Hi,

You know, there are a lot of people in therapy today for stuffing their feelings. Do you know what stuffing your feelings is? It’s when you’re afraid or unwilling to share or to show your feelings, so you keep them to yourself, shoving them down inside yourself, keeping them hidden, unshared.

This can be dangerous. If you stuff your feelings, they can sit there and fester and eventually boil up to the surface and come out in all kinds of negative ways. For example, this is one of the places that rage comes from. Violence comes from keeping things in for too long a time until they just explode from inside you too.

The point is that feelings have to be shared. If you just stuff them, you can make yourself sick as well. Holding things in for too long without expression can make stress build up inside you and you can develop ulcers, migraine headaches, insomnia, and other physical ailments.

Again, you need to share your feelings. But in order to share them, you need to know: How do you really feel?

Too many bipolar supporters get used to putting on a certain “face” before their loved one, trying to show that they’re strong, that they can take it, that they’re being supportive and understanding, that they never get angry or resentful. When the opposite could be their true feelings.

It’s normal for a bipolar supporter to get angry. You can get angry at the bipolar disorder for

making your loved one act the way that they do, or for making your life the way that it is. You might resent your loved one for staying in bed all day sleeping while you have to go off to work to support both of you. You could get angry that in their last bipolar episode, they spent all your financial savings, and now you have to start saving all over again.

You might feel envious that your other friends do not have the same problems that you have, all because your loved one has bipolar disorder. Maybe you feel lonely because even though your loved one is in the house with you, they are no longer the companion they were before they began suffering the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Perhaps you even feel shame and guilt for feeling these feelings. Then let me tell you what someone once told me: “Feelings are neither right nor wrong – They just ARE.”

What you are feeling is normal for a supporter of a loved one with bipolar disorder. Other supporters have shared the very same feelings with me. It’s normal to feel angry and resentful

at your loved one. It’s what you do with those feelings that counts.

Try to talk with them and share how you feel. Don’t be surprised if they already know! Then try to work out how you can work around your feelings so you don’t feel so bad. It’s important that your loved one knows how you feel, especially as it relates to them and their bipolar disorder. Then they might open up and share some of their own feelings.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave