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I think it can be as difficult for others to understand our bipolar disorder as it can be for us to understand illnesses and disorders that others struggle with. If you don't have diabetes, it's very difficult to 'get' what those who do go through. If you don't suffer from chronic pain, it's very difficult to understand what they are going through. If you don't have cancer... etc.
I don't think it's reasonable, even, to expect others to get it, much less blame them for this. I think this poses the danger of putting us in a very 'other' and/or victim roll, and this isn't helpful.
I think you can expect loved ones to *try* to understand, to be empathetic, perhaps, but to put themselves in our shoes? At the end of the day, how good are any of us at putting ourselves in the shoes of others who suffer so terribly with things we are not familiar with?
I work in healthcare, in a hospital, where I witness every kind of suffering imaginable: physical, psychological, psychiatric. It gives me perspective. Do I have it 'worse' than x, y person? It's a pointless question. And I can empathize, to a point, with my patients, but it doesn't mean I know what it's like to walk in their shoes. I think there's a kind of inherent loneliness in suffering (of all kinds); best, perhaps, to make friends with that loneliness, and not expect others to cure it for us.
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