0121 - Why Did Bipolar Do That? - Bipolar Relationships

00:00 - Temple (Host)
Why is he saying he's divorcing me? We've been married 10 years. We have two kids. What's going on? All right, well, welcome. What we're talking about today is why did bipolar do that? If you've been in a situation where you go, why did you say that I don't? That makes no sense. Things like we're getting a divorce, I'm leaving you right now. I'm packing my bag, it's over. Okay, that's one of the most common ones that I get a message for. Why is he leaving? Where is he going? Why is he saying he's divorcing me? We've been married 10 years. We have two kids. What's going on? That one's a hot topic. The other one is you're the enemy. Why does he say that? Has anybody ever felt that one? These are two of the most prominent topics. 

00:44
Dwayne is here on purpose. He is not the spouse of, which is primarily what this group is for is spouse, partners and sometimes parents of. But we get this special opportunity to put Dwayne in the spotlight and ask him some of those tough questions that we don't really get to ask our spouses when they're manic spouses. When they're manic, when they're in psychosis, it's very hard to get answers out of them when they're symptomatic, but afterwards, when things have leveled out more. 

01:15
I get a lot of answers because I do ask and I hope you do as well but it's really good to hear it from the perspective of somebody that's living with bipolar and what is going on. I mean, we can talk neurotransmitters and we can talk emotionality and all that stuff, but this is a really unique perspective for us to be able to hear it from somebody who has had to live it for a long period of time as to why certain things happen. So I haven't overprepped Dwayne, so he's a little bit in the hot seat. So I want everybody to just be very, very considerate and don't be hard on him. Okay, how? 

01:49 - Dwayne (Co-host)
are you doing Temple? Thank you for the warm welcome and I'm glad to be here. 

01:53 - Temple (Host)
Well, great, yes, I'm doing well. I'm really glad you're here and the conversation that you and I had previous, dwayne, I really feel like you're really the kind of person that we need to hear from in these times and your, you know, your transparency and your forthrightness is really, you know, it's really comforting. I mean, it's sometimes it's hard to hear the truth from people, but for me and, I think, a lot of people in this group, a difficult truth is better than nice, fuzzy lies. So feel free to be as honest and transparent as you're comfortable being, and I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and we'll get some feedback. Does that sound good? That's great Shoot, okay. Well, before we get into that, I wanted you to just go ahead and introduce yourself, dwayne, and talk about the Polar Oasis and what inspired you to get that started. 

02:45 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Wow, Okay, well, I am Dwayne. I am from Alberta, canada. I have bipolar one generalized anxiety, rapid cycle, mixed episodes daily. I've been suffering with bipolar since I was eight or nine and I'm 47. We started these rooms very similar to Clubhouse, but videos. Now for me, I have issues leaving the house. 

03:07
Somebody else who's in our group, who is about 20 or so years younger than myself, suffer with exactly the same symptoms the rapid cycle, all that such and such. So her level of anxiety is so high that she wouldn't be able to walk through the door Just a regular door so to go to the bathroom, all those little things we all take for granted she would struggle with. She was calling me up to 20 times a day and her issues were so severe that not only couldn't she work, which she had a degree in psychology and was teaching youth about mental health, so she can no longer do that. Her boyfriend had to take a full year off of work to watch her, and so I guess what I'm getting at was she was able to call me. We had that relationship. 

03:52
I play music and guitar and she would sing to the music while we were online together. So now she's vibrating high idle, which for a lot of people. When we're revving high myself, I don't want to be talked to, I don't want to be bothered. Try to think of it this way. Try to think of putting a thread through the needle and somebody bumping your arm every time you get close and see how quick and frustrated you get pissed off. That's an idea, that's just an idea. So when we're all high, idle like that, I would start playing music and next thing, you know, know, we would elevate back down and so we would use that to help each other. So we would use music to, you know, de-escalate our symptoms of being in mania, the high anxiety. So by doing that, I would ask her two words music or talk. And music would sing invisible string by Taylor Swift and lights on by Maggie Rogers. And in that time sometimes we'd have to repeat it a few times, but nevertheless her boyfriend was able to go back to work after a month. 

