Here's me again. I have noticed lately that when I have a few good days in a row I do enjoy it, but there is a niggling thought at the back of my mind that well, you're OK, so you shouldn't be on the Disability Suppoprt Pension (Australia) and should be working (I had a long career, successful for many years, which I lost due to my illnesses). Of course these few days cycles of feeling OK have come after and in between terrible cycles of Bipolar Depression where I go STRAIGHT to the Dark Place as well as crippling Panic and Anxiety.

I am a person with an overblown sense of responsibility and my mental health clinicians are very good at keeping me in a reality check. My therapist always reminds me that when I am feeling well, will pass and there will be really hard days, and when I have relapses, they too shall pass and there will be better days again. I never believed that the Dark Days would pass, but they do seem increasingly to.

Amanda, I've very alone due to my illnesses and while that brings profound loneliness, it does also have advantages in that I don't have to negotiate the family dynamics that you are facing now. I very much sympathise with what you are going through - in terms of your illness and the interface with your husband in particular. The closest parallel for me is my former relationship with my career. I was holding off for years from the inevitable, that I was going to need to let go of work, at least for a period of time, until I have gotten some recovery. Well of course, events over took me. I was sacked from a Government job (which is VERY hard to achieve in Australia!! lol) because of my illnesses and how they impacted on my abilility to work in my professional career.

The reality is that we can only operate within a framework of the resources we have to give. And if our illnesses are affecting our capacities in a chronic way, there's no escaping the reality. If I could work, I would be working today. I haven't worked for three and a half years now and I tried to go back to work last year with a heap of help from an excellent mental health team and a local job agency, got a job in my field, was only in it for a few weeks, had a meltdown and had to resign.

I had a very bad slump into Bipolar Depression following that attempt to go back to work, but keep soldiering on.

Of course I can't give you specific advice, but in general I think you need support from a therapist or a psychdoc around this issue - it is obviously putting a lot of emotional strain on you - which for us cannot be sustained over a significant period without damage to ourselves. You may consider asking your husband to go see your mental health clincician with you so they can help educate him on your condition and the limitations and effects it has on people's lives, including yours.

This is a time for asseertiveness, as hard as that is with intimate family. You may or may not be able to practise that now without help - and that's cool - we're all on a continuum with learning and practosing assertivessness - thus the need to get help to be assertive. Please keep coming here and tell us how you go. All the best.