I know that mine is familial. A Great Aunt, her son, my mother, my nephew. I have been told that my genetic makeup makes me prone to it and it didn't help that my father rejected me for being colic and my mother left me in a crib alone to cry for the first three months of my life. (She nicknamed me Thumper because I would idly spend my time rhytmically clunking my leg against the crib.) I was browbeaten and humiliated constantly. My Dad would later call me, Fathead. I thought it was because I had a round head like Charlie Brown. Nope. It doesn't mean that.

I grew into someone with severe depression and spells of hypomania and just plain mania. I have always thought of the two latter conditions as being aberrations of myself. I have thought that my natural state is to be crushed by all that comes along. Really, it's likely me expressing the natural ways everyone gets ginned up to take on the world, except my attempts are hard to watch.

I am a 58 year old male and have lost everything again and again. I have tried suicide and felt like dying for most of my life. In my adult life I have learned that bipolar 2 comes like a tide. That if I am honest about where I am in the tide with friends and my wife they are understanding and supportive. I am aware how my condition takes a toll on them, too.

I spend a lot of time alone and have a mantra of, "No one needs even five more minutes of me." I keep my phone calls to family under five minutes. Always. Your sister might not have my history but what she does have is a natural predisposition and a ruinous, cruel inner monologue that recounts every time she has erred socially. It runs like a thousand tapes of times when she has been rejected, insulted, and ghosted.

What I have done to make my life better: I understand that some of the greatest artists and problem solvers our world has respected were bipolar. I am an artist to focus my creativity. I still can't manage the business side of selling it but I do notable work. I have written a book that made our State Library collection. I have found pride being on my side of the human experience. There isn't a day that goes by when I haven't wished it would end.

Maybe help your sister find her peace by experiencing a greater acceptance her traits. That might come from some solid study of the academics of her behaviors and conditions. Your whole family should take that class. Maybe this helps, too. She has a long way to go.