Thanks for the great reply.
She typically wants to quit facebook and feels bad for neglecting the house and kids. Mostly she gets upset nobody comented on her "Preaches" and IF some poor soul does comment.. she spams them with another four or five over-zealous comments after their one or two word remark. She "connects" everything and relates things that are compleetley A-Biblical to a half quoted verse taken out of context. then justifies her crazy behaviour with things like "well what about that guy that walked around naked for a year". She also posts LOTS of youtube videos with her message she's trying to put across in there somewhere.
she doesn't get abrasive.. mostly over excited, over zealous and loving and gets very hurt if people dont comment or reply.. then she frets and gets anxious over it and tries to over explain simple things.
When she starts coming down, she deletes the hundreds of photos she has uploaded, and all her comments (which takes days).
Then she de-activates her account.
Within a week she's back on there because she's a social person and then before we know it "just a few" photos turns into hours of uploading.
over the last 10 years she has wanted to be averything from a florist, cake decorator, muffin baker, fashion designer, photographer, artist, and can never settle or stick to one vocation. It changes literally week to week.
She is often "manic" and goes through a high phase every couple of months. Only 4 weeks ago did she have a
real meltdown where she became psychotic. IE believeing God told her he was coming back.
So she drove to the church blowing the horn and calling people to come and be taken with her.. then she lay in the parkinglot and waited while the ants bit her. The kids were runing around her in what is currently a construction area. Then over the days it turned into believing she could speak in various languages that she obviously couldn't. Staring at the sun so she could see Angels. Believing she IS an angel.. believeing heaven and earth are one and she's immortal, she looked at me and caled me her dad and started asking me (as if i was her dad) why I wasn't around and saying she misses me.. talking about being a twin and calling people by names she knows aren't their own.
I believe it started aroung 8-10 weeks ago when she started going on about starting her own church where everyone is accepted.. a rastafarian church and all the religions are welcome and nobody is wrong.
Naturally, nothing I say is right. Everthign is "not supporting" and "this is why I don;t want to be with you" ...there is no reason with her no matter how nicely i say it.
Yeah, she got it bad that time.
she's curretly still in the Mental health unit. she's starting to recover and is asking about the kids finally. so I hope she will be released this week.
She has admitted what she did was wrong but cant understant that it wan't God.. it wasn't the Devil. it was just the illness.. she's still trying to spiritualise everything.
I guess i'm here to learn more.. I found it hard to cope with her moods.
one day i'm the light of her life.. a week or two later she regrets marrying me, loves someone else and wants a divorce. It's pretty hard knowing what is real and what is the illness. This is al pretty new to me.. i've been trying to ignore it and protect her because I din't want ther labelled as crazy even though I have long supected (secretly) that she does have some slight Psychological isues.
6 weeks ago during the build up, if she had walked out I would have actually been happy. I didn't realise it was just the illness. She's always denied she had a problem because she doesn't want to be like her mother, who has been Bi-Polar for the last 40 years.
it's actually somewhat of a relief knowing i'm not a bad husband and that she really is actually crazy sometimes.. it makes it easier to cope with knowing it's not really our relaionship that's broken.. it's just periodic chemical imbalances.
thanks for your kind support by offering your story.. it's sortof nice to know she isn't the only one.
oh man! That's gotta be rough for everyone.... her, you ...the kids.
So am i to understand that she has been recently diagnosed? Has she been on meds this whole time or just started now once hospitalized?
It sounds like she's gone untreated for a long time and in denial.
How early in the marriage did she start to exhibit the symptoms?
Listen, let me first tell you something to encourage you.... much of what you said regarding her thinking of you one way, then the exact opposite sounds to me very much like the sickness talking. Unfortunately, to an "NT" (a neuro-typical), those words and deeds stick with you and haunt you and really hurt a relationship. Think of it like a kind of involuntary drunken state where your judgment is impaired and inhibitions lowered. It's especially worse when you go untreated, remain in denial and never address what's really happening.... When a bipolar person doesn't learn about what bipolar really is, they don't learn how to understand themselves...how to even see it correctly once the episode has passed. Ignorance and denial is the worst thing for not only the patient, but for those around them. Psychologically, this is so traumatic and devastating. Think of what it does to you psychologically, now imagine the confusion, the conflict and the disrepair one must feel who goes through it. It's hard to explain...what i mean is, it sounds like your wife is finding it hard to realize what has been happening because her delusions weren't acknowledged as delusions....not by herself or others...so what happens is that delusions, as opposed to hallucinations, are harder to route out since they become ingrafted to your way of thinking...your way of believing and if that's all you know, you believe that is really who you are or what reality is. Does that make sense?
I don't really know for sure how long i've been struggling with bipolar...maybe since teen years? or earlier...not sure, but knowing what i know now about the illness, myself and how i manifest my symptoms, i can look back and pin point almost every depressed and manic episode... i can recognize in retrospect what was clearly manic behavior etc. I can even recognize or acknowledge it while it's happening, but really do something about it when the meds start kicking in. It sounds to me that whatever she went through with her mother and the stigma that went along with that was unfortunately too painful for her ...... something that not only affected her when growing up, but continued to rob from her into her adult years. The longer you go untreated, the more severe the episodes become.
The way many, if not most, people deal with very painful experiences are to not just block them out and bury, but to do everything to avoid any hint of anything that may remind you...because remembering feels too close to reliving it, so for those like your wife, who, as a child, not only witnessed the albatross that is this unrecognized illness, but was reared by the instability of it, is especially prone to avoid and deny its existence out of fear of it happening to them. I suspect that her mother too suffered with this illness for a long time before getting treated if at all. At the least, it was probably not something out in the open, explained to the kids, or talked about in the way families regard other illnesses. The irony is that by her avoiding her mother's illness and fearing the stigma, the exact opposite has occurred in her own life. Denial causes a person to remain in ignorance....ignoring what is happening just compounds the problem and feeds it. This sort of thing only serves to complicate treatment.
