Bipolar Spouses Online Support Group

...no matter the perception or personality. Each life is sacred.

Amen, living! The challenge is to look behind the obvious to find the good within.

I agree with that statement wholeheartedly livinginablender and it was the foundation that Dre and I tried to start this group out with.

We want everyone to feel welcome here, to enjoy their experience and have a desire to come back.

Damsel

Post edited by: damselndistress, at: 07/14/2010 04:14 PM

It is not possible to control every one's point of view completely .. and sometimes people say things or are hurt when there is no intention of that. I think that we have to take responsibility for our reactions. I value every member of this forum.

Intention is everything.

One night, I drove someone away who came here for help because this person used all caps and I had had a terrible day with my bipolar spouse, and I said something like "DO YOU HAVE TO USE ALL CAPS BECAUSE WE HAVE ENOUGH STRESS IN OUR LIVES." I PMed this person to apologize profusely, but zip. The person never came back! I felt awful! Since then, I have seen folks be a bit nasty from time to time when we disagree, but it's rare. Much more frequently, people are like I was with ALL CAPS--just fragile and brittle from the stresses in our lives. I hope we all assume that people mean well and go from there.

Very well said married.

When we started this group can you believe I was kind of wishing and hoping that we didn't even have to have group leaders? I felt the members were the group and where the value was. I agreed to it by default to protect us. I don't know if I've always come through that way to everyone but it's how I felt.

Damsel

I remember that post married but I had no clue what happened.

I had no idea that you felt that they left because of you.

I never heard anything about it.

Damsel

Post edited by: damselndistress, at: 07/14/2010 07:51 PM

It taught me to be a bit more careful with new people! And another thing I have noticed is that a new person will tell us part of their story, and only after we start connecting with them and they connect back do we hear the WHOLE story, which is sometimes much worse than their initial post suggested. I really do think we can be thin-skinned here--we come here for support and affirmation, and some days are in crisis (or extremis). But I like it that we are different. One person says "You have to take care of yourself" and another says "Gotta get 'em on meds or life will be hell" and another says "I was worried that you mentioned him being upset that you talked to his parents" and another says "You mentioned he is ADHD, well my wife is too, and she does that same thing with music..." Just examples, but out of that range of responses, one has to be helpful or interesting. And why do we expect online friends to have no personalities? My inperson friends have personalities. Some are blunt, some are nurturing, some are professorial and longwinded (uh, betcha can't guess this one is me). Some are short and to the point. OMG, I am about to sound like "Free to Be You and Me" and I often ridicule that kind of hippy dippy stuff...

Post edited by: marriedtoit, at: 07/15/2010 09:02 PM