Hi,

How’s it going?

Hope you are doing well today. Over the
last couple of days, we had one of the largest
influxes of subscribers ever. Almost 4000 new
people in just two days or so.

Today I wanted to send out a message about
our bipolar blog and what happen.

Just in case you don’t know, I have a blog.

The original mission of the blog was:

“With this blog, I want to keep all of you
updated on important information and share
with you some of my own thoughts about supporting
someone who has bipolar disorder. This blog, and
all the opinions expressed herein, are not
intended to replace the assessment, advice or
treatment of a physician or therapist, and are
not professional advice. If you are looking for
prose written by an English teacher with perfect
grammar, this will not be for you.”

That’s what I wrote about 2 years ago when I first
started the blog.

In the last year, the blog has been focused on
supporting an adult with bipolar disorder, a child/teen
and for those with bipolar disorder.

For about a year, it was doing great. Readership
was really high. People were making comments
regularly.

But then starting towards the end of April 2008
and early May, I noticed something.

There were a FEW hostile people. A few people with
bipolar disorder who were really ill and totally
unstable.

These people were doing the following:

threatening me
attacking me
saying that I stole money from them. For example
one person said I stole her grocery money. Another
person said I broke into their house. Another person
said I stole their tools they just bought from
Lowes.

I spent several days tracking these people down.
I found in ALL cases of where I could actually
talk to someone, the person was OFF their medication.

Then I started getting death threats to my cell
phone and home phone.

People were threatening me to take down all
my sites, to promote “natural remedies” for
bipolar disorder. To stop being the “hand” of
drug companies. To stop attacking those with
bipolar disorder.

99% of this made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL.
None.

It really started to get annoying
and old quickly.

Then I had people who read my blog for a long
time and were friends of mine. Nice people who
were stable who have my phone number. MANY called
saying the blog was getting totally out of control
that bipolar disorder took over and it was insanity.

These people urged me to do something. I then
went to the people who work for me that have
bipolar disorder and asked what they thought I should
do.

The people who work for me said I should keep the blog
up but not allow comments any more until a better system
was created to stop the few people who were posting
crazy things.

So I did that. I had Andrea who works for me stop
all comments on the blog and that was that.

FREE Audio Recording.

You can hear more about this by visiting and listening
to the following podcast.

http://bipolarcentral.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=339971
My goal of the blog was to have a place for f.ree expression.
I didn’t want to moderate the blog because it kind of
limited f.ree speech in my mind.

But someone who has bipolar disorder, actually 10 disorders
that works for me (she is a tremendous asset), set me
straight. She said essentially, “Dave, I admire your
let’s have freedom of speech approach but it doesn’t
make any sense at all. You can’t go into a crowded
building and yell fire. There are limitations to
f.ree speech. You have to setup a better system
and set rules otherwise the worst of bipolar disorder
will run your blog and it will be like the support
groups we all hate. The ones were the sickest most
ill people take over and drive all the good people
away.”

After hearing her, I knew she was right. So
then I worked with a number of people to develop
a new system.

Basically the blog will be moderated. What this
means is that there will be people who have to
approve messages BEFORE they are posted. This
is the only way to do it.

BUT, the only messages that will be blocked will
be:

-death threats to anyone not just me (we had people
threatening to fight one another over issues related
to bipolar disorder)

-hate speech. For example someone saying all people
with mental illnesses would be better off dead (
this was posted before by some unknown person
and removed but it’s a TERRIBLE
thing to say).

-flat out lies that don’t make sense. For example
saying I flew to a different country and broke into
someone’s house and stole there DVD player.

That’s it. You can disagree with me. You attack
me and my beliefs. You can get away with a lot.
But none of the above.

I hope this makes sense to you? Some will be
mad and want it to have no moderation. I don’t
think having these standards are a problem. These
are minimum standards.

You’ll see what I do allow and I am sure you will
be happy.

