Hello spencermm,
I think I know that boat you're in.

We also have an adult child with bipolar disorder and are strugging with finding the best means of addressing the issues that come up in a manner that respects everyone and also distributes responsibility appropriately. In our case, our child is still living at home with us. They have exerienced more than six manic episodes in less than two years but have only recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and thus, have only recently begun using medications that might help them find stability.

1. Would like to better know how we can help our daughter.

The "standard" advice is to educate yourself on what bipolar disorder is, what forms of treatment are available that can help the individual with the diagnosis manage it, and how to create a supportive relationship with professional caregivers. If you're like me, you probably have a working grasp of the basics and are getting into the nitty-gritty mechanics of living with the diagnosis on a daily basis. For example, a diagnostic definition might inform you that someone in a manic episode lacks impulse control and medications may take time to produce stability but how are you to deal with the fall-out of the episode? Who is responsible for what? Who cleans up the mess? Are your own standards and expectations too high or not high enough?

2. Help in knowing how to set healthy boundaries. She is an adult and not living with us(but lives close by), but her issues still become our issues. We are at our wits end and feel our own mental health is dwindling quickly.

What we're finding is that personal boundaries become blurred. There may be periods of time when a caregiver needs to assume control but resentments can build on both sides; the individual with the diagnosis resents that they have lost control or that others are imposing as much (they may also feel guilt and recrimination at not being able to retain control over their own lives) and the support people around them find themselves feeling overwhelmed at trying to manage not only their own life, but someone else's. The non-technical term for this is a cluster-*****. ha ha. The essential problem is that everyone has lost their sense of personal boundaries, and hence, their sense of personal responsibility.

I recently posed a question to the group here asking for some insights in regard to manic behavior and impulse control. That might be one place for you to start as there was some good feedback from others and I also found a number of helpful articles that I linked in that thread: Mania and Impulse Control. I would especially recommend the article titled The Responsibility Pie but all of them were quite good.

Something else we've begun looking at is our communication patterns, particularly when it comes to conflict resolution. My own style is to wade into the mess as a means of looking for swift resolution but I often feel alone in that space. My husband's pattern is to withdraw as a means of dealing with his own feelings of betrayal, anger, despair and out of a desire to not inflame the situation by bringing those personal responses into it. Our child's pattern is to retreat into a shell of defensiveness and to run away if they feel overwhelmed. As you might imagine, nothing was resolved as long as one person was running away, another one was retreating to the periphery and one was floundering in the middle feeling as if they were the only one who was willing to take on responsibility. We're not communicating well and this is contributing to building resentment and tension in the household.

In light of the recent crisis, we decided we're going to commit to a weekly meeting so we can discuss issues that have come up and work toward their ongoing resolution. It also means that we'll (hopefully) all be better informed of what is happening. For example, I sometimes forget to mention some key detail to my husband and he'll occasionally have conversations with our child wherein they'll make an agreement I'm not aware of.

This morning I'm searching the net for good articles on conflict resolution because it seems to me that we need to become aware of how we're dealing with conflict and refine our attempts to resolve it. There may be better articles out there but here's one that seems to lay down a basic structure:The Top 10 Tips on Managing Conflict, Emotional Tension and Anger

Meantime, something I've long encouraged others to do is to build a support team for themselves. I define support teams as people we identify as helpful: Family and Friends (pets too, if you consider them to be part of the family); Professionals; Peers, and; Mentors. Our own child doesn't yet have their entire team fleshed out -- in particular, they're lacking peers and mentors. But so am I. That's something I need to address for myself.

~ Namaste