This is part of a comment from a blog called Thebipolarproject… and the reason for the topic of this post! I suggest you check out her blog! 

I think you have it quite tough because you have a lot of responsibilities, you have children and extra stresses and difficulties. That’s a lot to juggle, and I admire your ability to keep pushing on. I would love to know more about what you value in life, what is important to you and the limitations that you do have and how you work within them (or not!) – Maybe a topic for a post on your blog? 

I’m not sure how to answer that but here is my best try at it; I value high morals, always do the right thing, always think of others, always make up for what mistakes you make, own your actions don’t blame others, work as hard as you can to be the BEST person you possible, don’t accept less than your best and be the best parent you can, your forming adults and they must know your values!  Help others in whatever way you can but don’t accept abuse from them. You must respect yourself or you won’t be happy!

With my illness I find it important to surround myself with positive people. Those that don’t make drama out of nothing and those that care about others. That doesn’t mean I don’t help those that don’t appreciate my help but I will only do what I can and if it affects my life, my kids, my world in a negative fashion it has to be stopped.  I have been mistreated many times but I can’t usually help myself until it affects me in a negative way.  Then I realize I’m not helping anyone and just sacrificing my stable moods so I have to stop.  I don’t help anyone with any expectation of getting anything in return, except respect of my life and my feelings.  

I do my best to not judge people, I don’t know what their life is like and I am not in their shoes so I try not to judge. Am I always successful at that, NO we all have those moments that we later realize we were being unfair, we are human. 

I have severe mood swings and anger at times and I have lit into people unnecessarily but I always regret it, the rage that comes with my illness sometimes takes over.. like the incident with my neighbor that I wrote about in a earlier post.  I always apologize and I  feel horrible about it as that rage isn’t who I really am, it’s a symptom of my illness that I work hard to control.

The number one most important thing in my life is my Children.  My two girls mean the world to me and I have worked hard for years to control my illness and change my negative thought processes to a more positive way of thinking and I am hoping they will be better people for it just as I am. 

My limitations you ask.. there are many! Number one I cannot work! The stress of a job sends me over the edge every time, it undoes my stability and pushes me into a world of depression and anger. I get lost in the swirling of my Bipolar Mind.  It takes a lot out of me daily to control my symptoms and live normally. I have to watch my feelings , reactions and level of happiness constantly, because any change could mean a big mood change in my life.  It’s difficult to not be able to work, money is a huge issue. Here I am on the third of January with not enough money to pay rent, turning in my recycling and collecting it from others to attempt to make it one more month. It’s difficult with two teenage girls who also have depression issues that have to be treated. I also have to watch them and their lives and reactions and such to make sure they aren’t falling over the edge and get them to the doctor when they are.. I must have the money to buy their medicine which is quite expensive even with insurance.

When you are depressed, which we always are, its hard to get up each day and get two depressed teenagers out of bed, ready, off to school and deal with all their weird morning quirks etc. I love them and I do it because I do love them, they have to see that you can’t let the depression rule your life. Really depression is just a fact of our life and we have to set up our lives and limits around it. If our anxiety is high then we don’t go shop that day or where ever we would normally go but we will push our way out the next day.

I can’t go into big crowds most days and my oldest daughter can’t either as our anxiety is high, we have a difficult time going some where we have never been before or talking with someone we have never talked to before. The anxiety is crippling if we give into it.

Since this post is getting so long I think I will stop there… Maybe I can expand on things further in another post.  There are so many accepted limitations that it isn’t easy to know what mine are in comparison to others anymore.