The problem is not the label, it's our society's lack of sympathy, lack of empathy and calloused prejudice for those whose illness happens to take place in the organ located above the neck. Any other physiological illness
is looked upon with great understanding and rallying sympathy....but not so for us....Even the institutions that are supposed to treat us, often patronize us, ignore us and strip us of even more dignity. People like us live in fear and secrecy because of how we're perceived and treated by the rest of society. We are raised to believe that being mentally ill is either the butt of jokes, criminal, somehow the person's own doing or something to be greatly feared. Most people really don't even like to try to empathize... it's one of those illnesses most people avoid like the plague and just thank their lucky stars it doesn't have anything to do with their lives. It's too messy for most people....even christians. To make matters worse for those of us who are xians, the church has failed us even more by calling it the devil or sin, which is the reason your wife is trapped in her thinking. She's finding it hard to reconcile what she has learned with what she is experiencing, so she is confused and trying to make some sense out of it....still trying to avoid the fact that she is sick like her mother is/was sick... or rather that she too has inherited this biological illness. Since many xians find this illness a challenge to their erroneous, over-simplistic understanding of God's nature, they end up going a step further with a 2nd label by calling it sin or the devil's doing....which is so extremely painful and harmful to those who suffer from this already shameful disease.
See that's the real killer..... the fear, the denial, the secrecy and the shame. Your wife would have gotten treated a long time ago for this and perhaps could have avoided a good chunk of her exponential instability were it not for society's shame. I'm not ashamed for having this illness, but others are and so, in time, it wedges itself inside like an inchworm and eventually makes me feel ashamed as well.....and boy does that imposed shame like to show up during the times you need it least..i.e during the suicidal/depressions when shame is already part of the delusional thinking.
The best thing you can do to protect her is to understand this illness yourself, make sure she gets the best treatment and never make her to feel "crazy" and ashamed for suffering from something she could not help being born into. It sounds like you truly have been a good and loving husband and have had to deal with a lot especially when you don't know what you're dealing with. I'm so glad you are starting to recognize the chemical culprits and that she is finally getting treatment. I suggest you get treatment as well, by way of counseling or joining one of those support groups that are for the loved ones of the mentally ill. I'm also glad you're here....it really shows how much you love her and how important it is for you to mend the relationship. Stick around and you will see how alone she really isn't in her experiences and the more you see the similarities, the more you will realize it's not her true heart talking, but the sickness itself. This will help you to forgive the pain her words cause and be more steadfast in your patience, which by the sounds of it, it seems like you've had the patience of a saint. I pray that God's loving kindness will carry your sadness and help you bear this burden. Your wife is very blessed to have you on her side.
Anyway, i'm glad to share my story. Please feel free to ask me anything about my personal battle with this illness if it helps you to understand your wife more.... most of us here are very open about this stuff. And remember, the more you know, the better equipped you will be to help your wife overcome the obstacles. Allow her to realize this at her own pace and take this in. Has she been in therapy before this or planning to be once she's out of the hospital? If she hasn't, i strongly suggest she finds a good therapist as part of her treatment. The 2 should go hand in hand. Perhaps later, the 2 of you may benefit from couple's counseling since this illness can be a strain on any relationship.
I've never gotten to the point of a psychotic break like your wife has but i've had psychotic features. Fortunately i was treated before it got to that. What you mentioned about misconstruing a verse and relating everything to something spiritual and seeing everything as a sign from god etc....is something i have experienced exactly. Like i said, this happened pre-facebook days Thank god! But listen, i no longer do that anymore or allow myself to trust my manic thoughts that tend to want to make these associations. I have a whole theory about this that i'll tell you about another time, but it's basically your brain trying to make sense of the faulty wiring, and thus the need to make neat categorical associations that have some semblance of logic to them even though they are nothing but illogical. I believe the insistence to make them seem logical, even after you sober up, has to do with one's inability to face the pain of not being able to reconcile these 2 worlds. To realize you really aren't a prophet and all of it nothing but a grand neurological light show....not god's doing or god's fault. That is why she then turns to blaming it on satan....because it's a hard pill to swallow once you realized all that spiritual elation came no where else but from your broken brain which would then make you to not only feel like a fool, but no longer feel as though you're particularly special or chosen by god which is all part of the delusional thinking. It's called delusions of grandeur.
Thanx for sharing and listening....it has helped me work some of this stuff out for myself as i recalled what it was like to feel what your wife now feels. So hang in there. There is hope. Treatment can be very effective and greatly improve one's quality of life, but most of all, we have a hope in Christ....that whatever trials come our way....it is better to suffer with him than without him. At the end, it's the only thing that makes sense in what sometimes seems like an absurd existence.
My thoughts and prayers are with your family
.....so yea, mania is a hard one to let go of....but that is precisely why it's so seductive and dangerous. Not only because of the aftermath once it gets out of control, but as you mentioned: the crash that follows. Another dangerous part about it, is what often happens to people experiencing manic....that's when you don't think you need the meds, or when you shrug off going to dr. and seeking treatment since everything feels peachy keen. That sucks about your anti-psychotics.... too bad they have that effect. Did you stop taking them? Are you not wanting to take them because of that 'ugh" feeling? Have you tried other meds? I say, keep trying them till you find the least "ugh" ones. 
