J

My husband was being physically and emotionally abusive towards me as well as cheating on me. I was scared to leave because of a lot of different things but recently I got the courage up to face those fears and keep my foot down when I told him I wanted to separate. Now he and his mother are trying to figure out how they can take away my custody of our 18 month old son. I'm not really worried about him taking away custody as he is a sex offender, but I am concerned that his mother may. Can a non-parent take away custody from someone when that person isn't actually doing anything to warrant it? I'm not keeping anyone from seeing our son including his father, I don't abuse my son, and our social worker has had nothing but praise for my parenting skills. However, I am an unemployed and broke student. Can someone with more money just take my son away just because I'm poor?

Here's some background: Several months ago I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I was originally on Paxil and Depakote but I lost my insurance and couldn't afford the Depakote. I was then tried out on Geodon but it just made me sleep too much and it didn't resolve my problems with anxiety and panic attacks... when I had a panic attack on it, my doctor switched me to Klonopin. When I first started on Klonopin it was such a huge relief. It was like a huge weight got lifted off my shoulders. For the first time in I don't know how long I was able to relax. The knots that were always in my back that no one could work out released themselves on their own. But that didn't stop the panic attacks, and for a few weeks I was having one along with a blackout daily. That stopped though and then for a few more weeks everything was ok. But now I'm starting to feel depressed and anxious all the time again. I was worried I had gained a tolerance to the Klonopin and stopped it for a while thinking that if that was the case I should at least experience some withdrawal symptoms but I didn't. I started it back again hoping that the time off would mean it would work again but that wasn't the case, either. These days I just feel depressed and anxious and I lose my nerve and/or temper easily and it's easy for me to get overwhelmed because I can't stop myself from worrying myself to death about everything. I don't think my medication is working any more, that includes the Paxil. The biggest indicator that the Klonopin isn't working any more is that I've started biting my nails again (one symptom of my anxiety is I'm a chronic nail biter... I will bite my nails down until they bleed... if I'm not feeling extremely anxious though I don't bite them). I'm also having a very hard time concentrating on anything, including listening to what people are saying when they're talking to me.

I already have an appt made with my psych and plan on telling him about all of this. I just want to know some opinions and experiences. What do you think is going on, and what do you think should be done about it, and why? I'm just trying to get a glimpse of different perspectives.

I suspect that I may be type II, but there's a possibility of type I as well as in the past I have had some pretty extreme erratic behavior. Right now it's not so much extreme as it is erratic. Some days I am what I call "normal" - there's a reason behind every emotion, if I'm happy it's because something great happened and if I'm sad it's because something bad happened. I have unexplained mood swings though, and it's hard to tell if it's due to bipolar disorder or something else because they happen so quickly and there's no defined pattern to them that I can find. Sometimes it happens all of a sudden out of nowhere - I'll suddenly start feeling like I'm smart, confident, beautiful, ambitious, etc. and anything is possible. In the past this has led to everything from applying to jobs that I was under-qualified for confident that I would land them to partying "like a rockstar". Most common is for me to spend days researching some random subject and learning everything I can about it, or spending days working on some project, or cleaning the house, etc. without any sleep. It's not uncommon for me to have issues focusing or paying attention because my mind seems to be moving so quickly in so many directions. I can't seem to sit still to save my life either. Other times I will suddenly start feeling like I'm absolutely worthless, stupid, ugly, there's nothing I want to do, nothing I can do, and I basically just want to crawl under a rock and die. I try to sleep the day away and stay in bed even if I can't sleep because I just don't see the point in getting up. In fact I don't see the point in doing anything. I will let my house and myself go. There are other times where it seems to be a combination of the two - I'll be hyper but I'm still depressed and often these episodes turn in to angry outbursts. I feel like I can't control any of it and I have tried for a long time to get a grip with no success. I'm worried it's going to break up my marriage because when I get to feeling depressed or angry like this I'm ready to leave my spouse over the most insane stuff. What makes this confusing is that these mood swings can happen several times in one day and there's never a defined pattern to them. They also aren't always without any reason whatsoever - sometimes there's what I call a trigger, something small that for some reason makes me do a complete flip flop. People tell me to just think it through but that doesn't work because it's like my mood drives my thoughts and not the other way around. I don't have to be thinking I'm depressed to suddenly get depressed. I have been on several anti-depressants with mixed results. Some of them don't do anything at all, some of them make me go through the roof, and some of them just seem to intensify my mood swings. I also don't have any definable manias, that is to say that I have never maxed out my credit cards or anything else, and while I am guilty of making impulsive decisions they're never so dramatic as to completely ruin me (unless I'm depressed and the goal is to ruin me, heh). But I can actually see a pattern to it when I look back on my relationships and work history. There has been many a time I started or ended a relationship based on a mood swing, and the same applies to work. I usually seem to start relationships when I'm depressed and then kick them when I'm feeling better, and kick jobs when I'm depressed and pick them up when I'm feeling better. This wouldn't seem so strange if it wasn't for the fact that it all happens regardless of how things are actually going at work or in the relationship. When questioned later about why I did it I often draw a complete blank outside of it happening because of how I felt. On top of that, my closest friends - the people that understand me the most - are both diagnosed bipolar, and both say that they believe I am as well because I remind them too much of themselves.

Just for a little background, when I was 13 I was diagnosed with melancholia and post traumatic stress disorder. They tried me on Prozac first and that made me go through the ceiling. Zoloft did absolutely nothing except make me sleep, Paxil worked for a while and then as far as I know it stopped because I got all depressed again. Later on down the road I got on Paxil CR. It made me go through the roof at first and then I was normal for a while and then once again I crashed. Since then I've been going on and off it as needed. Right now I have been on it for 8 months. This is the first time I've continued to take it despite crashing and it has just became a nonstop day to day rollercoaster.

I want to go through diagnosis but no mental health professionals in my area will see me right now because I'm breastfeeding. Something has to be done though because this is beginning to break up my marriage and I'm also worried about the effects it can have on my son. I talked to my doctor about it and he feels there's reason enough to try me out on a mood stabilizer