Hello everybody, I'm Laura, I'm Mollinari and welcome to my channel. Today we're going to talk about bipolar 1 and bipolar 2. I have bipolar 2 so you'll see a lot of phishing. I also have attention deficit disorder and I guess we'll deal with it together. I also have notes for Thana, make sure to cover everything with yeah. What we're going to talk about supporting our bipolar friends and family specifically what they will need from us when they start to struggle. First we must define what bipolar disorder is. Bipolar is characterized by extreme mood swings or episodes. First we'll talk about bipolar 1. Bipolar 1 has both hyper manic and depressive episodes. The hyper mania goes high. The depression goes low. The swing to get high is not as severe with bipolar 2. Bipolar 2, the patients spend much more time in the depressive episodes and their mania is lower and it's called hypomania and when bipolar 2 patients are in the middle of it they just can't wait for that few days of hypomania. In bipolar 1 there are roughly seven plus stays of hyper mania and bipolar 2 one gets roughly four days of a lesser mania called hypomania. From my experience in helping bipolar 1 people my mother was bipolar 1. They need much attention when they go into hyper mania because they tend to get wild. You know some examples are they spend too much money or all their money or go into debt. Other examples are they drive fast and very reckless. The other thing that's common is they get sexually promiscuous with anybody that will satisfy their needs. They're not very picky. But in my experience as a bipolar 2 person the time I need most of the help is when I'm in my depressive mode and that's the majority of the time for me. I only get a break from it when I experience the hypomania. But when I'm in a depressive mode it takes me down to a dark deep world of despair and hopelessness. I feel worthless and useless. I like I equated to be like being in quicksand in the more you struggle the deeper you go in the hole. I tried to dig myself out but my hands are bloody from digging and my whole body it hurts and I'm tired. I'm more tired than normal and my body feels beaten up and I'm exhausted and I'm just about ready to give up hope when boom hypomania comes and I actually take a bath. I get out of my pajamas. I put on street clothes you know and I start living my life again. So that's what the difference is between the two bipolar's. But there's 10 ways I've been told that you could use all of these. Some of these. Any of these. If somebody is in an episode. One, be mindful. Be a mindful conductor of activities. That means don't take your hypomania friend out for a beer or cruise and for drugs or something like that. You should pick a calm activity like going to the movies or you know playing a board game or just a couple of friends getting together. And two, you got to set boundaries for yourself. What you will tolerate and what you absolute absolutely won't. And you got to stick to it. They lose respect for you and they won't listen to you anymore if you don't stick with your boundaries. Three, you need to come up with a plan for the bad times and you don't hit them when they're in the bad times. You hit them when they're in a good place and they have been for a few days. And then you make the plan. You have your partner or friend tell you when they notice the symptoms. You may not know you're having the symptoms. It's just the way the illness is. Five, learn as much as you can about the illness. You need to do that yourself as a patient, but also your caregivers should be reading and watching videos and doing research to understand your disease. Number six, this is important to do with the person's consent only. You document their mood. You keep a journal and you just write happy face for happy face. They were happy this morning and then this afternoon something happened and there's a frowny face. Turning this into the doctor may help him better understand what you're going through with your episodes. And he's just taking an educated guess on whether you have bipolar one or bipolar two. Know your place. Seven, know your place. You do not play doctor with the doctors. I had this episode last week in that my PCP didn't know anything about a particular diagnosis for my children. And I had to educate him on what it was, but he told me honestly he knows emergency medicine and family health care and that he appreciated getting the information, but that he was the doctor. So he put me in my place. And I'm fine with that. I advocated for her. Eight, have a plan in place in case you have to call the police and only call the police as a last ditch effort. Nine, take good care of yourself physically and mentally. If you need someone to talk to get a counselor, take and join a support group for caregivers. I did that and it helped me greatly. Ten, take advantage of the functioning times. When things are good, try to talk about these plans that you need to have in place in case. Well, not in case, but when you cycle again. One thing is that bipolar is cyclic and the bad times are coming around again. Then you're going to have good times and then you're going to have bad times and it's just going to be going on and on like that. If I've helped you any way, could you please like, comment and subscribe? Yes, we're growing and I appreciate everyone when they leave me comments. Good or bad, at least it's a discussion and that's where we need to be. Thank you very much and you have a blessed day. It's still running. Oh my God.