men have to learn from their mistakes just like us women do its funny tho you can tell a man not to do something and he will keep doing it till he has to pay the consiquence for messing it up then and only then he might learn!! like my husband for instance he downloads music from the net and i have told him manny times not to get them if they ask for a file extension because they may contain a virus and he did it anyway and wonders why he keeps getting a pop up that says it must remove its funny how men have to mess things up so they can learn from what they did wrong and still they do it again and again

By the way what does that meen? My today was horrible yesterday it dos,nt make sense can someone explain am a bit thik

linda x

ye KAMIE the truth is some men dont like being told by a woman, am not say all men, a dont want men to think am being
horrible and a dont want to start a mass arrgument
Linda x

Interesting how you refer at the start to having the “craziest friends”.

Later you talk about the stigma society has against mental illness thinking that everyone with a mental illness is “crazy”.

If someone who is supposed to be so in tune with those with mental illness obviously can use the word “crazy” in just a joking way. How can those that he is teaching tolerance note help but being confused.

Your email today really hit home. Actually I had a crying spell before I could write this. I met a friend through a fibromylagia support group and she added me to yahoo messenger and kept begging me to be her friend. So I replied back and I was honest with her and told her I had bi-polar and was severly depressed and had been hospitalized with it and that I wasn’t going to write much more until I heard back from her to see if she still wanted to be my friend after finding this out about me. Well you guessed it, I got silence, no letter no nothing, I guess she thought she could catch it thru the computer or something. And I have hardly any friends. I can’t leave my house, only for doctors appointments, my pdoc doesn’t have my meds right yet, I have racked up $40,000 in credit card debt when I was manic,(no longer have credit cards), I’ve learned how to spend wisely. I am being sued by some companies, but I can’t go to court because I can’t drive or leave the safety of my house. I want to thank you for your daily emails, they keep me going, they make sense, and at times cheer me up. Please don’t stop what you’re doing! Thank you

Good morning David,

A man thing? well, what I’ve learned thus far that a “man thing” has a lot to do with testosterone! 😉

But come on David, can you say you’ve NEVER said about a women that “Oh it’s her time” or “women are just emotional”??? It’s a man thing is so true in so many ways.

On a serious note though, I agree about the stigma of “mental illness”…ooooh! ahhhhh! Well, you my dear friend (whom I’ve yet to meet in person) are breaking that mold day after day by your wonderful emails, books and diligent dedication.

I believe everything happens for a reason and I believe your moms suffering, your families trials were for the purpose of all the help you are giving others. I mean look how many people have the disorder, how many years this disorder has been around, and until now, nobody except David and a wonderful team of people have cared enough to “bother” themselves to say “HEY, IT’S NOT A ‘CRAZY’ PERSON THING”. “HEY, LIFE IS NOT OVER AND VERY MUCH WORTH LIVING AND MANAGABLE”.

In conclusion though, I really do think there are “man things”. 🙂 Have a wonderful day to All the team. Shauna

Hi Dave

i think a man thing is equivalent to a “man look”…you know when you might have to move that jar of jam to find the thing you want, ‘cos it’s not right in front..so obviously it’s not there!!! This is a very common “man thing” 🙂 Mind you we women are not exempt from the corresponding label…oh, it’s a “girl” thing, or it’s a “blonde moment”. The labels fly around every where! I guess what we need to do is treat them with the lightheartedness they deserve and remember to move that jar of jam!!!

But seriously, thank you for helping me understand my daughter in law to be a little more, you are taking away the fears, misconceptions and misunderstandings of her disease and giving me tools with which I can help her.

