And It Begins

I'm Bipolar and so is my mom. We were doing so well for almost 3 months without an episode. She has a lot more episodes than me and she never recognizes her manic phase. It annoys me that she only recognizes the depression phase. In her manic state she says she feels great and that she is being productive.
It begins with not sleeping enough. And her mind wanders off even more when she doesn't have a steady sleep. She starts talking a lot more and starts cleaning the house at 6am. She gets defensive and starts picking fights.

She's on a new mood stabilizer but the doctor put her on a very low dosage to start off. We are seeing him this morning and I'll be telling him to give her a higher dosage. She doesn't trust doctors and I know she will fight that she doesn't need a higher dosage.

I'm just waiting because the anger will be showing soon. She gets terribly angry when she's manic. That's really the worse for me.

I take really good care of myself, seeing my psychiatrist and therapist and taking my medicine, but I hate when she gets manic. Her anger always makes me so anxious. I never know what to do, but let it ride out.

This is the 2nd time in the last year we have changed her mood stabilizer. I'm just hoping for the day we find the right dose where she can be stable for more than a few months.

Living with her is so difficult but financially I can't go anywhere right now. I ask for strength, lots of strength to get thru the difficult days.

I'm so sorry you are having to deal with this. Living with a parent is very difficult as it is when you're an adult, but having a bipolar diagnosis on top of it has to put an additional strain as it is. My mom moved in with me last year when I was going through a depression episode and it just made things really awkward. Her being in my house and me depressed and not wanting to not be around anyone. At any rate, as far as the mood stabilizers go, from what I know, many of them have to be titrated up. You can't just start at a higher dose. My Trileptal took weeks, probably a couple of months to get to where it is. Same thing with Lamictal, it has to go up slowly. Those are the only two I can think of from personal experience, but I'm sure it's the case with some others. And sometimes it takes a while to find the right one. My initial experience with Trileptal helped me to feel better (not right away), but I slowly felt the anger go away and figured that maybe this is what "normal" feels like. At any rate, I know you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, but is there anywhere else you can stay with? A friend, another family member? I'm just happy you are self-aware and are doing the best you can for yourself. Your mom, well that is going to take some effort and unfortunately I've learned you can't force it. I had the same issue with my mom and her depression a few years back. She refused to believe that she was and wouldn't take the med prescribed to her. She was obviously miserable which in turn made me miserable...it was a mess. Especially when we lived together. Anyway, I think I'm rambling, and sorry if that didn't make much sense, I don't my sleep was productive last night because I'm still tired...
Please take care and I hope it works out.

My mood stabilizer is Lamictal which targets depressive episodes. I have bipolar 1 and take Geodon to control mania. It is prescribed for mania and it helps me sleep too. I hope the appt goes well.

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