're driving to the East Bay for concert you're staying home you know like I had no freedom at the time and and looking back at it now it makes sense to me it makes sense to me the way that mark behaved but in the midst of it right after my depression it was it was to the point where I just wanted to like get out get out and just and travel or anything to get out of that plan Francisco house like with Mark and feeling so controlled and so uncontrolled in life in general so now we're going to kind of talk a little bit about our everyday life what it's like you know for me being bipolar and what we're doing together and how we're really planning for the future with the fact that I will always be bipolar I will always have a bipolar diagnosis and how and how can we live in a way that feels like very fulfilling and feel like you know we're still you know achieving those dreams that we set out to achieve when we were 24 years old yes so um we this is a picture of our family did and this is like the thrust of the talk here like what did we learn how have we as a couple learned coping strategies to stay together and to make it that we were able to come from Julia being hospitalized to thankfully us being able to become parents together and kind of get back on that happily-ever-after track that we saw when we were in our 20s I think there's a lot of I think we learned a lot of important things at the core I realized that caregiving you know they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions right and like Julia she said she gets it looking back that I was trying to do what was right and yet at the time it felt really wrong for her and what I realized is that the care around mental illness this is to reference Artie Lange who had a lot of criticisms with psychiatry in the 60s when there was a lot of radical thinking and a friend of mine gave me his book it was really hard for me to read because I felt like I was personally being attacked by Artie Lange but I've grown to recognize that it's true like the treatment of mental illness boils down a lot to power and control you know when Julia was psychotic basically I didn't trust her decision-making and her doctors didn't necessarily trust her decision-making but they did trust mine so they put choices in my hands and that means that Julia didn't have a say in what was happening to her body and her mind you know and when she was suicidal and depressed and all she wanted to do was drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off once again I didn't necessarily trust your decision-making and neither did her doctors and so once again we would default to like trusting me you know and when we I think the resentment that I fell and the resentment that Julia felt after the first episode really boiled down to this sense of unequal power like our relationship had gone from one we're just like any adult relationship you're trying to be equal partners to a gross sense of inequality and it was just it was it was a parent and it was hard to restore afterwards so I think the first step was to become aware that this was a reality like that my good intention caregiving was a part of this unequal power dynamic so the first step was awareness okay with that step what do you without awareness what do you do the second thing that I really had to learn is what it means to listen I actually just had a piece come out in The Guardian last week that is about this you know it's funny when Julie was hospitalized I worked at a Benedictine school and the opening lines of st. Benedict's rule is listened with the ear of your heart and so at my school we talked a lot about the importance of listening and I thought I knew what it was to listen but when my wife was talking to me about wanting to kill herself I didn't listen I tried to fix it I tried to talk her out of it I tried to come up with all the reasons why she shouldn't feel that way which in a way is kind of rejecting that feeling you know and it took me honestly just fatigue it just took me that having had this conversation with her saying I was suicidal and me being told over and over and asking to tell her over and over this is why it's worth staying alive that um that I got to the point where I just would finally she'd say these she'd say these really dark things to me and look around and say hey we're in we're in our living room we're together she can't actually hurt herself right now so why do I have to talk her out of it why can't I just sit here and let her express what she needs to express and that had a pretty big transformation on us because I think she was able to feel like her she felt validated she thought hurt and so in learning to listen I think we came upon what feels like to me the most important strategy that we learned out of trying to manage her illness which is that we have a working plan for what to do in the event of a relapse we put this together after the second episode I learned about it from an organization called the Icarus project and they call it mad maps but you can kind of call it whatever you want but basically we made a lot of I think inevitable mistakes about how to treat Julia I've had a lot of meetings with her doctors where she was not there talking behind her back I signed off unquestionably on medication no matter how much Julia complained about the side effects and after the first episode of this said our marriage went into a tailspin then we had this second episode and kind of out of habit we sort of repeated a lot of the mistakes of the first episode so then it was like okay now that the diagnosis is bipolar disorder now that we have to grapple with the reality that this comeback many many times we have to figure out how to go through crisis without it feeling so unequal and so controlling and where I feel so unvalidated and unappreciated you know and so but after her second episode Julia and I basically talked through all the details of what her episodes look like the onset of psychosis the admission into the hospital the reality of her job the reality that this part we had a child the