I also agree with not calling your daughter “a bipolar” or of thinking of her that way too, like ,”Oh, she’s a bipolar, no wonder she did xyz...”. Out of curiosity, how old is she?

Bipolar people are people first and not a disease. I don’t go around thinking of myself as “a bipolar” but a person first. Usually someone undeserving. and worthless, but still a person, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter. In some cases, a lot of the time, yes bipolar permeates my life, though I do take my meds to most or all extent.

Here’s what is the downside: side effects, for me fatigue. I cannot function through the fatigue on Seroquel and Trazodone. There is lack of creativity, feeling “numb”, the great feeling of hypomania. Generally, and this is just me, I can’t claim other bipolar people function like this, but if I am on meds and depressed and stop taking them, I sleep less. The less I sleep, the more manic I get. But mania feels so much better than depression until I crash and burn.

I cannot hold a job either. I am 41 years old. I usually end up in or near hospitalization whenever I try to work. I think the longest I lasted at any job was 3 months after I was through with school.

I graduated high school valedictorian, granted a class of 109 students but an excellent small school district. I graduated summa cum laude with all A’s and one B in a tough major, microbiology, at Texas A&M University (main campus, a huge student body). I had better grades than most pre-med students. I went to graduate school, got an M. S. in Cell & Molecular Biology (had to work as an RA/TA, peanuts for pay). I wrote articles in well respected journals in my field, my first author publication gaining quite a few citations in other scientific papers over the years.

I went into adult life with a lot of potential. I still know there is value in being a good mother and wife, and I have had to shift my expectations. I know I need to continue working on myself. I am a work in progress, and I am doing the best I can. Bipolar disorder is like being a parent in that no one can understand what it is like until you go through it yourself.

Is your daughter in therapy? Usually that goes along with meds though I haven’t really found a good therapist and stop going when I feel like it is doing nothing. But I have a lot of issues...see listed diagnoses.

Also, don’t think meds are a 100% cure or even close. They get me off the ground, functional, but no medication works 100%. If meds and therapy alone worked completely for bipolar, this forum wouldn’t need to be here.