My cousin and I just recently got in touch again; we haven't talked since grade school and we found out that we have a lot in common (although her disability is physical) so we have been talking more...and venting a lot LOL! She doesn't really understand what bipolar is though, so I did find a few websites to send to her that she could look at, but I couldn't find any that had more than just the "basics", i.e. what the symptoms of depression are, what the symptoms of mania and hypomania are, the fact that we swing between those moods, and that it is a chemical imbalance. I found one that talked about the irritability and anxiety in addition to the other things.

But it really ticked me off that I could not find any that talked about the other things, like how any kind of stress affects us negatively, how we can still be triggered into episodes even with medication, how we actually feel when we are depressed or manic or hypomanic (the symptoms don't really explain what we actually go through), how something as simple as a too much sunlight or too little sunlight can affect our moods, etc. I know there are books available, but I haven't read any of them and I don't want to buy something brand new if I don't know if it will actually help people understand, plus I don't expect anyone to read a whole book just to understand what the illness is!

So I was thinking...I keep a blog (or try to, I don't write in it as much as I would like to) and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to respond here and give some feedback on how bipolar affects you personally, and I could add a kind of bipolar info post in my blog (I would start by saying "In this post, I have asked people who have bipolar to explain how their illness affects them personally. I have not included any names or any personal information about these people.). When I get it posted, I could put the link to it here, and then if anyone wants to direct someone to that post they would be able to, and maybe we can get more info out there for people who do want to know more than the basics. It's just an idea, I thought it might be helpful, but if you don't want to that's okay too.

Thanks!