The Bipolar Family Cure: How to end the arguing, overspending, lying, anger, manipulation and irresponsibility.

By John Ford

The Bipolar Family Cure: How to end the arguing, overspending, lying, anger, manipulation and irresponsibility. Get your normal life back, get control over your time, and live stress free!

For family members of patients with bipolar disorder or others who support these patients, and who have almost given up on having a normal life because of the suffocating demands of coping and dealing with a loved one with bipolar disorder...

Unlike other books on bipolar disorder that speak to the person with the diagnosis, this book speaks directly to you and the unique problems you face as a supporter. Each chapter is directed to another aspect of the difficulties you deal with on a daily basis, with strategies and solutions you can immediately apply to your own situation.
Wouldn’t it be great to stop the fighting, overspending, lying, anger, manipulation, and irresponsibility? Wouldn’t you like to get your normal life back, get control over your time, and live stress free? This book helps you do all that and more, with easy-to-understand information, instructions, examples, and case studies.

Over ten years of research has gone into this comprehensive book. Thousands of people have benefited from the strategies and solutions presented, such as:
•Avoid the top 5 mistakes the majority of bipolar supporters make...
•Specific ways to deal with anger, lying, and manipulation...
•What to do when your loved one refuses to take their medication or refuses treatment...
•How you can gain control over your finances and avoid bankruptcy and other money problems caused by your loved one’s overspending...
•Whether or not you can “catch” bipolar disorder from your loved one and how you can get support for yourself, restoring your life to a normal one once again...
•How to use the Post Episode Analysis to avoid future episodes and further reduce your stress...
•What to do when you begin suffering from the inevitable caregiver burnout syndrome...
•How to distinguish the symptoms of bipolar disorder particular to your loved one so you spot the warning signs of an oncoming episode and head it off in advance...
•The “Bipolar Stability Equation” and how you can help your loved one use it to reduce their susceptibility to arguing, overspending, lying, anger, manipulation, and irresponsibility...
•Sex and your relationship - how to restore intimacy...

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Ford
• Release date: May 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370741571

Book preview

Chapter 1: Introduction

I want to commend you and offer my congratulations on getting this book! It was a brave step indeed. But first, let me thank you for doing what you do with your family. . . because rarely as a supporter of someone with bipolar disorder do you get any credit.

This book collects the results of over ten years of experience helping and supporting people with bipolar disorder. That experience comes not only from my own role as a supporter of my own mother, but also hundreds of others whom I personally helped with issues concerning their loved ones, as part of many bipolar support groups. I’ve also been in contact with thousands of others.

When you add all this together I’ve actually gathered over 1,000 case studies on bipolar supporters! That’s how I learned exactly what to do, when to do it, what not to do, and all the solutions and strategies which successful bipolar supporters use all over the world. I compiled their experience, along with my own, into this comprehensive book. This book CAN give you back your normal life, help you regain control over your time, and (believe it or not) live stress free.

So let’s begin our journey together…OK?

First of all, to help you appreciate where I’m coming from and why I’m passionate about helping others struggling to support someone with bipolar disorder, let me share my own family history. My mother has bipolar disorder, and I am her primary supporter. I therefore very deeply understand what it’s like to support someone with bipolar disorder. I not only have firsthand experience…but also an in-depth knowledge of bipolar disorder from years and years of research.

Like you, I'm all too aware of the devastation that bipolar disorder causes in our families. My family made MANY horrific mistakes handling my mother's bipolar disorder until I decided to find a way to genuinely help her and the millions of other individuals and families who live with this awful problem.

I started supporting mom in the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, she got sick. We figured out that she had bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses.

During this time, I also started to attend several mental health support groups. A man there indicated that I had to learn how to be a great supporter to help my mom.

From that point forward, I was devoted to helping my mom and learning how to be a great supporter.

Eventually I realized I needed to know:

What my mom had

Why she had it

What I could do to help her

How to find people to help her

How she could help herself

What kind of doctors she needed

What other kinds of people she needed to help her

What help was available in the community

What kind of medicines she should be taking

What she needed to do to get stable

Whether other people with these disorders were successful

What they did to get successful

How to set up a great future for her

Whether she would always have episodes

At the time, my father had a heart condition and I didn’t want to overly involve him because stress could kill him, so I became my mom’s primary supporter. Because of my experience with her and all the research I did about her disorder, as well as all the other people I talked to, I became a sort of expert on bipolar disorder.

I started meeting other supporters and people with bipolar that needed help so I started coaching and supporting them as well.

From the mid to late 2000s to mid-2010s, my mom did well. She had about ten great years but then relapsed again. Later on in the book you will find out how she could have so many great years and then relapse.

In the last decade, I started coaching:

A woman with bipolar disorder

A woman supporting a child with bipolar disorder

A man supporting a mother, brother and sister with bipolar disorder

A man supporting a father with schizophrenia

A woman supporting a sister with bipolar disorder

A woman supporting a son with bipolar disorder

A woman supporting a sister and many family members with bipolar disorder.

I noticed that people were making the same mistakes and those with success were doing similar things. I started privately sharing success tips, do’s and don’t’s with the students.

From 2010-2013, my mom had some mini-episodes here and there, but because of my coaching her as well, she did relatively well over those years, never needing to be hospitalized.