offers of health that come from her parents and my parents we basically had to say like okay you're well now you're doing great now there's no depression or psychosis now so now we can sort of trust each other's judgment and each other's ability to listen to each other and hear the hard things and so basically we went through this many month long process of working out a plan for if there was another episode how would we respond and what was really fortunate is that we have this plan in place by the time her third and what to this point is her latest her last episode and we actually got to put that plan into effect and I have to say was pretty remarkable Julius spent the least amount of time in the hospital compared to the other two she had her shortest depression compared to the other two she did not have to leave her job something she had done with the other two in fact she resumed work fairly early and so a lot of the big quote-unquote mistakes that we have made of the first episode felt like they were being addressed because we had this plan in place and so here we are it's in two-and-a-half years almost three years since through the his last hospitalization and you better believe we still have this plan and it's something that we still talk about because even though we had a plan for episode three there were so some things we didn't do right and we know that because we processed it afterwards and so if again with our talk being about what we learned as a couple through bipolar it's that I polar is a lifelong you know illness it's something that has a likely possibility to return and continue to impact your family and I think the way we look at health care tends to be there like you just want to quote unquote you want to beat it you want to fight it and cure it and fix it and never have to deal with it again and if you actually address a relapse it's almost like you're you're losing to the illness but I actually think it's the exact opposite that if you're prepared for the illness to come back then that's your way of claiming victory over it and that's your way of taking control over it so that if it does come back in your life it doesn't have to be so destructive and harmful to your relationships and the people that you love so that I think those three things are really the biggest lessons that I've learned in our marriage it's the reality from the caregivers I can MIT it's about power I need to listen to her and then we need to have a plan of how to address future relapses so I'm going to Julia's going to chime in that with some of the things that she learned through this about how to keep the family going as best I can yeah for me it was definitely to add to Mark's list because I really believe everything that he said especially type of listening piece and it's something that I work on so very much with my relationship with markets really listening to him and when he has heard and his concerns especially through my bipolar episodes but my main thing is really about acceptance it's accepting this diagnosis as part of who I am you know our book we aren't we have a memoir obviously that came out in May and the title of it is my lovely wife is cyborg and I remember at the beginning I was not okay with this title because the psych ward is such a powerful scary word and do I want that associated with me and it actually took a long time to accept that light and darkness within myself the lovely and the psych ward that is Who I am both of those things are true and they list within me and and I learned that expecting that is the only way that you can truly love yourself and you can truly love others and really give to this world and give back and love your spouse so I think it was a lot about me coming to terms with my diagnosis and my life journey like it took such a different spin that I would have ever imagined but at the same time it's beautiful I have a beautiful life I get to you know do a job that I love I get to be a mom to a five-year-old son you know and I I get to share our story with all of you and and that is such a beautiful thing that I never would have dreamt about for out there or my life so um I think I think that is my main lesson it's like if you are in a really dark place you know keep keep going you know there is going to be that light there is going to be that lesson and there is going to be that support that you need to get through some of the darkest days of your life and and I'm so grateful for my life and I fight for my life every day and I want to be here today and I want to be you know the best mom that I can be and I want to be the best wife that I think be and that wasn't always the case you know sometimes I took mark for granted like through the depression through that time the fact that he stuck by me that is not a given people leave these situations and they get scary when they get really dark people leave and mark chose to stay and be by my side and that and that is so beautiful and something that I can't ever forget about and I have to continue to appreciate so um yeah those are my lessons so as we've referenced multiple times we have a book out um this is the cover it's published by HarperCollins it came out on May 2nd it's the same image from earlier than my dad took because my publisher thought it just evokes so much and I agree and we wanted to before we opened up to questions from the audience we wanted to talk about why we wanted to write a book about this right this these issues are so personal and most people just keep them to themselves and I think my answer to that you know what actually truly why don't you start first okay I'll go first cerimon as I said earlier when Julia was hospitalized I felt super alone you know I'm a history teacher I like to research and find answers and so when she was I remember being in the emergency room with them you know working on the paperwork to admit her and I was on my phone trying to research what the heck was going on and I found a lot of great resources for what was happening to her but what I did not find was a lot of great