The Importance of Team You, Part III

Team You, a term coined by advice writer Captain Awkward, is a group of people who support you in times of emergency. If you are fighting the grips of mania or coping with isolating depression, these allies are invaluable.

This is part one of a five-part series.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

When to Explain Your Disorder to Your New Friends

This section head is actually misleading. You can go full bore and spill everything on your first date—er, meeting—or you can wait until your friendships have been cemented a little. Either approach can work, though I’ve found that the latter is smoother for all involved.

Parent friends are tricky because at first you’re meeting for your kids, and only sometimes each other. Make sure to get to know them as a person first, and vice versa. Once your conversations turn to the personal, now you get to decide how to tell them. If you’re already pretty open about your condition, this is old hat. But if you’re not, you get to try and gauge their reaction and tailor your explanation. Fun!

When it comes to a parent friend, I look for the following signs by the third play date:

1. Is this a trustworthy friend I feel comfortable with? Are they comfortable with me?
2. What is their experience with bipolar disorder or even post-partum depression? Are they at ease talking about those topics?
3. Are you living in a community that is insular, like a small town? People in larger cities tend to be a *little* more accepting of mental illnesses, and news in small towns gets around. Try to gauge if your friend is circumspect.

Once you decide that it’s time, there are several ways to tell them. You could take the conversational approach: “Sorry for losing touch with you. I deal with periodic depressions due to bipolar disorder, so I was pretty much out of it.” Or the formal approach: “I want to let you know that I have this disorder, and what it might mean when I’m manic/depressed.”

Your friend might have an “oh!” moment, where they quickly re-categorize everything they know about you. They might need some time off to process everything. They may even run. Let them do what they’re going to do. If they back off completely, let them go—they wouldn’t have made a good Team You member anyway.

The next process involves time. Time, time, and more time. Make friends with your friends. Get to know them. Rely on them, and try to be a person they can rely on, too. Write thank you notes. Apologize when you need to and celebrate your successes—together.

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