In 2013, my mom started acting strange again and had to be hospitalized. She then went on to be hospitalized eight times in only a few years. It took massive effort and investigation to figure out how someone could go from doing great for so many years and having an episode one time every seven to eight years to having an episode every few months. Later you will discover why.

Eventually I helped to stabilize my mom. It took a lot of time and energy, and a lot of effort on my part.

For the last decade, I have been coaching a number of people including my own mom. Some have done great. Some have done terrible. I have carefully tracked, analyzed and recorded the good, the bad, and the ugly to share with others.

While I was glad to have helped my mom and so many others, I realized that while there was a lot of information on bipolar disorder itself, there were virtually NO books available to help their family members… the people who SUPPORT the person with bipolar disorder. I'd also learned from firsthand experience a book like that was desperately needed.

I wanted to create a book that contained all my results to help millions of people. I figured I could give it away and help many people avoid the nightmare that myself and numerous other people went through.

My goal is to make things easier for you, to help you avoid what I have endured, and to teach you what I learned, all in this comprehensive book. I have worked hard and hope you enjoy it.

Recently, I did a search on Amazon.com for books specifically for the bipolar supporter, and found just three! Can you imagine? Three! And there are millions of bipolar supporters out there, struggling daily with the issues of coping and dealing with a loved one with bipolar disorder.

So I saw the need for a book written for the bipolar supporter that addressed these issues, which also provided basic background on bipolar disorder itself. In other words, if there were to be just one book to help a bipolar supporter who was trying to cope and deal with a loved one, I wanted this to be it.

So that’s my goal for the book you’re reading right now. Call it a one-stop shop for everything you wanted to know about bipolar disorder, as well as the specific issues you will be dealing with as a supporter…

This is something no other book provides you.

Before you start, think about your mission in reading this book. Your mission should be your purpose. In your case, your mission should have to do with learning more about bipolar disorder and how to help your loved one. But it could also have to do with learning how to help yourself, so I’ve included important information on that as well.

You should also consider your objective for your mission. In this you set some goals for yourself, as you just read that I set for myself. For example, you could set a time frame in which to read the book, or in which to apply the principles set forth within it.

For a FREE worksheet that helps you set appropriate, achievable goals for stability with your loved one with bipolar please visit www.BipolarFamilyCure.com

Chapter 2: This Is WAR and You Are a General

I love studying military theory. Many years ago I read a book on nuclear war called The Wizards of Armageddon by Fred M. Kaplan and I could see how it can relate to bipolar disorder.

You may not have thought of it this way, but you are in a war with bipolar disorder. You need to think of yourself as a general in this war. And in that light, strategy is crucial.

Most supporters don’t stop to consider strategic principles in their war with bipolar disorder. That’s why they are not only losing the battles they are facing, but the war itself.

They don’t question their routines or the way they do things – they just go along doing them the way they’ve always been done. They don’t consider that consistently doing things the same way and failing is the reason they’re losing the war. And they don’t consider there may be a better way… having a strategy!

Most supporters do not actually strategize; therefore, they keep facing the same problems over and over again. Problems with anger, rage, lying, money problems, not achieving goals, etc.

And if they strategize at all, they don’t do it often enough (or deep enough), nor do they plan ahead for enough of the inevitable problems bipolar disorder creates.

My family didn’t have a plan at all. They just kept doing the same thing day after day. This is the polar opposite of what a good general does in the military: Strategic thinking and planning; i.e., the setting of goals and the development of long-range plans to reach those goals. When you think and plan strategically, your goals determine what actions you take today, tomorrow, and in the days, months, or years it may take to successfully complete these goals.

Strategic thinking can help you cope with a constantly changing environment, and your goals can change along with it, because you can be flexible.

Unfortunately, most supporters don’t use strategic thinking. Therefore, they make constant strategic mistakes. Here are some of the most common:

They don’t get their loved one diagnosed.

They don’t get their loved one into treatment.

They don’t insure that their loved one takes their medication.

They don’t get a good doctor for their loved one.

They don’t make their loved one go to the doctor.

They are too cheap to hire a good therapist.

They invest money in the wrong places.

They don’t take over the finances.

They are too cheap to buy books or courses to learn about bipolar.

They don’t attend a bipolar support group.

They don’t form a support system.

They isolate themselves.

They don’t take care of themselves first.

They only think day-to-day and not of the long-term.

They are not positive thinkers.

They don’t get involved with their loved one’s treatment.

They give up hope for recovery.

In general, the worst strategic mistake supporters make is not doing the right things, or not doing anything at all!

To be a good strategist, you need to be able to look at the big picture, but you also need to be able to see the details as well, and you need to be able to jump back and forth between the two. Most supporters can’t do that.

A good general gathers intel (intelligence/information) from a multitude of different sources. Could you imagine if he didn’t do that? He’d have to fly blind, wouldn’t he?

You need to gather intel as well. Gather it from as many sources as you can to gain the best strategic advantage.

Many people simply overcompensate for their problems, which leads to real difficulties with strategizing. When a general overreacts to problems on the battlefield, he is not proactive, but reactive. You don’t want to be like that – you want to be proactive.

Say you’re facing inappropriate rage in your loved one. Imagine if you kept reacting to their rage with anger of your own, instead of strategizing exactly how to react to diffuse their anger; such as staying calm and reflecting their feelings back to them, or telling them you will discuss the issue with them