resources what was happening to me I felt like a spouse side of the story was no I just couldn't find it and I ended up feeling like I knew it obviously wasn't the case but I felt like I'm the only person in the world to be going through this because I can't find anyone else to tell me about it you know and so once we got through her episode and I kind of I don't know I had never been a writer before but I said you know Julia what we've been through was really harrowing and really difficult but I got to be honest I think that since we're making through we could have the potential to help some people and I think especially I we can have the potential to help people who have been hospitalized and diagnosed like julia has but also to help some family members who maybe feel alone and don't feel like there's anyone that they can turn to and knowing that they can ask for advice or even just read their experience and so that was really the motivating force to write this essay for the modern love column in The New York Times which I did at this point five years ago now even six years ago and you know I submitted it not knowing what was going to happen and it was really widely read and I think that was a validation that I'm not the only person who loves someone with a mental illness obviously but most importantly that other people like me we're looking for someone to connect with and then I wrote this magazine an article and Pacific standard which was longer and really became the basis of the book and that one especially was well read I mean that that had millions of reads within a week or two and and that's where it was like okay we have a story and a message that people are resonating with because there's so few out there talking about it so that you know it was difficult to write this book I had to go and relive a lot of really hard moments from my life and try to put my authentic self into them so it wasn't exactly easy but so far with the book out over two months now we've been really just humbled by the response by people who have you know that I get a lot of emails about my writing and the ones that hit me the hardest I distinctly remember this guy who said hey I'm in the I'm literally emailing you from the emergency room and my wife is psychotic I don't know what's happening and I googled psychotic life and I came across you and your book and your article and then he just launched into it and honestly that was like I just started crying when I read that because I felt like that's exactly why I wanted to do this because I was that guy and I came up empty with a school search and now that guy has something where he can just have this little thread to grasp onto that hopefully gives him some tools but also most importantly some hope that on what's happening is really troubling and scary but there's there's a way for it so I think Julia spoke a little bit about her acceptance around being and because this is not my medical diagnosis this is her so this is even more private and I think I extension more courageous for her to be associated with this book but I still want to make sure she had the chance to say what she why she wanted to have this book go public yeah we really shared our story so that others would feel less alone and less scared ultimately it's all about bringing more understanding to mental illness so that we can end a stigma I always find all of my little well you know social posts on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag and the stigma because it's so universal like that that is what we're trying to do with our stories by putting it out there most of the comments that come back is gratitude that's saying thank you for sharing this because now I actually was able to share my story with my own family that I am bipolar like there's people out there that I haven't even been able to share their diagnosis with their own families you know it shouldn't be that way and so we really want to address mental illness with love compassion and understanding and feel that our memoir does a good job at bringing the awareness out there and and being compassionate about mental illness and and and so we just hope you know that anyone can pick up this root of this book and learn about bipolar mental illness about families and struggle and it's it doesn't even have to be tied to mental illness it could be a couple that you know is going through cancer and the wife has chemo that has to go through it you know we feel like this can reach has a universal message and it could reach a lot of people and we're just so grateful to be here today with all of you to share our journey with you yeah that's actually the note we want to end on is how much we appreciate speaking hosted by the International bipolar foundation you know we've done a bunch of book readings and interviews and assessing the interviews a lot of people get so curious about some of the sensational aspects of mental illness like the delusions or the suicidal impulses but I feel like we're here talking to an audience of kindred spirits people for whom bipolar is a big part of their life whether it's through their own diagnosis or a family member or a friend or whoever it may be and it's just obviously the chance to connect with an audience of fellow travelers is the one where I feel the most excited and empowered because I just feel like you're the people for whom honestly we're like trying this is why we're trying to share our story to connect with people like you so I know that debbie is has been facilitating questions we have still about 15 minutes so any questions that you all might have hopefully you've been sending them in maybe we should have said that 40 minutes ago but if you have any questions you can email them in I'm not exactly sure how the tech of that works out but I think that he might have some to send over to ask us and then we'll just kind of take it from there okay yes thank you both thank you thank you for sharing with us and we do have a number of questions here so I will just get started the first question I think is a really important