Hi, how’s it going? Hope you are doing well.

I’m not doing so well after what I just saw. I am watching the news, and I just saw a story that made me sick. There was a candle lit in an apartment building, and several children in the apartment. The parents stepped out for a moment, and during that time the candle caught the entire apartment on fire. Without going into details the results were tragic. And it only took one small candle for it to all light up in flames.

Sometimes that’s the way it is with bipolar disorder, too. Sometimes it only takes one little thing to make everything go wrong. One little candle, so to speak. And the results can sometimes be tragic.

There was one lady, lets call her Susan, who got her first paycheck after starting a new job. This was significant because this was the first time she had been able to work since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But the concept of having money threw her into a manic episode. She spent all of her money on things she didn’t need.

She got so focused on her grand plans to go back to school and on studying for it that she forgot to go to work one day and got fired. She lost her apartment, and had no one to turn to for a place to live. She got frustrated and went off of her medications because she believed that they weren’t working since she was in an episode.

After going off of her medications, she became chronically unstable, and her disorder proceeded to ruin her entire life. All because she hadn’t braced herself for what it would be like to get that first paycheck.

If she had predicted that there would be problems, then she could have had a supporter help her manage the money. Her supporters could have checked up on her directly following that to make sure that she was still following her treatment plan and going to work. She could have mentally braced herself for the fact that the money she was getting needed to go for specific things and she could only have, say, five dollars for spending money.

All of this could have been avoided if she and her supporters had realized that this small thing would make a big difference.

I heard a story once, almost a fairy tale. “For want of a nail the horseshoe was lost. For want of a horseshoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the battle was lost. For losing the battle, the war was lost. For losing the war, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

It’s amazing how something so small can affect something so big, isn’t it?

So when you are helping to make your loved one’s recovery plan, one thing you need to take into consideration is how the little things will affect your loved one. Ask yourself, if they make this accomplishment, how might it affect them? If your answer is that it could affect them in a bad way, or that you are not sure, then you need to do what you can to take precautions just in case. After all, you wouldn’t want that little thing to set off a series of bad things.

What are your thoughts on this?

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave