Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder: Understanding and Helping Your Partner (The New Harbinger Loving Someone Series)

If you have someone in the family with mental illness or maybe you want your spouse to learn more about your condition then this is a great book to invest in. But, honestly the only way you’re going to learn to live with it is trail and error. No book is going to give you the answers. Be consistent with medications, treatment and coping skills and if therapy works for you then all the more power to you. This book of helpful and a nice gift but, the only way to get stable and move on forward, keep taking care of yourself and learn from your own life experience. Don’t let it define you. The book is fine for more information though! Especially if your new to the mental heath world.

My husband was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and this is by far the best book for spouses/significant others that I have read. It's good to read a few books for the person with bipolar disorder (I highly recommend Welcome to the Jungle) but this book gets me. It has been an emotional experience reading this book as I recognized how many of the symptoms and behaviors my husband was showing and even the ones I was experiencing. I had to put it down a few times because it was all too much. That being said, I appreciate the breadth and depth of knowledge in this book. Detailed plans for working with your partner to come up with a strategy to stay well and sample scripts for everything including how to deal with unsupportive family and friends (which thankfully we don't have). And always the reminder that I have to take care of myself first and that deciding to leave is okay. Honestly that was reassuring: hearing that yes this is a terrible situation and leaving because a partner with bipolar disorder is unwilling to get help is okay. That's why I have the courage to stick it out for a while (but not indefinitely). I have yet to sit down with my husband to work on the exercises in this book but as this book was just recommended by his bipolar outpatient program I'm hopeful that he'll read it and then we can get started. I found doing some of the exercises on my own was really helpful in sorting out some of my emotions and I did try a few of the techniques in communicating with my husband. Tl;Dr: if you only read one book on bipolar disorder as family or friend of someone with bipolar disorder, make it this one. And then follow up with Welcome to the Jungle because it will make you laugh which you desperately need.

Love this book, very helpful!

This book really helps the supporter of someone who's bipolar learn more about bipolar and continue learning about the disorder. The book contains information on certain behaviors and patterns that occur. It helps the supporter realize that this is a predictable disorder. It's really hard dealing with someone who is bipolar on a daily basis. Medication is important for the ill partner as well as working on a treatment plan together as a couple. If you are willing to work on treating the disorder to save your relationship you should read this book.

I am father with a bipolar adult son. This book helped me to understand bipolar conditions, behaviours, causes and how to help my son to understand his condition. I am in the middle of this process. It gave me some hope and understanding better how to improve my son's conditions and quality of life. My son is unable to fully accept his Bipolar II condition diagnostic, quite well explained by the authors on this book. However is getting better to understand that he may do something to control his quality of life. I have followed my son's psychotherapy sessions for years, with several psychologists, and no one in the US helped me to understand his condition and recommend me to help me and my son with a book like this along psychotherapy sessions. It seems that psychology treatments for patients is misguided and biased on a" one to one sessions" and the individual , and should include at least 20 % of sessions to compare advances and setbacks with parents. I bough this book and gave copies for all family members and we are going from desperation, to understanding and managing behaviours for us, among us and my son, to improve our quality of life. I congratulate the authors and strongly recommend it to any family with members with bipolarity conditions.

"Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder" is a book that shares real solutions to a real problem. BiPolar Disorder has been very prevelant in my immediate family for the past 25 years. I have learned to cope with the disorder in family members in my own way but I needed to do more than cope. "Loving Someone With biPolar Disorder" has opened my eyes to several things. 1. How to separate the illness from the person. 2. Through the writing exercises I am learning how much I personally have been affected by loving someone(s) with Bipolar Disorder. 3. If you want to know how you can support your loved one who has this illness, this book can give that to you. This is definitely a hands on approach and if possible you can work together. 4. A holistic approach to treating this illness. Man does not live by medicine alone. 5.It is possible to head off the worst case scenarios by knowing the warning signs and using preventative treatments before things get out of hand. This is just a sampling of what I have discovered by reading "Loving Someone With BiPolar Disorder". It is not a cure all and it takes hard work on our part but my family has already started to benefit. I love this book and am highly recommending it to others.

I got this book for my partner who doesn't know anything about bipolar. He has read some of it and bits at a time. I even read some of it and find it very nice and thorough in some areas of the illness. I think it has helped give him a generalised idea but like he says, its still a learning curve for him to understand me as an individual because not everyone exhibits everything in the same manner. I believe thanks to this book, he was able to see my warning signs of a pending overdose as well. I was very ill at the time and stress is a major trigger. Ever since I got the book for him, he's been more attentive to me and my behaviours. We still need to talk it out though but I feel like the book has given him more insight into my brain to some degree and he has gone from someone who doesn't understand or acknowledge mental illness to someone who is trying to understand and make things work even though I can be incredibly difficult some times. I very much appreciate this book and I am very glad I have purchased it.

I bought this for my daughter’s boyfriend after she got her diagnosis, and he has quite enjoyed reading and working through this book. Says it has really helped him understand how she’s feeling and how to help her.

My boyfriend has bipolar disorder and this was the first book I bought to help me get some knowledge of the subject and how best to try and be there for him. Found the information very helpful, especially the breakdown of the different symptoms, as it gives good, detailed explanations of them in very understandable language. A lot of focus on taking care of yourself as someone close to someone else with bipolar which I appreciated, as you can't look after someone if you're not looking after yourself. It also had lots of good tips on basic relationship tools, which I thought was really good. The book doesn't assume anything about your circumstances which I think makes it accessible for a lot of couples situations. The actual treatment plan is very interesting and detailed, but I haven't tried implementing it fully. I think it's maybe not something any couple can do at any time, but I'm sure it would be useful in the right situation. I would love to use it in the future. Having said that there are very useful aspects of the plan that are just helpful for understanding more about your partners experience. Another important point for me is that the book doesn't avoid any subjects. It even talks about ending relationships and walking away, and whats acceptable and whats not under any circumstances. Its very hard to have perspective when youre so closely involved with something like this so it was really nice to have that voice reminding you of a more rational point of view. Its very American if you know what I mean, but I got a lot from it and would definitely recommend it.

Perfect and very easy to understand. Even if I am the ill one I wanted to read this book to understand my partner’s difficulties.

Such an informative book!