Thank you

Janet Southern

Hi David and all the staff! I wasn’t going to even touch the “man thing” thing, but I can’t resist. I call it a “guy thing”, but it’s just the same. I would have to say that is it just about every action that produces an unwelcome outcome that wasn’t thought about ahead of time or noticed during or after it happened. Like Linda said about going from A to B without even noticing they’d trampled the begonias! Or walking through the house with shoes on leaving a trail of mud and then not noticing it until they get a mop handed to them! Or, this is my favorite and it happened last summer… mowing down a whole flower bed of perennials thinking he was helping me weed!! (He will never mow anything from now on besides grass, I hope!) haha We laugh it off and call it a guy thing cause we don’t want to go to jail for what we really want to do to them! LOL
You are right though about generalizing but I’ve noticed that the more I talk to my friends about my son’s bipolar, the more open they seem to be about the disorder and the more at ease they are in discussing it. We need to talk about it and educate people. I’m doing my part and I hope you are all doing yours.
Take care…

OK, I’ll bite. A man thing. That which is obvious or common sense, at least to women, but is apparently not to men. Behaviour that runs the gamut from annoying to hysterical, you learn to shrug it off.

I have lived my entire life outnumbered 3:1 by men. Common sense is not always so obviously sensible to them.

Same way with unthinking friends and their stimatizing comments “she was definately bipolar” or why would she have done x,y,z? As if people don’t just do unexpected things without being mentally ill. Whenever someone uses bipolar as an adjective I am tempted to tell them off, but resist blowing my own cover over their lack of sensitivity. I don’t believe bipolar is a good excuse for bad behaviour.

A man thing is also a woman thing. We get obsessed with an idea and carry things too far. We get caught up in an idea and won’t let it go. We think we have the answer. It’s an everybody thing. We just want to get it done, get it out of the way, and be through with it….whatever “it” is. Sometimes, “it” costs us more.

For mental illness, I think we generalize “it” as you say. Everyone with a mental illness is put into a large pot and deemed crazy. We rush to judgements about “those people”, cannot understand why “those people” can’t be more like everyone else. We tend to have no core sympathy even for ourselves.

We lose as we fail to treat others as we wish to be treated. We lose when we fail to try to understand.
We lose.

Thanks for always trying, reaching out to all of us, and being there. You are greatly needed and very much appreciated. “IT” WILL GO ON AND SO WILL “WE”. Talk to you on the future page.

I know what ” a man thing is.” it is the behavioural pattern which was passed down to us from generations before we got here. I understand because I have 5 brothers and I am in the middle of them. I was used by them only as a fill-in. So ladies, it is a ” man thing.”
denise 60

OK I admit I couldn’t make it through all the posts. It’s an ADHD thing.

I know I do some “woman things”, so why can’t guys do a “man thing”. Funny how it’s OK for me and my daughter to have our ADHD moments, my very blond daughter to have her “blonde” moments, my husband and son do “Man” things and our 4 year old can have her “4 year old” moments, but heaven forbid our bi-polar daughter have a “bi-polar” moment.

That in reality comes from the fact that her bi-polar moments are so destructive. Whether she’s destroying relationships, toys, soiling herself or her bed or even threatening herself or others, her bi-polar moments can’t be tolerated and require special attention and care. We are still trying to find the right combination of meds and therapy for her.

In addition, her only bi-polar role model is her bio-logical “mom” that is the epitome of all things bad bi-polar, and is probably borderline as well.

The sad thing is, people with untreated bi-polar disorder are the rotten apples in the barrel. They build the stigma, then people who have been burned by untreated bi-polar disorder tend to keep their distances to protect themselves. They tell a friend, the friend tells a friend, it goes on.

It’s a big stigma to overcome.

Then you have big stars like Robin Williams and Jim Carry who’s bizarre behavior and creative genius make people think bi-polar people have to be eccentric.

Yep, it’s OK to have a man thing, a woman thing or even an ADHD thing, they’re all big jokes. You’ll never hear somebody joke about it being a bi-polar thing,… because that can be such a dangerouse proposition for all involved.

Dave keep up the good work getting the work out how important it is for people who are bi-polar to get help. That’s the only thing that will get rid of the stigma.

Psychologists reinforce this thinking when someone who has a bipolar diagnosis does something horrible like verbally assaulting or getting violent repeatedly, and a psychologist tells the family “oh it’s a bipolar thing”. Or “it’s the illness, he’s very sick.” So are we left with, the behavior and thinking is not part of the disorder or it is?