Understanding Father-Daughter Relationships: The Unique Struggles of Women with Bipolar Disorder
A father is his daughter’s first love. He is your first male relationship that teaches you how to navigate friendships and partnerships with males. He teaches you the inner workings of a social system filled with disappointment and discrimination and how to achieve success even after you’ve failed. He teaches you to be tough in a world that owes you nothing except the opportunities you make for yourself. He teaches you how to keep your head down while holding it up high. But what happens when that father-daughter dynamic is severed by the traumas and tragic circumstances associated with mental illness, specifically Bipolar disorder, which changes the way you relate to each other and threatens to alter the course of a bond forged in love and mutual respect?
My father is a formative, charismatic and dynamic man. He wasn’t present for the first five years of my life, not because he didn’t want to be but rather he was working hard to pave the way for my mother and I to move from third-world Guyana to a country with more opportunities for his daughter, Canada. However his absence in the first formative five years of my life took a toll on my emotional development. I often felt lonely or second-best to his life in Canada and I missed his presence in my day-to-day life back home. This feeling of second-best and sometimes neglect didn’t change once my mom and I moved to Canada. Rather it persisted because he still had to work hard at his job to provide for us and he had an active social life that seemed to take precedence over his relationship with me.
I think these complex feelings of abandonment led to feelings of depression and anxiety at an early age. I was a highly emotional child and my dad was and still is more stoic in personality, so we had difficulty relating to each other then and now. Put it this way, my energy always leaned toward the manic and hyper and he was always still and calm. These differences led to a lack of understanding and a perceived lack of support especially when it was clear I was dealing with mental illness in my adolescence.
My father was always strict when it came to school. I remember when I was 7-years-old my teacher contacted my dad and told him that his daughter couldn’t read well and I was being transferred to the English as a Second Language program. My father didn’t get mad but he didn’t ask me any questions about what my teacher had said. Rather, he instructed me to read all the books I currently owned until he was satisfied that the teacher was wrong. In reality, I was being bullied at school. I became extremely anxious when reading-out-loud in class. But what I thought was a punishment was actually my father teaching me a valuable life lesson: never let anyone tell you you can’t do something. Because of that pivotal and challenging moment in our relationship I became a voracious reader and ultimately a successful writer.
This is just one of many examples in my father-daughter relationship where the blessing in the lessons he tried to teach me was lost. When I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder the relationship really suffered. I felt isolation and fear that I had lost my father forever but the fear wasn’t just mine it was his too. I was no longer the daughter he knew and navigating this new element of my personality was extremely difficult for a man who took pride in my usual productivity and excellence. No longer was I thriving like he taught me to. I was barely surviving, flailing and vulnerable in a world he taught me would eat me alive if I didn't toughen up. I know my return to post-secondary education gave him hope but Mania and substance use derailed my course for years to come. I always believed it was disappointment my father felt but I think it was actually fear and hopelessness for his eldest daughter who couldn’t find the strength to plant her feet on solid ground.
After much self-reflection I realize as an adult my father experienced a lot of emotional turmoil with the Bipolar I disorder diagnosis that I was too in my illness to recognize. Early on in my journey I self-stigmatized blaming my father and then the world for not understanding or accepting me. I blamed my illness for my father not loving me, I played the victim of a circumstance I could not change but could learn to manage and I understand now that taking control of my illness is all my father wanted for me.
Before this enlightenment came there was a lot of resentment and emotional volatility aimed directly at my father and I would watch every misunderstanding turn to a rift in the relationship between him and I. There is a perceived expectation between fathers and daughters that “daddy will always be there to catch you when you fall,” and if he’s not there he’s a bad father. But I challenge this notion. With Bipolar I disorder I fell fast and far outside my father’s reach or understanding. I slipped away from him, I left him behind on a course he couldn’t save me from because I had to learn to save myself. The greatest lesson my father has ever taught me is self-sufficiency and I had to learn to take the necessary steps toward wellness and back to him on my own. My dad and I still have a complex relationship even with my sobriety and remission being evident. There are things we just can’t talk about right now but the biggest feeling that lives between us now isn’t pain or resentment, it's hope. I know that we communicate better now than we have in years because he started cooking my favorite meals again and if you know my dad he is most loving in the kitchen.
I can honestly say my dad isn’t the first person on my support team I call in a crisis but he is the first to call all the hospitals in the city to find out where his daughter is. He is an important part of my support system choosing to play a role in the background but nevertheless always there. I have yet to address some of the trauma that contributed to my Bipolar and substance use with my dad because we are not there yet. I’m taking it one day at a time and continuing to foster an environment where open dialogue and ongoing growth are key.
My dad is and will always be my first love despite the challenges we’ve faced and might face in the future.One of the most valuable lessons he taught me was: “There are three things in life you can’t get back once they are gone. A lost opportunity, a shot arrow and the spoken word.” With so many lost opportunities to communicate with my father throughout my journey to wellness, I will never lose another opportunity to tell him how much I love him and what his support, wisdom and tough love has meant to me. What can I say I’m a card-carrying Daddy’s Girl. Love you Daddy.
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