I am new here

[BetweenThePoles]

Hello,

I am new to forums and hope this is the right area to post this. Decided to come to this site because I need support, I have no support network that can help me with my problems. I have a close friend with the bipolar and she’s angry with me. She doesn’t tell me why and pushes me away. This has been happening for some weeks. It hurts me because she is important to me. I am so upset. She won’t communicate with me. Last night I sat outside and wanted to hurt myself. Self hurt has never come to my mind before even though I have depression and have had it for a few years. Only because of how it would impact my Mum that I did not hurt myself. My friend says I have problems and she’s probably right but without her telling me what I have done wrong I don’t know what to do. Self improvement is something I am prepared to do. I read on this site about bipolar but I can’t tell if the bipolar is the problem or if I am. I need help please, I am hurting so bad.

[Sophie_M]

Hey BetweenThePoles, welcome to the forums. We are so glad you decided to join us here. We know it can be hard to reach out, so thank you for having the courage to do so. We are so sorry to hear that you are in pain over the issue with your friend and were considering self-harm as a way to relieve these intense feelings. The situation with your friend sounds distressing, especially when we don't have clarity on why someone we care about is shutting us out. Please know that you've come to a safe, non-judgemental space to talk things through and hopefully some of our wonderful community members will pop by to offer you words of support, advice and kindness.

If you would like some support navigating these intense thoughts and feelings, we recommend that you get in touch with the Beyond Blue Support Service. They are available 24/7 by phone on 1300 22 4636 or on Webchat 3pm-12am AEST on our website: www.beyondblue.org.au/getsupport One of our friendly counsellors will be able to talk through these feelings with you and can offer support, advice and necessary referrals. 

We hope that you will find some comfort here on the forums. Please feel free to keep reaching out here on your thread whenever you feel up to it.

[BetweenThePoles]

Hello Sophie . Thanks for the reply. I regret that my post had to be edited because of details I wrote about self hurt. My apologies for not keeping to the forum rule properly. At the moment I feel trapped because I don’t know how to fix this problem or even where to start. I don’t want to lose my friend. If I try and talk to my friend now she will get angry again. Someone suggested I give up on her and that she’s a bad person because of how she has treats me. Accepting that is very hard. I don’t see it like that way. She is kind and caring and has shown this more than other friends. A councillor told me that it is not her speaking as such it is the bipolar and that I should not let it hurt me and stay and be understanding. He said she may not have much support. I don’t know who is right. The problem is me chances are. I am far from perfect and screwing things up is something I would not pretend I do not do.

[BetweenThePoles]

Being here is not all about me. I want to try and help other people if that is possible.

[therising]

Hi BetweenThePoles

You sound like a beautiful friend who is facing significant challenge and I truly feel for you so very much.

Would you say one of your greatest challenges in you relationship with your friend involves the ways you relate? It is going to be hard for you to relate to her if she isn't transparent in the way she's thinking or feeling. Maybe she doesn't express herself because she doesn't want to hurt you in some cases. For example, you could give her sage advice which is absolutely spot on, yet she may resent that advice because she knows it's right. She may even resent you for being so sage like but she's not necessarily going to tell you she resents you. Or she can be 'vibing high' in an 'up swing' and resent you for not being as excited as she is. Maybe it's a matter of 'If you won't play with me in life, I'm packing up my toys and going home'. She may resent your lack of energy. So, in other words, it's not necessarily you, perhaps it's really about her challenge, to face the reasons for her resentment.

It's hard not to take another person's resentment personally when they are dealing with their emotions. When someone says to us 'You're really not helping!' that can be painful to hear, especially if we're someone who really wants to make a positive difference in their life. It can be important to know that we're not helping though; it allows us to scrap a strategy that's not working, in favour of finding different strategies that can possibly work. A trial and error thing.

Transparency is in itself a great challenge for both parties. It requires clear and honest communication. It can prove painful for all involved yet working through the pain, working through the challenge offers the chance to become more conscious of how we tick and how others tick.

Don't lose sight that this is a significant challenge for you, helping someone with complex mental health issues. Identify yourself as 'Master in the making' when it comes to mastering what works and what doesn't. Mastery can often involve 2 steps forward and one step back. Graduating to 'master' is a gradual process. Some challenges in life we will graduate through slowly and some challenges instantly.

The truth is...you are an incredible person who is facing discovering what you can and can't tolerate or what you will and won't tolerate. Do you think figuring out what you won't tolerate from your friend will help make a difference to your own mental health challenges?

🙂

[BetweenThePoles]

Hello therising. Wow. Thanks so much for your very articulate, thoughtful and helpful reply. I am humbled. You have given me a lot to think about and provided a very fresh perspective on this for me. Regarding transparency: I believe she is fairly transparent generally, although not as much as I am. Her lack of transparency during conflict is difficult to interpret. It doesn’t feel like she refrains from it not to hurt me, because of the often illogical and untrue nature of what she says, combined with other language she uses, combined with her unwillingness to work towards resolving the conflict. I was told that the latter could be a coping mechanism. I wrote about this in some detail in another sub forum.. At other times yes she has refrained from being fully transparent to be considerate of my feelings.

its Interesting that you should mention sage advice. In all the time I’ve known her, we’ve only ever had two disagreements of a major nature and both were very recently, almost back to back. The most recent involved advice she offered me, as what I interpreted as concern for me. I considered and took her advice and thanked her for it. The following day she accused me of being a liar, since following her advice changed an aspect of my life by definition, and she saw that as me lying. The anger I was subjected to was not only disproportionate for any disagreement, but did not make sense in response to following someone’s advice. We have similar energy levels, we both suffer from insomnia and spend many hours talking. She’s very aware that I am a passive person who does not like conflict and it has been suggested she uses this to her advantage, or has at least to begun to anyway. I have poor boundaries and have never had to vocalise what I don’t tolerate, since she’s never behaved aggressively toward me until very recently. Thanks for your compliments. This is a challenge.