one and something that could be very helpful for everyone and you talked about a plan having a plan do you have any suggestions as to how to get started or any reference you know resource tools that you were you went to to get yourself started you know so I think again I learned about the mad nap through um through the icarus foundation so you can go check that organization out if you want to they have some resources about it but I think that what Julianne I did is the way we started is after her second hospitalization her doctor gave her a jar of risperdal which is the anti-psychotic she takes which she does not like it all and said alright this is your this is your emergency supply and I realized that Julie and I never actually defined what an emergency was like what would what what would have to be happening to get it that where we would both agree that she needed to take this medication which he did not like and so I was like these pills are pointless if we don't actually have an idea for when we're going to actually get to that threshold where if she's going to take him and so I said hey we need to talk about those pills and it did not go over well she was like you know don't you believe I'm strong enough to not have a relapse and it turned into a really tense fight and so I would say one strategy I recommend is if you have a difficult time working through this plan get someone to mediate the conversation we actually ended up meeting with Julia's psychiatrist say hey listen we're trying to define what this a crisis situation would look like in which Julie would take her medication I thought one night of no sleep she's got to take full dose and Julie is like no way I want to go three nights and take half a dose and you know we needed the doctor to weigh in but honestly as soon as we figured out the first detail it was like okay it's actually not impossible to come to an agreement about these really difficult things and so that kind of opened the floodgates for us to figure out the other points of tension you know I can't really speak universally because I think each relationship is going to have their own points of tension but I think for us they were certainly around when to take medication what to do about Julia's job because her job is so big in her identity and like with her first hospitalization I was in the one communicating with her job and they actually presented me with a choice to either quit on her behalf or let them fire her and they said we don't think we should fire Julie because that'll like be bad on her track record so we think you should quit for her and even though those were literally the only two choices like Julia really had a hard time accepting that I had quit her job her you know and then asked her about it and so we've made a lot of decisions around her job we've definitely made a lot of conversation around our son because he was five months old when she was hospitalized for the second time two and a half years old the third time and now he's five and so we need to continually tweak our plan as he gets older and more aware and also has a more autonomous like I think eventually our plan is going to have to include him because right now we're really acting kind of at his protective parents is like what we think is best for him the like I think it's important that he gets to say what he thinks is best room and that's kind of part of the listening component so I would say like if you're considering like if you want to do one of these plans which I could not more highly recommend if you got a first look sort of like a cataloging of what are your biggest points attention what are the things that are the hardest for you as a couple to talk about around these health issues that as soon as you start you figured stomach tighten up and like the air gets sucked out of the room or like those are the things that you have to address right and start with one and if you can find some success through one you're going to find a whole ton of confidence that you'll be able to figure out the others as well excellent thank you for that answer and the next question is how many times has Julian sis for you you guys have your medications or treatment methods been changed by doctors until you found one that works for you I would say that after my first hospitalization the first nine months while I was an intensive outpatient care like it was all it was like a cocktail mix of going up and down in different medication antidepressants antipsychotics I feel like I have been every single one right now I have found what has worked for me for my bipolar I've been stable for the last couple of years and have been on the same medication so I only actually and I can share that I only take lithium and I have a really amazing psychiatrist that is also a mother who so compassionate and loving and she knows my anxiety anytime that we up or down the dose for lithium but I know that I have this certain times of the year where I'm much more prone to relapse and that is in the fall all of my free up those have happened in September October November so I do heavy up on my dose in the fall to protect myself and then and then I ween back down to my regular dose during the spring and summer so that's kind of been what has kind of worked for me but yeah I have been on every single medication I feel like and it was really frustrating the first I remember there was one medication specifically where I gained 70 pounds in six weeks and and this is right after having come out of the psych ward for the first time so then I signed myself with my mind feeling broken right because I have no idea what just happened to me and then my body which I was always really small like ballooning and going up six sizes so it definitely was a frustrating process to go through but I am so grateful and thankful of the medication them on and I'm confident that I'm you know on the right dose and that I have the right team that really supports me through through my life and being able to to be the best as like my mom as a mom and also in my career which