I was reading a post in the forum about family and responded to that post but thought I would post the information here as well. This user was asking if they should disown their family. I said no for now not knowing how long the issues had been going on, but said if it was causing you to have mental health issues it might be necessary. I've sure thought about disowning mine. Granted they beat me to the punch at the start and my siblings pretty much disowned me but we do things now on a very limited basis.

Here's my story. I had a bad manic attack and my ex kicked me out of the house and got sole custody of our child while I got supervised visits. I was angry with one of my siblings during the attack and supposedly said some hurtful things and sent some nasty emails which I don't recall. Of course she kept them according to one of my parents and in my opinion still hasn't forgiven me for these actions. She is very good friends with my ex and takes my ex on vacations as she is quite wealthy. Right after I had my attack she said she didn't trust me and of course my ex had custody so she had an excuse to take my ex and not me on the vacations. The start of the hurtful vacations were ones that were joint trips with my siblings, their kids, my ex and our child. One is actually coming up soon so I'm feeling pretty down about things.

It's really interesting how we get judged on actions we do when we are having a manic attack and people don't take into consideration all the of the good things we did do when we weren't in the throes of our illness.

It is all very ironic that one of our parents was bipolar and they still don't really have compassion for me. One of our parents wasn't super involved in our lives but they worked hard and were successful in their career and supported the family financially. Yes, my parents did stay together which I understand in my research only about 10% of couples with a bipolar person stay married.

So, I have a very superficial relationship with my siblings. I rarely if ever share if I'm struggling with something and just plain share extremely limited information with them as they are good friends with my ex and I'm worried and concerned that anything I say will go directly back to my ex. I just frankly don't trust them! One of my parents pointed out that they will not be there forever and you need to try your best to keep the relationship going so if something does happen they will hopefully be there to support you when I'm gone. I really don't know if they will be there or not for me, but it's not completely effecting my mental health so I'm going to stick it out. I've been dealing with this stuff for about 4 years.

Any thoughts, feedback, etc. would be great! I'm also trying to post different facets of my story so I can get approved for chat.