The important lesson that I wanted to also mention
to you is:

YOU CAN LET A BIPOLAR EPISODE CONTROL EVERYTHING

Read that again.

Bipolar disorder is a sneaky thing. I actually
think of it as a person. It’s goal is to rise up
and create destruction. It works really hard
to do this.

If you are a bipolar supporter, you can never ever
let a bipolar disorder episode take over.

In my courses/systems below:

SUPPORTING AN ADULT WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER?
Visit:
http://www.bipolarsupporter.com/report11

SUPPORTING A CHILD/TEEN WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER?
Visit:
http://www.bipolarparenting.com

HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER?
Visit:
http://www.survivebipolar.net

I talk about how important it is to make
sure this doesn’t happen.

There are all kinds of systems to setup. There’s
lots to do.

If you have bipolar disorder, you MUST work
with a supporter and setup a system that
is in place in case you go into a bipolar
episode. A system that makes sure you
are protected.

When I was speaking to some of the people
that threatened me or said that I broke
into their house, two didn’t even remember
saying anything.

EVERYONE had no friends. No family. No money.
They had lost it all. EVERYONE moved away
from them.

When you think of this blog and what happen,
remember these people.

1. You can’t let a bipolar episode control
the show so to speak.

2. If you have bipolar disorder, stay on
your medication otherwise you will most likely
do and say something really bad. NOTE-For some
of these people if I wanted I could press charges
and get them into a whole lot of trouble with
the law. It’s not legal to make death threats
against someone. Everyone I contacted agreed
to go to the hospital. Note, you can read about
that in my past blog posts where I talk about
how I confronted these people and what they said
exactly and what they agreed to (you can see
old blog posts below).

3. You have to take action. When there is a
problem with bipolar disorder, you MUST
take action right away. You can’t wait weeks,
or months. Action is required right away.
In my case, I let the blog problems which
you could say was the result of almost
a mass mini bipolar episode go on too long.
Shame on me. BUT after a short period of
time I took action to deal with the problem.
I didn’t let it get totally out of control.

4. You have to look back at what happen,
discover why it happen and make a system to
prevent it from happening again. People never
really do this with bipolar disorder. They
never look back. My dad HATED (understatement),
looking back at my mom’s past episodes. He said,
“I don’t live in the past.” That’s not smart thinking.
You look at the past to make a better future.
Today my dad totally agrees. It was all the past
research that I did to figure out patterns with
my mom to predict the future and make better
systems and plans.

Honestly, there’s a lot to learn with bipolar
disorder. Most of it’s in my systems and courses.
You can learn it on your own but it takes a long
time. Other wise you can learn it from me and others.
It’s up to you. I just urge you to learn it either
way no matter how you do.

Hey, I just looked at the clock and I have to
run to the gym.

I think tomorrow is the day that we will be
able to start posting comments again. Andrea
is getting it all ready.

Excited?

Catch you tomorrow. Hope you aren’t mad
at me about the new rules and regulations.
Hey, guess what? If you are, with the new
system you can write about it and have it
posted and that’s okay. Even if it’s
negative about me. That’s okay to post.
Just no violations of the points I listed
above.

Okay, seriously I have to go. Catch you tomorrow.

Your Friend,

Dave

===>> Great Resources For You <=== Get Your Own Subscription To This Newsletter
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Get More Help On Bipolar Disorder
Don’t forget to take a look through the
different programs I’ve put together… each
one is designed to help you with a different
area of bipolar disorder whether you have it or
you are supporting someone with it.
You can see them all and get the details by visiting:
http://www.bipolarcentral.com/catalog.asp

View Past Daily Bipolar Emails For F.REE
Check out my F.ree blog with copies of emails
that I have sent in the past and lots of great
information for you:
http://www.bipolarcentral.com/supporterblog/

Get Audio Information On Bipolar Disorder For F.REE
Check out my F.ree podcast. Hear me give
mini seminars designed to teach you information
you can’t learn anywhere else.
http://bipolarcentral.libsyn.com