are both you know very important to me the last thing I'm in before we get to the next question is like a little bit more detailed because I was paying so much attention to the medicine that is happening today was has been on four different antipsychotics and three different antidepressants all in different quantity and in different pairings and then finally towards the end of that first nine months she was given lithium and that turned out to be the thing that really turned around that they kept her on an antidepressant when she got pregnant they took her off lithium kept on the antidepressant that may have because again and he thought that this is major depression not bipolar at that point and then beautiful since returning on medication it's just worth chiming and reminding people that it's like even if you found the pill that works well for you still gotta kind of track it Julie was on with him on the prescribed dosage of lithium when her third episode happened but we had gotten a little complacent and she hadn't taken blood work for a while and as it turns out like when she didn't have her first night of sleep and we went to her doctor the first thing they wanted they ordered a blood sample right like what are your lithium levels and even though she was on the right dosage I guess her body had started to metabolize it at a different rate and she was below the therapeutic level at that point and so especially if you can identify if there are triggers or times of the year that are challenging um to just you know check in with your medication um be aware of like is it still working well like have those conversations with your psychiatrist just because I think being proactive around that can help to hopefully keep relapses at bay wonderful thank you for that information the next question is I I'm a wife or the husband I'm diagnosed with bipolar and he has had a number of psychotic episodes and hospitalizations yet he has not accepted his diagnosis and doesn't take his medicine regularly do you have any suggestions as to how I can approach him to be compliant with medication you know this is I'm just like I'm like just so overwhelmed with emotion I don't even know where to get started I have I don't know I think you have to play the bad cop because you want to keep your husband safe it's what I did for Julia's first episode I think that through our trials and tribulations I know that I'm really fortunate that it really only took one episode for Julia to to understand that she did need her medication you know and I know for some people it takes much more than that and a lot longer I have friends who who have family members have multiple cycles because they haven't gone to that acceptance that julia is at and I know that that acceptance is is really one of the most important steps and so I think that yeah I mean it's kind of a bitter pill for you to have to swallow but I do think it might mean just keep on playing bad cop and keep making sure he gets his pills and then deal with the tension later because eventually he's going to realize at least I hope that the pills allow him to be his best self you know I think that's what julia has recognized like to be the best mom does wife best career woman she needs to take her lithium without it she has these instabilities which hold her back and prevent her from being able to be there all the time and so yeah that that's a hard one but I yeah I think that's what that would be my recommendation and I just want to also wish you like a ton of love and luck and hope you guys can hang in there great thank you and the next question is specific to your plan in terms of when a spouse is away for example market steer away from Julia and she was experiencing a stressful moment if you're traveling for work or something what what what do you have in terms of your plan to help Julia in those times yeah I think it's about it's about the village approach as well I mean there's no question about it and I'm the most most friend Center in Julia's recovery plan but over time I've learned to let go of needing to be the center of her recovery program and instead trust the friends she's made along the way I mean I know that Julia through her hospitalizations and outpatient programs and through opening up has made some really strong friendships of people that she who she can call during times of crisis and sometimes even if I'm in the room with her it's better for her to call a friend as compared to talk to me just because even though we love each other very deeply like I've never actually experienced what she's experienced and she can sometimes just have a deeper connection with someone who has so um I think also like the truth is my job on the teacher I don't actually travel that much and so we don't we don't have to deal with these things individually too often but I've I really just trust the friends support that she has and her doctor' support to know that if there was a crisis and I'm not aware and having seemed true they go through this and being more proactive around taking care of herself rather than wishing that it wasn't part of a life her life and just you know pushing the pills to decide she's become so much more proactive but it's like you know I think that obviously I want to be there but in worst case scenario Julie could handle it until I am able to be there great thank you the idea if I can just now I'm sorry to interrupt but just in the interest of time you probably only have time for maybe another question or two the okay I thought it would make you we'll make this our last question so kind of holding last question / answer in terms of you mentioned that julia has strong friendships and has already been has have there been any difficulties around friendships given her diagnosis and also how do you keep the romance alive in your marriage I'm missing I'll talk about the romance and then she can talk about the friendships um it was really hard to see Julia romantically when she was so sick you know um we didn't I mean once we were eating out we were like I guess you could call him dates but they weren't really dates because like it was this like once a conversation just trying to keep her present and I think what it was what it took for me was just realize like it's like it's like saying like you know if she was in a body cast romance would not be my top priority right but then I think it would be okay that once she got better to say hey you know what like now that were both super healthy like it's important to reconnect romantically as a couple of not just in this caregiving dynamic and so similar like while she was in the hospital and then suicidal I wasn't really I just kind of turned that switch off you know but I think that after that because we've had some of these I think the process of working on this book which I wrote that Julia read every draft of and all these really difficult conversations I think in this sort of unexpected way that's actually been a big way that we've been able to keep the romance alive because at the end of each conversation no matter where it starts if we actually see it through to its end what we ultimately end up concluding is that we love each other and that we're trying to hang on for each other and for ourselves and that may not be you know a walk on the beach holding hands with sparkling blue waters that's a pretty romantic sentiment you know and so I think that I it is it's a kind of ironic but like talking about the challenges of her illness have ultimately helped us to strengthen our love for each other and our you know our desire to stay together as a couple and I mean this memoir is very much you know it's a love story I sometimes I see it as I find it extremely sexy because it's like Mark writing you know a love letter to me you know because because only by reading this book through his point of view and his perspective was I really able to understand like his loneliness or everything that he you know did as a father like to Jonas when I was in the hospital you know I was able to really really grasp that like by reading this book so I think there was nothing more romantic that he could have done for me there's not a question about you two friendships yeah back to your mother yeah friendships for me uh all talks about me personally difficult at times just because caregiving was so consuming you know I acknowledge that after during her first steps that I was a husband and that was pretty much it I was not in I didn't have the capacity to be a brother or a son or a friend I was just a husband and in the second episode I had to had to learn how to be both husband and a father because now it wasn't just truly it was also our son and so the truth is is like I think that I my family unit is really where I put the overwhelming majority of my energy and as a result I definitely have friends who I think are wonderful people but I don't just send a lot of time with them and I think that's something that I'm trying to do as we keep going through what's been a prolonged period of stability but you know what it's okay to step away from my family in order to pursue some of these friendships more you know I'm 35 now and my two closest people in my life are my wife and my child I think that's great but I also think that I need to have some some buddies that I can go surfing with and now I'm biking with and not just do those activities alone like I typically do you know and so I think that's part of my going to be a part of my life going forward is to is to give myself the space to kind of pursue friendships more than I have over the last eight years with Bipolar such a big part of our life yeah for me some of my closest friendships I met after my diagnosis after I became bipolar these are friendship but I met like in the hospital or through friends of friends who later became mentors of mine as well one specifically I have in mine you know she had her own one she is bipolar and she had her own battle 20 years ago being in a psych ward and I remember coming out of the hospital and feeling so lost and alone and she looked at me and she said you will be happy again I remember going on so many walks with her on the beach and being in trying so hard to believe this statement that she made and looking back you know were still very close all these years later and she's still so important to me because of the role that she played so I have to say I have my group of friends that have known me you know since those Georgetown days that I was this you know type a like super achiever and then I have my really close friends that I've really developed through this new journey of mine that I feel so privileged of knowing and I feel that these friendships wouldn't have come in my life if we didn't have this connection this really deep connection and understanding of mental illness great thank you thank you both and we will end on that question and I just want to add that there has been an overwhelming number of folks are sending me messages through through this portal thanking you for sharing your story and and how helpful this has been for them knowing that they're not alone and all those wonderful ways in which you have shared your the way you manage your life and it's just been incredibly overwhelming so thank you very much thanks to everyone who took the time to join us this morning and you saw I'm going to don't mind I'll go back you can find our book and go to my website you can email me through there we would love to be in touch and just wish everyone the best and sorry we didn't have the time to get to all the questions yeah thank you so much for your love and spending the morning with us today absolutely and just to remind everyone this this webinar has been recorded and will be archived on our website for your future viewing reviewing or sharing with others and everybody make it a great day we'll see you the next webinar Thanks bye-bye

Channel: International Bipolar Foundation

Views: 38,846

Keywords: bipolar, marriage, relationships, mania, depression, parenting

Id: WGAgl8Rh7VE

Length: 65min 20sec (3920 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2017