Anyone else looking at a lifelong illness?

[Brittapieandchips]

I've known for a while that I will always have bipolar 1 with anxiety. Hopefully it will become more and more controlled, but the pattern up to now, and the severity when I've stopped treatments and lifestyle stuff means that I will at the very least always have to be on alert.

It's just hitting me more recently what that actually means. My sisters are both looking like they will have successful careers - at 21 and 27 they have already achieved things that would be fairly impressive if someone managed it before they retired. I will most probably always struggle to even work at a mainstream full time job, never mind a high pressure one. Youngest sister just moved to London for an impressive job, other sister just bought a beautiful house and brand new car and her job stresses are about her assistants and team not meeting her high standards. I'm the oldest and I am a single mum on benefits in a rented house with no degree and an artistic business that makes no money but is basically art therapy, on meds and with various health issues, many connected to my mental health, that mean I have at least weekly appointments and my family are sympathetic but slightly patronising.

I'm mostly stable ATM but the illness is still definitely there and fear of the fairly alarming previous consequences means I question every single feeling and experience.

I'm generally happy in my life, I have a good life mostly and I'm pleased for my sisters, I'm just a bit, I dunno, freaked out.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Don't compare yourself to your sisters, you are all very different people with different paths through life. It's tough, accepting that you have a lifelong illness. You seem to have carved out a life that satisfies you and that is what matters.

please don't think like that.
you have children who are more valuable than anything else in the world.

Oh, it doesn't stop me loving and being massively proud of my children or anything. Generally I'm happy, it just sometimes is a bit difficult to get my head round it being a life long thing, especially when I get so many people telling me I'll get better if I get fresh air or whatever and thinking I'm just being pessimistic, so I end up having to explain again and again. I can control it, but it will always be there, and people not acknowledging that makes it harder.

I hear what you're saying. There will always be people who judge those of us who need help (be it meds, therapy, social support) because they don't understand the nature of our illness. The best one can do is ignore those who are a lost cause and try to educate those who care enough to listen.

I'm beginning to accept that I have a lifelong illness. My sister is 4 years younger, just at the beginning of a promising career, making lots of money, she's been travelling, she's done everything I haven't. I'm struggling to make my business work, have a series of failed jobs and relationships under my belt and seem to crash from one crisis to another. I'm also a single mum and while to me that's the most important thing I know my sister looks down on me. We have always been compared so its hard not to do it yourself but I would try to look at all the great things in your life that you achieved under MASSIVE pressure from your illness. Yes your sisters have achieved xyz, which were no doubt hard won but perhaps if they'd been bringing up a child alone and/or struggling with a mental health issue then it wouldn't have happened so fast for them. Just because you haven't achieved all you want doesn't mean you won't ever, you'll do it in your own time.

I have schizoaffective disorder and like you I find it hard to accept. I totally get where you are coming from.

I sympathise. I'm coming to terms with the fact that my MH means I can't do what I used to do and live the life I used to live. It sucks.

It must be really hard to see your sisters living the kind of life that you'd like to live. The thing to remember is that everyone, even those who are outwardly successful, will have problems of one kind or another.

When I compare myself to my peers I really struggle, sometimes it feels like such an injustice to have MH problems. I can't live the life I want to live.

That said in the past year I have made huge steps forwards and that has been positive as I felt stuck for ever such a long time.

Yes my illness is lifelong as well. I haven't worked for over 15 years and I can't see myself working again.

My sisters are average, rather than high achieving, so I don't feel too bad when comparing myself to them. But a lot of my friends are childless so they've focused on their careers and achieving a lot. It does make me feel a bit left behind - although as we all grow older, it's evening out a bit as I find my childless friends becoming disillusioned with what they have and worrying about the biological clock.

I try to focus on what I do have, and in some ways things have balanced out - my disposable income is not too far off some of my friends', due to council rents/DLA/ESA, I have more free time now as I had dc young when unemployed, while my sisters have to juggle childcare and work. Also the longer you know people, the more likely it is that they'll have some kind of setback in their lives as well. Not everyone you know will have MH health issues but they might be affected by physical illness, bereavement, disability in the family or other trauma.

I get massively irritated when people helpfully try to trot out treatments for minor depression like exercise and fresh air, which wouldn't touch the sides of the MH issues I have. I don't bother engaging in that sort of conversation now, and I'd suggest you ignore it as well. It is only ever mentioned as a way for others to make themselves feel helpful, not as a genuine source of advice for you.

Yeah the 'loads of people take anti depressants for six months or so, you'll get better and this will be a distant memory, just rest while you are temporarily unwell and then pick up where you left off' people - I get that they are trying to help, and I'm not minimising the pain of a relatively short burst of depression, but it is so different in so many ways. I will never pick up where I left off, partly because I was never able to properly start - this illness even made me have to drop some of my gcses. It's so much more than just having relapses and hospital stays, it's the constant fear and low level symptoms (although my 'good days' would be enough to have most people in an urgent GP appointment)