04:50 - Temple (Host)
I love that. I love that. I mean, that's really beautiful. It's really there's so much to that, duane, because there's a couple of different things, like on the biological side. I'm not sure if you're aware of this you probably are but when we sing, it vibrates the vagus nerve. You know, the vagus nerves are attached to your brainstem and it wraps around all different parts of your organs digestion and your chest, your breathing. There's so many connections. People that have an inflamed vagus nerve can experience dizziness, confusion, just to jump in there. 

05:29 - Samantha (Co-host)
Duane, I actually have a question for you, sure. So how do you, when you're rapid cycling right and what you're coping mechanism, it's awesome. But when you come out of the mania, do you have moments like when you look back and you're like, what did I do while manic? I guess I'm saying, like, how do you process reflecting on manic or anxiety or any of those high moments? How do you go about reflecting and learning from those experiences? 

05:58 - Dwayne (Co-host)
From that I can tell you with my wife been with her almost 25 years, so I've put the woman through the ringer in just about every sense you could think of, and I've been this way for quite some time. But how I've learned from it was by hanging out in the support groups and putting language to how I was feeling. And that was the important part, because I didn't have language to how I was feeling until six months ago. And considering that I've been through the system, I've been to treatment with addiction. I started cutting at 11. There was sexual abuse in there as well, so I got a full bag. 

06:29
But yet once I was able to figure out what made me manic, which was my job and after being able to say to my wife, after talking to a psychologist, it was her that figured something out about myself and about being able to communicate better to her. 

06:45
And that was the difference, because she could spot me and go okay, yeah, you're starting to talk faster than normal, you're starting to get revved up. Okay, you need to disengage. That's where someone like me goes and plays guitar, goes down, goes in the room, starts talking. What I noticed about all of that was the music helps us all, all of us that are in that room, and so communicating back and forth and finding people that you truly gel with, that's the number one thing, because if whoever was suffering like for me, I didn't trust anybody and everybody's against you because nobody can understand what you're going through. So you're so frustrated. Why can't somebody help me? That's what it boils down to. And so having people around you that you communicate to every day, all the time like I mean extreme communicate, and that what happened for me and my wife like two or three weeks ago, and it's now that next level so sorry, I'm not really sure if I answered that. 

07:38 - Samantha (Co-host)
No, you answered that beautifully. 

07:40 - Temple (Host)
Yeah, you're doing really great, Dwayne and I keep getting kicked out of here, so Sam and I are tag teaming, but just your transparency about your trauma. 

07:50 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Oh yeah, she was mentioning about the trauma and the history. 

07:53 - Samantha (Co-host)
Yeah, I think she was acknowledging how you're so transparent about it and I think that's definitely the first step in healing. And just speaking from me being the wife of a man who also experienced some level of trauma, I definitely like hearing you say that gives me a lot of clarity because I think for me that's my husband's next step personally is just he's accepted that he's bipolar, he's med compliant, but I think as far as truly like working through it and being comfortable, that's like the next step with being comfortable within himself. So it's communication, but like with pulling teeth. So I just love your transparency and I hope one day that we can also get there personally. 

08:30 - Dwayne (Co-host)
So thank you well, no, you're welcome and for like for me, all I want to do to be honest with you, is stop the 11 year old kid or being so frustrated, right, being so frustrated with life that you got nothing better to do than to cut because no one's listening. And out of all the years I grew up playing music, I started playing guitar when I was nine and I still play to this day. I was playing actually two minutes before I was here. That's why I was kind of almost late. But the communication thing is, the person has to feel comfortable with you and I know that's going to sound very strange coming from a spouse, but I would just say for for me, what my wife was doing, even though it was coming from her heart, it was actually making me worse. Can you give? 

09:10 - Temple (Host)
us another example of that, duane, I keep getting kicked out. What would you say was a way that your wife had approached you while you were manic. That shut you down. 

09:20 - Dwayne (Co-host)
She just would say like, yeah, you're starting to speak fast, starting to switch subjects, and so she'd be like, okay, you're starting to get worked up. I can see that you're moving around, you're starting to pace, starting to do different things. Your body needs to be stimulated, so it's okay. 

