Holiday Depression

Over the holidays it all started when my daughter that lives in Texas wrote on my facebook page that she's angry because I gave up on her when she was a teenager putting her in foster care and how she would never do that to her daughter. I have 2 grandchildren (one girl and one boy) that I haven't ever seen except on facebook. They are so adorable but I get so sad. Sometimes I want to erase them but once in a while she'll throw me a bone and I'm delighted. It feels kinda pathetic. I don't want to sit here and accuse her or judge her because I love her and I want to be open to allowing her to come to me when she's ready but it's so hard. It's driving me crazy at times. Everyday she's in my thoughts and I want her to be able to call when she wants or needs. She was diagnosed with bipolar with psychotic features when she was little and her behavior became so out of control no one could control her. She went through more foster homes than I have shoes and I love shoes. She became a threat to society at a young age, it was sad. I tried so hard to get all of the best help and therapy and then I lived in a place that I wasn't able to bring her back home again even if I'd wanted. My heart hurts and it makes me cry so much. I just want the best for her and her children and they look happy but when I hear others talk about their kids or grand kids I get jealous. This is usually what starts my depression all over again. I kind of stay to myself instead, which I'm sure doesn't help either. I think it's time for me to rethink this though and begin to get out of my funk. I'm just not sure where to start. It's a scary thing to let people in and really let them care.

I really feel for what you are expressing here!

What isn't understood is the role of society in the life of a bipolar person. The bipolar person typically has been socially rejected nearly everyday of her life and not know self, that becomes a religion of self, a belief system of self. It becomes a habitual thought that she is unworthy and defective. The medical community reinforces the idea of being defective and proves it with meds and therapy and even the insurance companies reinforce it by paying for this treatment. It's all placed on the bipolar person's shoulders and that isn't right.

We all are human beings before anything else. None of use, especially bipolar people, can be happy without being oneself. The society working through the parents, the schools, the politics, and the religions seeks to indoctrinate each young child into the culture and bipolar people along with the ADD/ADHD crowd resists this molding. The molding is done by creating mental habits through repetition over many many years. Anyone not molded is unpredictable and labeled. To be "adjusted" to society means a reprogramming into the proper socially acceptable set of beliefs and principles to live by with the promise of a happy life.

Your daughter wasn't a danger to society but the society has been dangerous to her and she couldn't take the pressure to be something that she isn't....why? Because no one can be something that he or she isn't. Mental habits are not us. When we make ideas of living into habits we have just put ourselves into a prison. The tension of not being authentic is too much for a bipolar mind to bear.

Please take a look around my blog website...I have a lot about bipolar on it. You may really get a lot out of Sean Blackwell's work in the bipolar arena and a great book is "The Stormy Search for Self"...His youtube videos are outstanding! ....all of these links can be found here... http://www.profound-self-help.com/bi...-disorder.html

You daughter judged you love as conditional (her projection, not the truth) because you gave her up to foster care....what she doesn't see is that her love for you is also conditional because she is withholding herself and her kids from you as punishment. Because her love is conditional, she can't see that your's is unconditional.

Ron