My husband and I both are both bipolar. I am a bipolar I with borderline personality disorder, anxiety and post traumatic stress and I have been hospitalized numerous times. My husband is a bipolar II and a recovering alcoholic, sober 8yrs 8mo 17days.
We are both stable, med compliant and doing better than even our support team ever thought possible. It wasn't easy though, it took a lot of years of insanity before I was even properly diagnosed and it took more than 8 years after diagnosis before the right mix of medicines was figured out. During this time we were also raising my 2 kids from my first marriage and as you can imagine it wasn't the best atmosphere to be raising kids in. My kids are grown now with kids of their own. How do we get past our guilt and the kids anger issues? How do we forgive ourselves and how do we make the kids understand that we honestly did the best we could, even if it wasn't good enough? The guilt is even starting to come between my husband and myself causing communication problems.
Can anybody relate to what I'm talking about? Any advice?
I relate to what you are saying in terms of guilt and children. I grew up with an alcoholic parent and I always thought there must be something I could do to fix her (and tried everything for years - being good at school, trying to get her into treatment etc etc)- apparently that's very common in children who's parents have substance abuse or mental health issues.
After my own experience as a child and adolescent I made a pact with myself that I was going to be honest (age appropriate of course) with my child about my mental health problems (she calls my psychiatrist the "head doctor"!).
My daughter is now 10 years old, and when I was recently hospitalised for a medication change my husband and I explained to her that none of mummy's moods or anger were becuase of her, even if it may have been directed at her, it's mummy's brain playing tricks on her. And she gets it. We had her see a psychologist once (very low key, an "at home" chat) and she's fine - she knows what's happening and she knows that it's not her fault, that she cannot fix the problems and that I am doing everything in my power to help myself (and that's what the psychologist said was very important - she knows i'm actively seeking help).
So the guilt still plagues me, but I can handle it with the thought that i've, with my husband's assistance, done the right thing by my child.
I don't know how old your kids are or what stages they are at in life, but if you can get the message across to them that I got across to my daughter, then that may help.
All the very best to you and your husband.
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I didn't read the part where you wwrote your kids were grown - but the fact they have kids of their own may be a starting point for dialogue - they must realise that there is no such thing as a "perfect parent"?
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