![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/martin-gum-image-friendship-300x300.png\")
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I love doing guest blogs for helpful website. The Gum on My Shoe<\/a> website was created by Martin Baker and Fran Houston to highlight the needs of friends who care about someone with bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder. I love their book High Tide, Low Tide: A Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder<\/a> and I appreciate how they allow me to be brutally honest about my life with bipolar and how it affects friendships.<\/p>\n My latest post,\u00a0How to Gently and Kindly Talk with a Friend About Difficult Bipolar Symptoms<\/a>\u00a0talks about the other side of the bipolar friendship discussion. MY friendships with people who have serious mental illness.<\/p>\n Here is the beginning of the article:<\/p>\n “As friends of people with bipolar and schizoaffective disorder<\/a> we want to be understanding and kind regarding the struggles people with serious mental illness face. But \u2014 and it is a very big BUT \u2014 there is a line to be drawn in terms of what you as a friend can handle, especially if the person\u2019s symptoms are active.<\/p>\n I see this from both sides. I have bipolar disorder and a psychotic disorder myself. I know what the symptoms can do to our minds, and ultimately how they can affect our friendships. I have lost or left many relationships with people who have untreated mental health symptoms. On one occasion a friend with schizoaffective disorder decided that I had stolen one of her ideas. She texted me at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night and said:<\/p>\n I am very upset with you! I just saw your latest blog post and you\u2019re using my ideas in this post and this is not cool. I need you to take it down and print a retraction!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another time, a friend with bipolar one decided that he wanted to live the manic life and went off all meds, saying:<\/p>\n I am finally free to live the life I have always wanted!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let\u2019s look at these situations in more detail…”<\/p>\n Click here to read the rest of\u00a0How to Gently and Kindly Talk with a Friend About Difficult Bipolar Symptoms<\/a> from Gum on My Shoe.<\/p>\n I love doing guest blogs for helpful website. The Gum on My Shoe<\/a> website was created by Martin Baker and Fran Houston to highlight the needs of friends who care about someone with bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder. I love their book High Tide, Low Tide: A Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder<\/a> and I appreciate how they allow me to be brutally honest about my life with bipolar and how it affects friendships.<\/p>\n My latest post, How to Gently and Kindly Talk with a Friend About Difficult Bipolar Symptoms<\/a> talks about the other side of the bipolar friendship discussion. MY friendships with people who have serious mental illness.<\/p>\n Here is the beginning of the article:<\/p>\n “As friends of people with bipolar and schizoaffective [ Read More ]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12686,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12684\/revisions\/12686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Julie\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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