David,
I really agree with you. I am working toward a 10 after being a 1 and I can’t let these negative ppl bring me down. You seem to be a wonderful person and ignore that depressing letter. You have made a lot of ppls life better and are a hard worker to make ppl understand what is going on in their
I finally had to understand what

Yeah! Even if you know the negative is not about you; it still infects you. I have the crease between my eyes to prove it. Just from one year of full time caring for my husband after a head and body injuries from a car accident. His migraines were so severe, no medication could relieve them. I could not find a support group that had anything positive to say. They were all venting still about how horrible their brain injured spouse was/is acting. I couldn’t find anyone that had cared for a brain injured spouse that hadn’t gotten a divorce. Because I didn’t want to pass this negativeness and complaining to someone else (not that I had anyone to talk to), I absorbed it. It’s as if…when you have no one to “share” it with that will validate (tell you it’s real what you’re feeling and thinking); you can’t help but let it affect you. I know no one wants to hear the negative and it does bring you down. But if you are listening to someones problems to allow them to voice and progress; aren’t you really being a positive. If your positive doesn’t bring up the negative around you; what will? I still needed someone to listen to my negative experience to tell me what I felt was justified and that someone cared. That’s just a fact.

Think about it this way. If she brought you down to a four, you probably brought her up to a four as well.

I think that you are wonderful Dave and I am sure that there are people that are quite negative and you are correct that can and will bring you down if you let them. Stick with the positive people.

And bi polar people do have a tendency to go on and on.
Frankly I know, I am one and so is my daughter.

But we love you and hope you stay strong.

Wow! I was really surprised at the negativity you showed in your response. Perhaps you were having a bad day. I live with two 2’s who are bipolar and in a state of depression and very negative. I can’t send them away and only surround myself with 10’s. However I can “be there” for them by just listening to them, making sure they are taking their medication and seeing their therapists. I don’t have to solve all their problems, but be their friend. I do choose to have as many other 10’s in my life as I can. Perhaps this lady just needed someone to listen. We all need that from time to time. I suggest you try not to internalize their problems. By the way, I want to thank you for the wonderful help you provide us supporters. You are the best.

I agree with David. Negative people can pull us down. It is not our responsibility to pull them up. Our first responsibility is to look after ourselves what flows from that allows us to care for others.

Dear David,
you are 100 per cent correct. Being around negative people pulls you down. I get so disappointed when I am around negative people. It is so hard to remain up, it is exhausting at times to remain up. My husband is negative 99.9 per cent of the time. I have learned to talk to myself even if it is out loud to counter his negatives. I also have my mom with me and she is like a minus ten …she is so negative. Too much energy on negative. I am striving for positive and your emails do help.

Dear David, I just wrote a post and it disappeared as I hit the submit comment button. I had poured my heart into it and it’s gone so I am a little closer to a 2 right this minute. For the most part I am a negative person but I also have a positive side. I am positive that there is a lot to be negative about! I am very sick physically besides being bipolar. I am very lonely as I lay in my hospital bed most days and I delight in talking to others who feel hopeless because I feel other peoples pain in my heart and truly can empathize with them. I share my pain and listen to theirs. I try to encourage them by helping them to appreciate the little things I call “miracles” each day. My dogs “sense” when I need a nose nudge or a good lick on the hand. I have the internet-thank God! I have cable TV so I always have company. I can look out of the window and watch rabbits and squirrels play. I have good memories of my parents and I was with them when they left this life and I was able to kiss them good-bye. I have a son that survived having half of his brain removed and a daughter that has given me 3 beautiful granddaughters. My daughter is also very sick but she doesn’t give up, she fights every day and I am thankful for that. We all have problems and we can help each other appreciate the good things we have left. I share my life with a wonderful man who treats me really good. He has heart failure and rods in his spine. We are both disabled and whenone of us gets down, we pick the other up. I have a wonderful friend 1000 miles away who listens to me complain and cry when I think I cannot take the pain-physical and mental anymore and she never gives up on me. She is also a miracle in my life. I have an adopted grandma I send cards to all the time because she too is lonely and needs my love like I need hers. I have a stepdaughter and grandchild that I text daily and am able to pep her up, too. She lost a baby last September to SIDS. Taylor was 5 months old when she went to sleep and did not wake back up. I was there to hug my stepdaughter as we laid little Taylor to rest. Now we have Maddie and she was on her way before we knew it and brings light back to her Moms eyes. We need each other because we can share the 1-10% every day because each day is different for us all and a day can start at 1 and end at 10 or start at 10 and end at 1. So if we can just make it with each others help no matter what ‘cos we are all gonna be negative sometimes and positive sometimes. We need to meet at least halfway somehow every day. I tend to go on and on, so I know you probably won’t print all of this, but you do a good job and I thank you for your encouragement to keep going when the going gets tough and to be thankful for the gifts I have left in my life. At least I do still have a life and that too is a miracle for me. Thanks for letting me share, Debbie

Yup – brought this 10/2 equation up to my husband a few years ago and he was waaayyy too manic and negative to even understand it anyway. I say this because when he is manic he is even more negative than ever. On a good day he rains on anyone else’s parade, on a bad day there will be no parade b/c you will be in your bomb shelter protecting yourself from his nasty mooods. I tried explaining the health benefits of looking at life positively for years to him and it all fell on deaf years. Now he lives in a terrible situation and contact has ceased until he is willing to take a treatment program seriously that will help him with empathy, “the power of positive thinking” and general boundaries about how destructive moods and behavior affects other people around you (he likes affecting other people – example: we are on a wish trip for my son, we are eating in the special restaurant to meet the characters. He has us all in tears and the day is ruined because he has been negative and nasty to each of us and all of us. We lose our appetites and the pictures with the characters don’t show big happy emotionally healthy smiles on the kids. They have had their fun ruined one more time. When I reminded him that we were there to make good memories nad enjoy our time together as a family, more negative energy flowed out of his mouth. After that, we no longer took him along anywhere we went if we could avoid it or him or his negative moods, it was healthier for all of us. The “switch” is the part I don’t understand. Sitting watching a baseball game, everyone is fine and happy and all of the sudden it’s like a cyclone has hit. He gets in a nasty mood, starts abusing, becomes severely negative toward us, the tv, the players, anything and everything. It turns into us being scared of his anger each time. And I am always left to wonder, hnow in the world does that “switch” happen? Mood changes that happen that fast and then the explosions. Not fun, not healthy and not ok. He calls his manic states “passion”, we call them abuse. He can bring everyone down in a room within minutes of entering the room = he is a one, we are tens always trying to lean into the light of positive thinking, and we get sucked nad pulled down to his one and we hate it. It is exhausting and not healthy. They talk alot about this type of thing in co-dependent books.

This is a tricky one for me, and is not as simple an issue as it first appears. I have had bipolar for about 16 years so i have had my fair share of depression. I know what it’s like to be and feel like the negative one, and maybe that’s why sometimes I find it so hard to hear it from anyone else…

also, my mum, who is not bipolar, but does get depressed, can be incredibly negative. It’s a difficult balancing act, staying well, and positive myself in the face of her negativity. I try not to buy into or indulge her negativity, and have learned not to offer positive suggestions/solutions either as these are often thrown back in my face and not appreciated, even taken as not really caring. It does seem to be a lose, lose situation sometimes, where I become the baddie. Also, she reminds me of all the times she’s supported me when I was unwell, argghh.

It’s hard, the more i think about it, to strike a balance between supportive listening, and staying well myself. If I’m honest I think some people just are more negative than others, and where possible I try to avoid them for my own well being. Thanks to everyone else who has shared on this.