[BetweenThePoles]

It hurts me accused of lying in result to taking her advice when she regularly lies to me but ai have never mentioned it because of my unwillingness to provoke her, cause possible conflict, snd my passive nature. That aside, everyone lied for various reasons and there are more important things in life than worrying about it.

[therising]

Hi BetweenThePoles

Is it possible your friend is becoming more frustrated than ever, regarding the challenges she's facing? If so, this could explain why she was so upset you took her advice and made it work. Perhaps she envies your progress, while she's left facing little progress herself. Just a thought.

I've found, in many cases, anger is largely based on intolerance. You know what it's like sometimes - you can be tolerating and tolerating and tolerating something for so long and then, BAMM, suddenly you hit the brink and spill into intolerance (anger). No obvious progress can have us tolerating frustration, constant disappointment, incredible sadness and so on until we just can't tolerate it anymore. All of a sudden we can be experiencing anger, wondering how it came about. In some cases, anger can actually be a productive emotion. It can facilitate change because we don't want to be left feeling angry. I believe we have to be conscious to make anger work for us though. If we're not conscious, anger simply becomes destructive/self destructive in negative ways.

I really feel for you regarding the insomnia. I experienced insomnia some years back, throughout my first pregnancy. It felt so debilitating at times. The frustration of not being able to sleep was so incredibly agitating (not helping matters I suppose). I feel for anyone who experiences insomnia, especially long term. I count myself as lucky simply having it for less than 9 months.

Relationships definitely have a number of bumps in the road, as we journey together with those we care about. Trying to figure out why we're not relating so well at times is definitely a challenge. It can be interesting when the issue comes down to us actually not relating well to our self. This can impact those we travel with. Perhaps this is an issue your friend is facing.

🙂

[BetweenThePoles]

Good morning therising. Thank you again for helping. Your first paragraph made me realise something that is my fault. My friend has a dog she loves very much who hurt himself. The day before our most recent disagreement, she told me all about it and how stressed out she was about everything that was going on with him, the toll it was taking on her and so forth. I failed to recognise how extreme that was for her and how much it was affecting her. I read it, replied with sincerity and genuine concern, but missed the most important part — the impact it was having on her and how she was trying to put it across to me, This is not the first time I’ve overlooked the gravity of a situation in a text chat environment. That would for sure have been a major component in why she got so angry. She was clearly manic at the time, too, which would also contribute. Frustrated with the challenges she’s facing yes, envy towards my progress only a maybe, although telling me I’m an attention seeker might translate to envy/jealousy. I certainly wasn’t trying to seek attention, but she obviously saw it that way.

i have little knowledge of what went on in the two weeks prior, because we were having time out but she called it a sh*t-show. I think because I am so used to her describing things using such metaphors, I may have myself have become desensitised to the moments when she’s serious about the severity of a situation.

So I’ve come on here, wondering what is going on and why, and going bipolar this and bipolar that but missing the big picture 😞

I rarely experience anger, when my friend says I should. She almost encourages me to do it.

[therising]

Hi BetweenThePoles

Text chats are definitely going to be challenging, given that we rely on a variety of cues to get the overall picture of things (tone of voice, body language etc). You met the challenge of figuring out what the underlying issue was for the anger, regarding the dog. Of course, you're already a thoughtful person but I've discovered for myself that becoming more and more thoughtful gives us the ability to eventually naturally read a person. What I mean is things become instinctive. So you could say in practicing thoughtfulness, that practice leads to a heightened level of natural instinct. Without a thought you simply sense what could be wrong. Some may refer to this as being empathic (the ability to sense or feel someone's upset or joy). It is said that there can be a down side to this. If you are an empathic person, it is easy to take on everyone's negativity or anger, as opposed to observing it in them. In other words, people can bring you down or 'lower your vibe' if you're not careful. It's interesting how people describe energy when they've been in certain situations: You could have cut the air with a knife, that person really drains me, I feel like I'm suddenly on a high every time I'm around that particular person and so on. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you meet someone and straight away they raise you energy levels? You can't quite put your finger on what it is but when you're around them you just feel so incredibly happy or upbeat.

Might even be an interesting exercise to ask 'What am I sensing here (in this conversation)' as opposed to asking yourself 'What's wrong with her this time?' Kind of like getting a feel for her upset.

Wonder whether you don't experience anger a lot because you experience intolerance differently. There are a variety of ways to express intolerance: Venting through anger, venting through reasonable communication (giving reasons for no longer wanting to tolerate something that's intolerable) or venting through tears. What's intolerable can definitely be sad or even depressing at times. Regarding anger, I can feel myself (my body) getting worked up into 'hyper activity'. I tend to vent such activity through breathing before unleashing any fury. Sometimes I let myself unleash in order to be heard. There are some things I simply will not tolerate from anyone, such as ongoing arrogance or cruelty.

🙂