{"id":246,"date":"2014-07-30T00:59:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T07:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/2008\/07\/01\/bipolar-disorder-and-friendship\/"},"modified":"2018-05-15T09:56:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T16:56:54","slug":"bipolar-disorder-and-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/bipolar-disorder-and-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"Bipolar Disorder and Keeping Your Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Bipolar Disorder and Friendship<\/strong><\/p>\n

I lost many of my friends when I was really ill with bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

That was over 10 years ago. When I started to get better through using my treatment plan 24 freaking hours a day! I thought carefully about the things I needed to change and learn in order to become a good friend.\u00a0 Here is my biggest suggestion if you want to do the same:<\/p>\n

If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> This is a great place to start when you want to make friends. No one likes negativity. No one wants to hear how rotten your life is.\u00a0 I used to be super negative and I always complained about how terrible it is to have bipolar disorder.\u00a0 Now I just go with the flow on the simple things- don’t like the meal you’re eating? Gauge the situation before you complain. Think the movie you’re watching sucks? Well, maybe the people you’re with are actually enjoying the movie.<\/p>\n

Complaining is selfish. I was selfish.<\/p>\n

I learned to change instead of complaining all of the time.<\/p>\n

It took many years of practice to end a lifetime of negative comments, but these days I’m pretty much positive in what I say no matter where I am. I’m often raging on the inside- miserable and lonely on the inside- or just feel like screaming at how stupid people are!!!!! But I keep it to myself and only let it out when it’s appropriate.<\/p>\n

People appreciate this. When I really do have a problem- they know I’m not just being negative. This makes for a strong friendship.<\/p>\n

Julie<\/p>\n

PS:\u00a0 When my friend Karen and I are at karaoke and people are being really dumb, we are allowed to yell and be negative as long as we keep it at our table. \ud83d\ude42 Ha Ha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Bipolar Disorder and Friendship<\/p>\n

I lost many of my friends when I was really ill with bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

That was over 10 years ago. When I started to get better through using my treatment plan 24 freaking hours a day! I thought carefully about the things I needed to change and learn in order to become a good friend. Here is my biggest suggestion if you want to do the same:<\/p>\n

If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. This is a great place to start when you want to make friends. No one likes negativity. No one wants to hear how rotten your life is. I used to be super negative and I always complained about how terrible it is to have bipolar disorder. Now I just go [ Read More ]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"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=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11270,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/11270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}