09:35 - Temple (Host)
Now we need to shut it down, go lay down and watch something on Netflix that has to do with birds, cause I love birds, it's something to relax and because that's something that you guys talked about ahead of time, about coping skills, of things that she could suggest for you to do, or did she just learn as as you guys went? 

09:52 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Um, it was all of the above and all I'm saying is that the more detailed it, or the last little bit, has been the most detail in the sense of building our relationship Right, and that communication put us on a whole new level. I mean just a whole new level with friendship, with the bond like, even like sexually. The whole experience is on a new level because of how well we're able to communicate. 

10:15 - Temple (Host)
Well, we're all definitely interested in hearing about that. I know that there's several relationships in the room, that there's a great divide at this point and the communication is almost impossible. And I, my husband and I, we do have coping skills music he doesn't play music, so he used to play keyboard. So it's good that you told us that because it reminded me that he did like to play the keyboard when he had one, and I'm going to find him one and bring it back in for him to do. It really does calm him down. But there are definitely times when there's a lot going on, that when you see your spouse starting to ramp up for me, I can get very irritated myself too, like, hey, come on, get together, we have things going on. You know what I mean. And that hurried attitude and energy I know can agitate him even more. And it takes a lot of practice to be able to slow yourself down as the partner right and to say, hey, what's going on? 

11:11 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and just oh sorry, go ahead Go ahead. 

11:16 - Temple (Host)
Kind of the flip side is. Can you give us some examples of things that don't work? Almost makes things worse. 

11:24 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Almost with trying to pry something out of you and it almost turns into like it's picking. You know what I mean. It's like okay, I just don't want to talk about that right now. I mean, and it's one of those things, but you don't know how to say it, because when you're sitting back on the chair, you're still wondering what's going on. You have no idea what's going on and someone's tapping you on the shoulder, asking you questions. Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's how we take it because you get hypersensitive, you get all of those little things in there you know. 

11:50 - Temple (Host)
I mean, it makes perfect sense because I'm replaying a lot of incidences where I'm going what's going on? Where I start interrogating well, what's going on in your mind? I can't help you if I don't know what's going on. Can you? You just give me a word, give me a phrase, give me an emotion, and I'm sure it feels. Probably the same way I feel when he's rapid firing at me, right, and I think I well, I know it comes from a place of just wanting to stop the train before it goes off the tracks, you know, and like let's get to a solution as quickly as possible. If you could just give me something, I can do something. 

12:26 - Dwayne (Co-host)
The only way I can somewhat explain it about that is think of it like a sport dog, a dog that needs to be run more than average, and put it pent up in the house in a room for two or three days and don't run them or her and watch how they'll be running circles around the room. Give them that time where they get to go out, and for me that'd be the creativity part. That's where the guitar, writing, music, poetry all those things come together, and so when I'm not doing those, I'll use that. Like I mentioned, I think before about starting guitar at nine and six months ago I almost walked away from it and it's something that's been a part of my heritage for a long time. But my illness because I felt guilty I had to get rid of and sell all my things guitars and whatnot I spent 35 years collecting all went out the window in a matter of like three days because of addiction. 

13:12
And yeah, and not like I'm not going to say not in a bad way, but it was in order for me to be where I'm at right now. 

13:20
I had to go through that. I almost walked away from it and if it wasn't for helping Lauren playing the music, she's like it's not just the song, it's you playing, doing all these things in between, and that's why I still started playing and I started being creative, meaning when I'm down in the rooms playing the guitar, doing my two to three hours a day of like my creativity, I'm telling you, get your husband the keyboard and get him to come and just kind of hang out, because then he's going to have something, something to do it with or somebody to do it with. Because the biggest thing about us is that you feel so alone. You have a spouse laying right beside you but yet you feel alone because you know she doesn't understand how you feel, but you don't even know what's going on. You're trying to figure out what's going on and so you're completely engulfed in that and that's where the sorry so go ahead. 

