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First a question..are many of you in relationships with people who also have mental illness. My husband is bi-polar and while our respective ilnesses allow for eachother to have a certain understanding of one another sometimes i feel we feed eachother massive doses of crazy. lately we've been taking rapid cycling turns of flipping out, at ourselves eachothe and evrything else. i have a huge memory problem, my dissacosiation no longer lasts for long periods of time but seems to rapidly cycle with frequency on a daily bass so id frankly say i miss 1/5 of the entire day evryday. and when my hubbie is manic he flips out on me for eing a "retard" then as soon as he rails onme its triggers lilly who is a shy 4 yrold who remembers my mothers abuse and i turn to abject terror. then he becomes deeply epressed for sparking this in me and gets suicidal..this is becoming a daily situation..this is not good.
so what i wanna knowis if any of you who have a relationship where both of you are ill...do you trigger each other like thisand in other ways?? how do do i minimize this affect? we are tryingto raise our son in as much of a normal environment as we can..im already paranoid he'll be removed cuz i'm anut, but we never hurt him and in all honesty my and my hsbands good momnts are thrilling to him cuz we are creative and damn well fun parents..we try to remove ourselves from his view during our episodes but for instance when i revert to the lilly aspect i dont know whats going on. We are at the end of our ropes our son is so important , and we see a counsilor and im trying to straiten out a new medicine cocktail cuz what i was taking is no longer sufficient. and i believewe can be a good functiong family but the stress of hurricane katrina uprooting us and all has really flipped evrything upsidedown..so im just looking for any advice at all

My husband was diagnosed with Depression, though he's not currently being treated. Sometimes we do antagonize each other, of course, that's what couples do. But other times, we hit on the right idea of understanding each other. I think it helps that we've lived together for almost four years now, so I know when he gets depressed and says some bad things, that he doesn't mean it. And he knows that, when I have a hard time, I'll pull through and keep trying. I think it helps when, during an arguement I say "well, I'll keep trying to do this, and I know you'll keep trying to do that." Or I just spell out what's going to happen like "I'm going to leave the room and rest on the bed for a while. When I come back, we'll both be calmer and will be civil to each other."

I'm glad you're going to see a counsellor.

Ayesha... no not really we dont have much outside support anymore. we did back at home we each had our friends and things to go to. but here we are extremely isolated. And i unfortuntly depend on him for practical things... i have an irrational paranoia for the phone, i am incapable of making phone calls on my own and he has too, i am not able to drive so he has to do all the driving its not fair to him, yet this is how i always have been. we've lived togethor 5 yrs now ourselves. I rwally think the major problem is this recent trauma its made us resentful of the situation ourselves even our son.
kudzu ..its difficult to speak ratinly for meduring theese times though when i can i do try. I dont like yelling or sharp tones of voice, it triggers me and then i lose ability to assert control over myself. If jason isn't losing it himself he always uses soft tones to alm me. but when he gets so depressed he acts out and intentionally does his best to upset me. , which makes him feel just awful and guilty as soon as he calms down. Unfortuntly i am begiing to fear we are to much for eachother. We will se the counsilor though. We love eachother and our son, and it's odd..i mean he rationalizes backwards the way i used to, I used to injure myself be cause i thought if i could nearly kill myself my mm would suddnly get scared and stop beating me. When he goes manic he does the worst things he can think of to make me leave him so taht he willapreciate me whne im gone. he wants to punish himself..i understand that, he has a self-destruct kind of personailty. I just dont know whats going to happen....evryone who knows us thinks we are so good togethor, but when we just lose it togethor it is a bit dangerous.