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I am currently not working, partly due to me, and partly due to circumstances beyond my control. Anyway, I'm not working.
When I was hired back in September I didn't tell my new employer that I struggle with and have been diagnosed with Bipolar. Yet, I knew I had to have time off during the week each week to attend therapy and visits with the Pdoc because I am still in the stumbling around with meds stage (though currently I am unmedicated).
I am now unemployed, unmedicated, but not totally untreated in that I am attending weekly therapy with my new therapist as of October 1st. Yet the new therapist wants me to attend DBT classes which are held once a week for 10-12 weeks and are 2 hours in length. In addition, I must attend a 1 hour therapy session each week or be removed from the classes.
I would also have every 2 weeks or so, a 30 minute to 1 hour Pdoc meeting. This results in approximately 6-8 hours every week for 10-12 weeks for which I would have to tell something to a new employer so that I wouldn't be fired for running through their attendance penalties, occurances, or demotions, and so that my probationary period won't look really horrendous.
I really need the DBT classes when they start in December and right now I need the therapy for my depressive side is escalating again. Yet I also must work in order to feed my daughter and myself and to buy gas to get to the appointments not to mention work, etc.
If I tell the new employer I am BP, well just face it there is still a negative stigma, then it throws up a "red flag", and I'll not be hired (given another reason) OR I don't tell and then something goes south and I need the appointments and can't go for risk of losing my new job.
Therapy, docs, and groups apparently are geared for those who simply do not work or stay at home. I don't have that option, I am the main breadwinner, I can't not work and yet I am getting more and more ill with this as I get older.
Does anyone have any advice, thoughts to share, or anything?
You really do have a tough choice. I am not sure I can help. I am newly diagnosed, and presently extremely depressed.
Today, I realize that i have been bp for decades. Now, having hit rock bottom, after some really crazy behavior, I am so guilt filled it is unbearable.
I do wonder: if I had not been in denial,and had sought and received treatment earlier would there have been a better result? Maybe. Possibly, if I could have made treatment the priority earlier in my life, then the fall would not have been so long and hard? I think knowing you need treatment and neglecting could be just another type of denial.
Bill, guilt and regret are common themes for those of us who spent a lot of our lives undiagnosed, or who just didn't want to get help early on. I wasn't diagnosed until my forties.
But all we have is NOW, and we need to start wherever we are to build the best lives we can. This isn't always easy, but it's the only path that makes sense.
Marie, your situation is a difficult one with needing to work and also needing to be at therapy, etc. I think you have to do the therapy and DBT sessions, etc., and therefore maybe need to find a job with different hours?
I wish I had more helpful advice. I struggled as a single Mom for years raising my daughter.
Do you have any family that can help?
Maybe all we can offer right now is understanding.