14:09 - Temple (Host)
No, I mean, I just want to. I don't want you to feel like you're talking into a vacuum either. I wanted to just switch gears just a little bit, because I know that there's some, a couple of people that are going to ask some tough questions here, and I wanted to bring up this topic, this book that I've read, and it's called why does he do that? It's by Lundy Bancroft, and this one is about inside the minds of angry and controlling men. Okay, this is not a book about bipolar disorder, but this is a book that I have read, and and the way it helped me was I got a much more clear idea of differentiating between mental illness and abuse. And so, dwayne, I'll you, I'm going to ask you to jump in here in a minute to get your feedback. 

14:56
But, uh, you know, I gently want to say there is a line between mental illness and abuse. There's things that are said and a lot of people are told you know, you should leave your spouse because of things that happened during mania. And that's for each person to make that individual choice when they've reached a limit, or if they can go through more therapy, or if the spouse has more treatment to be had. That's up to each individual couple. But here's just a couple of myths I want to say and, duane, if you have some feedback on this, let me know. 

15:30
But a myth about people that are abusive when it comes to verbally abusive or physical abuse this is mostly verbally, mentally abusive is that we justify it if they were abused as a child. We justify it if they were abused as a child or if their past partner abused them, or if he abuses people that he loves the most because of what he's been through. He abuses because he holds in his feelings too much. He's an aggressive personality. He has anger that is undealt with. He has mental illness. He hates women, fear of intimacy, low self-esteem. 

16:09
Okay, these are some things that we will excuse behavior for, but actually psychologically, no, those are myths. Those aren't reasons that people abuse. Those are reasons that people have their own illnesses depression, anxiety, and with mental illness, with a psychotic disorder like bipolar, there is some gray areas there. But we should not be excusing extreme behaviors of verbal and emotional abuse with excuses like well, his dad beat him up or his last wife was a witch. Those things actually psychologically don't match. They're separate, because there's lots of people that have been abused. I've been abused sexually and physically and mentally and emotionally, and I have no excuse for treating other people that way. I had to go to counseling a long time and fix it. What do you think of that, duane? Have you been in a position where you felt like is this because of the way I've been treated, or is this my mental illness and what parts do I have control over? 

17:21 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Well, what I'll try and do is I'll try to paint you the picture from a kid and hopefully I'll try to do my best to answer that. So when I was about five, six and seven, my uncle used to pull my pants down and touch me in front of people, and he used to do that several times in the run of a night, even in a party type atmosphere. Then, when I was nine years old, I got hit over the head with a bottle, cracked my head open, and that's when everything changed for me. When it came to just something switched. Everybody started treating me different. I was never a part of a group or anything ever again, except for playing with my father, playing music with my father. 

17:56
So, man, all I can tell you is that I was angry my whole life and I had been a self-hater my whole life. And only because, finding out from my talking to my wife and plucking a sentence out of that what do you mean? Your uncle used to do that to you, and then, when she started asking questions, that followed suit. Now everything makes sense. I asked for help. Nobody was there. I wasn't good enough when I was a kid, so why should somebody care now? And I carried that my whole life and it wasn't until like two months ago, a month ago, that I was actually okay with what's happening Now. As for getting out of control, I can tell you that, not understanding my manias and hypersensitivity and all of that, oh, I could have saved myself so many years, so many years of misery if someone would have told me at 10 years old hey, Dwayne, yep, you are a little bit different. You know that there's different routes to the same a public space with people you don't even know? 

19:03 - Temple (Host)
I think the last few sentences it probably dropped off, but what I had said was that you know, many of us experience physical and sexual abuse. I'm one of those as well within my family, and had repressed it to the point where I didn't know until I was much later in life and I was the angry one. 

19:20 - Samantha (Co-host)
I can 100% also relate to what you're saying. My husband, at his worst, is violent and it took the proper medication to finally get him to a place where he doesn't rage. But his psychiatrist actually said during his last meeting, which I think was super great she said rage comes from sadness. Turns to anger, turns to blackout rage, and if you don't take care of sadness, that's where that rage comes from. So would you agree with a statement like that, like what I just said, dwayne? 

