Hi,

Do you remember back in school? Who was your most favorite teacher? Why? Who was your least favorite teacher? Why? I bet I know the answers! I bet they’re the same as mine: I bet your most favorite teacher was the one who made the material the most interesting…And your least favorite teacher was the one who just lectured the material and made the class so boring you just wanted to scream and run out of the classroom!

I’ll even go you a step further…I bet the times that your parents were the most understanding to you were the times you felt they listened to you the best…Instead of just lecturing you. Am I right? The point is that lecturing doesn’t work. If you think of your own experiences, you can back me up on that.

Many times I have talked about the different methods that work and that DON’T work when you’re dealing with a loved one with bipolar disorder, and just lecturing your loved one is one of the methods that definitely does NOT work. I mean, put yourself in your loved one’s shoes.

You wouldn’t want to be just lectured all the time, would you? You would start to resent the other person, the one who was lecturing you. Just like you resented that boring teacher back in

school who just lectured all the time and didn’t make the class interesting.

You see…There’s an old saying that: “You can lead a horse to water…but you can’t make him drink.” But someone added an adage to that saying: “But you can add salt to his diet so that he gets thirsty and wants to drink that water.” Interesting, huh? In other words, when applied to bipolar disorder, you can look at it this way: You can’t MAKE your loved one do anything. And certainly lecturing them won’t help anything. But you can make them WANT to do things for

themselves. You can provide incentives, for example.

Like, say they’ve been depressed. And they’ve been laying around in bed or on the couch for awhile. And you haven’t been able to get them to do anything productive (which is at least part of the reason why they’re depressed to begin with). You can give them a To-Do List, and tell them that after they’re finished doing what’s on the list, the two of you can go out to eat at a restaurant of their choice. Or, if that doesn’t fit into your budget…You can offer to cook them their favorite meal. But you understand that if you just gave them the list and told them to do the things on it…They would probably be resentful of it and not do it (perhaps even out of rebellion)…Because nobody likes being told what to do. Just like nobody likes being lectured.

But everybody likes doing things for incentives, or rewards.

Here’s another example: There was a couple where the husband had bipolar disorder. And he had had a problem with excessive spending before because of it, and a general problem with managing money. So his wife was basically managing the money. So she started off with giving him an “allowance” of only $10 per week…But as he got better with his money management…

She started giving him $20 per week. Do you see how incentives and rewards are better than

just lecturing?

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave