This is a good article.

I have a friend with bipolar 2, who had a friend "break up" with her for a very similar reason. Which is awful.

One thing I do struggle with though regarding my friendship to this person, is how to support her in a way that is healthy for me. Because one of the common patterns in our friendship is:

- she will express feelings of self hatred and shame regarding not being where she wants to be in life

- I and a mutual friend will try to build her up and show her that she's worthy of love and that external markers of success aren't important, as well as point her towards professional resources to support her (she's already going to therapy)

- it doesn't really work, this pattern repeats hundreds of times over the years with no real change or improvement

- we wonder whether some other response on our part would be better or what to do or say...

It has gotten to the stage where if I or my friend succeed at something, we worry about sharing it with her. Because even though she absolutely would celebrate our wins, and be supportive, we know that hearing about other people's success in life is a trigger for her to go into a self hatred spiral. And we don't want to make things worse for her. But at the same time, having to minimise your own happiness around a person who you care about is not great either.

I wish I knew how to better support her. Because I agree nobody should shame someone for a mental illness that's not in their control. But at the same time, it's natural to want to lift your friends up, to the point that if you don't (if we didn't respond to my friend's self hating statements with efforts to cheer her up) it would be being a bad friend. And yet - trying to cheer someone up hundreds of times without success becomes exhausting. So what to do?

Any ideas? I want to be a better friend.