19:48 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Yeah, yeah, I could see that Because see my whole life. Like here's what was funny. So when I got hit in the head, things changed for me. But when you go into high school at least here in Canada you know you have like an entry level exam that you got to go into, at least here in Canada. You know you have like an entry level exam that you got to go into. They're not an exam, but you know what I mean Like an IQ test to go in there. Well, I got held back, kind of thing. So I got slowed down from then on out I never felt like I fit in. Then, when I left high school, right, they even told me don't even apply to the universities and the colleges because you're not smart enough to get in. 

20:17
So, they said basically, on your IQ, you're a truck driver. Now, I have nothing wrong with a truck driver, because I've been a truck driver for almost 10 years, but that's what they told me being 17 years old. So by then I'd been playing guitar quite a while and playing in front of people, and not one person had said to me wow, you got this music thing going. You know, yeah, you don't have the grades to get in, but there's other alternatives. That would have been life altering for me and, yes, I was angry my whole life because I got bullied in school and then I got big and then I spent my whole life being upset and resentful because of how my life turned out, and meanwhile it was my own doing all along. I don't know if that answered your question. 

20:53 - Temple (Host)
Well, there's two layers to that, because the head trauma is very relevant. When people have traumatic brain injury, it really changes the format of their future. And if you does, anybody follow Dr Amen, because he does a brain scan to see the three dimension of the brain and it shows that there's blood flow that stops in certain areas after a traumatic brain injury. He does scans of football players and you know, it shows that their hippocampus is damaged and then that's your emotional regulator. So you don't know, I mean that hit in the head could have been the catalyst to a lot of things that have happened that you didn't have control over. So what we're talking about here is why does he do that? And Janice is here, and I think Janice is going to have a good question for us. Her particular situation is very shocking and I'm just going to see what your question is, janice, and see if Dwayne might have any reflection on that. Okay, so if you're still here, janice, go ahead and unmute. 

21:51 - Janice (Guest)
Actually, I had to flee my husband 10 days ago, so my kids and I are currently homeless. We're looking for shelter. I've been renting an Airbnb, but I talked to Julie fast and she thought that he was in a psychotic, dysphoric mania and we weren't safe. 

22:05 - Temple (Host)
So, okay, hold on. Let me just take that in for a second, because we've all been very concerned about you, jenna, so I'm actually really relieved to hear that. Thank you. 

22:14 - Janice (Guest)
It's a very difficult time and he's not responding to any of the lawyers letters or responding to anything with regard to child support. He's not putting money into the accounts. There's a lot of stuff going on, but the basic question I have, blaine, is my husband wasn't always bipolar, at least not to my knowledge, and I've known him since I was 18 and I'm 48 now, so it's 30 years. He got very sick. He had a severe episode for the first time five years ago. Now he still does not believe he's sick. He's only had one psychiatric assessment. The psychiatrist at the time had told him he'd had a psychotic episode and should have been medicated. He was supposed to go back and he never has. Now I know he doesn't believe he's sick, even though his sister was institutionalized today because she has schizoaffective disorder. 

22:57
My father told me because my father's staying at my home Now, he told my nanny my former nanny on Saturday because she went to clean the house, because he asked her to clean the house, because he wasn't capable of doing so, and he said you know, janice wasn't a good partner to me. Imelda, she would say you know you're exercising too much because he would exercise six hours a day sometimes and therefore you're bipolar. Or you don't eat any food, so you're bipolar, or you're raging, so you're bipolar. And he said you know, just because my sister, my father and grandfather were mentally ill, imelda, it doesn't mean that I am. So I'm just trying to understand how someone can be in so completely unaware of what's wrong and how. I mean, or do you think he knows on some level? I'm curious as to how, because I mean he's so full of rage, so full of rage, and I don't understand how you don't see that as being not normal, when you were a happy person for the 25 years previous to that. 

23:51 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Well, trying to, I guess, accept it. I mean, I guess it's like people in addiction right, denial is the first, I guess the first thing. But in my case I always knew I was off because everybody treated me off. I just could never explain it. There was a reason why I got into alcohol and drugs. I had to go to treatment center. I could never keep relationships, I couldn't keep anything for that fact, and then I didn't want to accept it either. Oh, bipolar. 

24:15
Well, people treat you like a radiation spill when it comes to mental health. I watched it happen in two treatment centers. So a lot of people are afraid, men included, everybody, the rooms that I host or whatever in Discord. People just have nowhere to go. There's nothing from the hospital to when you get home. All everybody does is give you a phone number. 

24:36
I'm sorry that you're going through what you're going through, janice, to begin with, because that's tough, but the one I guess that's always used to being pissed off. I come from a very big family and I can honestly tell you with sincerity that the only time they ever wanted something from me was when they wanted it lifted or they wanted somebody punched out. That's what I grew up around and for me I had to read things over and over again it took probably about eight or nine years to get properly diagnosed and they say usually it takes around the 10-year mark. But that whole thing is try to introduce him to something, get him to watch some stuff, a YouTube video and say, hey, look, here's the symptoms that you expressed, yes or no, and go over it with him. 

25:15 - Temple (Host)
That's the only advice I could say, because if you can't get past the denial, you got to basically tell him look man no-transcript, and I'm just really glad that you were able to get through to Julie fast, janice, and for her to clarify for you that he is in a psychotic disorder and he may be stuck there right now, but eventually there is a breakthrough. There always has to be. We just don't know when. But you, you have to keep yourself safe in the meantime until that happens. And if you're able to email him or you're able to text him, you know, like Dwayne said, and just be honest about this is what I know, this is what I feel. Let me know when you're ready to to work through it with me. 

26:39
But you being in a dangerous situation, being deprived of relationship, finances and, you know, verbally abused on a consistent basis, he's not going to have his breakthrough that way. It has to be kind of like with addiction. It's almost in in the loss of things that the reality sets in. But when you're manic and it and stuck in psychosis as long as you're still receiving, then their illness has fuel. My husband stayed psychotic for months and months and months while he was charging $10,000 for marketing clients and then, when the money ran out, then so did his mania. So, janice, I really appreciate your question and I just think that you coming here, the times that you've coming here, is giving you the strength to be able to get through this, and I really we are praying for you. I hope you know that and we all think about you a lot. 

27:29 - Janice (Guest)
Thank you very much. It's very kind. I just I struggled because he's seen his sister. His sister had the illness for 15 years before him, so that's why I just don't understand how he can't see it or see what his grandfather was like and say, hey, I do that. 

27:42 - Temple (Host)
Sure, I mean. There's families full of alcoholics and it keeps going on down the line. I have a girlfriend whose mom died of alcohol poisoning and she drinks every single day and she's extremely smart, confident, compassionate, loving and she's wrecking herself, even though she watched her mom die from alcohol. It's not logical. They have to have the point where they're ready to see that they've lost more than it's worth to keep going. Unfortunately, I don't like when people have to hit rock bottom and, as a mental health advocate and somebody who's educated in mental health, intervention is more powerful than rock bottom. Intervention is safer than rock bottom and I always encourage people to keep trying and to stay in contact, to keep checking in. But you got to protect yourself at the same time. But you can send emails, you can send video chats, you can send messages of encouragement. 

28:31 - Janice (Guest)
I've only spoken to him once. He wrote me asking me to see him in person, was getting all emotional and sweet after just threatening me with a million things the day I left and I just said you know, I will meet with you at some point, but I won't meet with you until A you're in mental health treatment and B there's a third party, neutral party, with us, because I don't feel safe and I don't know if that's going to mean anything to him. I know that the lawyers are now talking, but I've been advised not to communicate with him for a while and so I don't want to reach out. I'm also very angry because I'm homeless before Christmas with my three kids. Like I've got a lot of dealing with in that respect. But anyway, thank you Absolutely. 

29:07 - Temple (Host)
It's a lot and you're not going to be much help to him when you're in a state of panic and anger. Please let us know if we can help you with any resources. Okay, dwayne, thank you for your feedback. I know that's a tough question. It's kind of like you know you're a token person and we're we're prodding you, but you're doing a great job and I appreciate your feedback. So, stephanie, if you're able to unmute, do you have anything that you want to ask or or speak on Hi? 

29:33 - Stephanie (Guest)
Yes, I am in a quieter space this week. I made that a priority. I guess the only question that I would want to ask is the best way to support when the spouse or caretaker is feeling positive and energetic and really excited and you're experiencing a lot of negativity and frustration. How do I meet you halfway in helping not support negativity, but meet you where you're at, without bringing myself down? Does that make sense? 

30:03 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Yes, it absolutely does, and I'm only smiling because I'm usually the pain in the ass causing the issues and, to be honest, that's what it comes down to, and I was going to ask about what I was getting. I was kind of be referred to as a sports dog being locked up in the house for a week. It's going to go crazy, literally. But for me, if you wanted to meet your husband in the middle, find something like a common ground that he's interested in For me, music or animals as an example, and I need a breakaway right, if you notice that he's starting to get agitated, either let him do what he wants to do, as in a passion or something that he wants to do, even coloring. I know it sounds ridiculous, but something as simple as coloring can help distract long enough. There's people in our group that actually, while I'm playing music, actually color. I actually have stuff from Australia that people colored while we were playing. For me, that's what works A lot of times. 

30:57
If they're running high like that and they're irritable, just try to let them fizzle out, because a lot of times when you're like that, you're hypersensitive. So what the average person you'd be like well, I just said it like this what's the big deal? But to them, your world's ending because there's no governor for your emotion. So you might say doing nice hair, and I might've thought you'd made a smart ass comment while I'm in the defense, straight away. So I don't even have time to really process things without getting upset and every emotion that I've ever had turns into rage. What someone was saying about the buildup and all of that, that's a true thing. So for me, that's all I would say is try to get them out of the conversation that you're talking about, get them out of the topic, get them out of the environment. I don't know if that helps or not. 

31:37 - Stephanie (Guest)
No, definitely Excellent. Thank you so much, and I like that tip. My husband is confident in me that I can sing and I'm not so sure, and he is an incredible guitar player as well. So there are moments where I'm like, okay, do you want to duet tonight? And we have some songs on Spotify. We created a playlist and we'll jam out. I'll try to jam out, but, yeah, we do make that a priority. So thank you for reminding me to make that even more a priority. 

32:00 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Being a guitar player myself, here's a quick question what's he interested in what music? 

32:05 - Stephanie (Guest)
Oh my gosh, oh everything. I should get him in the room right now. He's just in the other room working. 

32:11 - Dwayne (Co-host)
But not only that. No, I was going to say I'm good for all of that, but what's his? What would you say his favorite band is? 

32:17 - Stephanie (Guest)
Oh my gosh, lately it's a lot of like, I would say, john Denver, beatles, james Taylor, that type of music. 

32:26 - Dwayne (Co-host)
Well, what would work for me, and what does work for me, is, when I put one of the videos on, go on YouTube, like if I'm vibrating, it's like, okay, I need to disengage, I need to go back to when I was a kid to watch something that I enjoyed. So for me it was guitars and Eddie Van Halen as an example. So then I will go back and I will watch it. Here's the key thing. My wife also knows when I'm starting to run high like that, she'll put on something with birds or she'll put on something that gets me out of that irritability and it works almost instantly. And that's kind of what I was saying about Polar Oasis and how I worked it out and how we're all working together now because we're all suffering and we're able to be a little more. We're easier to be around, I guess. 

33:10
So you bring up anything guitars, anything that'll distract from the conversation. If it's about money, it's about whatever. Talk to him about gear. Ask him what's the latest pedal out that you want to get. I know that sounds ridiculous, right, but watch the information that he's going to give you on it. That's a great tip. Thank you, brent, you're welcome. 

33:22 - Temple (Host)
I love that, duane. I mean it's. You know we tend to overcomplicate and what I'm hearing is you're bringing kind of bringing us back to the simplicity of being able to connect with somebody on their level, where they're at, on their interests. When I know myself and a lot of the wives here, we want to solve a problem instead of looking to the core, which is how do we just reconnect? And as far as music, I know that that heals the world energetically, on the energetic scale when you sing. It's one of the highest vibrations that your body is in is when you're singing. So even if you're not a great singer we've talked about this in the group just play whatever feels good to you and allow yourself to hum along or sing along. If you're not musical, you don't have to play an instrument, but just being able to sing along raises the vibration of your vagus nerve and it stimulates the brain to create oxytocin, to have that loving feeling. So I really enjoy these tips that you've given us, duane. It's been very beautiful, I think, to me. 

34:27
Just to get back to some of the core ethics that we want in our marriage, which is just to connect we forget about coloring. My husband loves to color he loves and to play. Yeah, and to play Exactly. You know those coloring books that have all the weird like mandalas and stuff like that. I keep those around and a big jar of pins there so that my husband can just grab it whenever he needs to. But, danielle, I wanted to make sure I could say hi to you before we wrap and can you give us a little feedback about your creative side with your spouse and how do you feel about the conversation with Dwayne Hi? 

35:01 - Dani (Guest)
Temple. Hi guys. Hey, dwayne, thank you so much for coming today. It was really kind of nice to have your perspective because at first when I hopped in, it was like I don't know, I was just feeling all kinds of ways about what you were saying and then and then, as I just kind of like listened in and, with the girls, questions like Janice, stephanie, you guys are freaking awesome. I just think that you have so much value to provide to us, even though a lot of us have like mixed emotions about how to deal with our spouse and what's happening day to day and abuse versus mental illness and all these crazy feelings. But I really do cherish this time that you have created for us this afternoon because it is so valuable. I 1000% agree with my husband's super musical as well. He doesn't play any instruments but he likes to do DJs and he likes to do the different beats and this and that and you know I don't really like electronic music and I'm kind of a hater on him and I maybe need to check myself sometimes because allowing him to create and have his creative juices go in and stuff like that is so good for him. Thank you for sharing that, and what we like to do is my husband. He's also very 40. 

36:17
So when I first got with him, we started playing golf together. Now, I had never like actually played golf in my life like real golf, not mini golf and so I just started picking it up and we ended up we would play like three times a week, like just have that time together where it wasn't about the bills or what's for dinner or what are we going to do with the kids. It was like no, this is 18 holes, me and you, let's go, we can have that fun, get the endorphins out, walk and have fun, have good conversations too. So just getting back to those basics and stuff like that. Now we're more into riding bikes. As you guys know, we have an e-bike company, so we ride around a lot and that's really fun. 

36:58
Today he went out with his friends. They went into the back hills. We're like right against a marine base or like a military base, so there's like a bunch of just hills and trails and it was raining yesterday, so they went out and shoveled and I just let him have his time today and didn't say like oh well, you're taking off work early like I really want to, but I'm just allowing him to have that like base and time, away from his wife, his family, his responsibilities, and just having a good time I definitely enjoyed today. 

37:27
Thank you guys so much. Janice, I'm glad that you guys are on the road to being safe. I think that there's times where I feel like I'm not safe, you know, in mania and stuff. So to draw a boundary and just make him work on it, like force him to work on it, that's powerful and you go, girl, I pray about you and I'm super glad that you keep coming back. So anyway, thanks for having me. 

37:51 - Temple (Host)
Love you guys. Oh, danny, I love you so much. Thank you for your energy and for your words. It's always encouraging and you're just really a blessing to have here, and your transparency too. I mean, we all feel some type of way when we're hearing the other side of things and it's like, well, I'm doing everything I can, so why can't he just get it together? That's why we need to have these conversations, because there's a lot of reasons why and each couple has to learn how to differentiate that why Is this bipolar? Is this traumatic response? Is this crisis? What is happening? But we have to get very educated and then really trust our instincts on how to stay connected. 

38:31
Otherwise, I just want to say thank you to Duane, for you know, just jumping right in here, and that was really brave of you to show up with very little preparation and not knowing what kind of questions are going to be coming at you, and you did a really elegant job at representing where you are and your history is very relatable with all of us and our spouses and what they've been through. So I hope you come back and see us again, because it is valuable. With that, I just say thank you, love and blessings. It does all come from love. Even the scariest parts can all be lightened up through love. Love you.