Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Should You Lie About Your Disorder?

November 3, 2019
We all know that when writing a resume, you should write either “good” or “excellent” when you refer to your health. Any other response will make it certain that your resume will be headed straight for the circular file.
But what about your mental health? Most resumes and most job applications don’t include a space for that, but what if they did? What would you answer? What should you answer? And should you tell the truth if you do answer?
 
In one corner of England, job seekers were encouraged to hedge their bets or to flat-out lie. The British newspaper The Guardian reported that welfare personnel “have urged jobseekers who have depression to hide their diagnosis and only admit on work applications that they are experiencing ‘low mood.'” 
 
Fortunately, there has been a backlash from mental health organizations, who describe the advice as an “outrage” likely to increase stigma. They point out that “the law provided protection to disabled people, including those with mental health problems, if their disability has a substantial, adverse, and long-term effect on normal daily activities.”
 
The welfare department in question brushed off the controversy by saying the suggestion was only “well-intentioned local advice” and encouraging people seeking jobs to “speak freely about a health condition or disability.” But that’s not a choice that everyone is willing to make.
 
Whether or not to disclose one’s mental health condition when applying for a job is not an easy decision. American law (at the moment) protects employees and potential employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). But many people are rightly suspicious that disclosing a mental illness at the application is a one-way ticket to unemployment. Even when applications invite you to disclose and pointedly proclaim that they abide by EEOC regulations, many people choose not to disclose.
 
Disclosing after you’ve been hired or have been working at a place for a while is another matter. Many people (including me) have lost jobs because their bosses and coworkers don’t understand mental illness. There is plenty of motivation never to mention it.
 
That may not always be possible, however. Sometimes, the symptoms of bipolar disorder or another serious mental illness are obvious and negatively affect work. (I’m included here, too.) If a person isn’t able to do the work – for whatever reason – it’s understandable that they will be let go.
 
That brings us to the subject of accommodations that permit a person to do the work. Under ADA law, persons with disabilities, including mental disorders, are to be given “reasonable accommodations” to help them perform their job duties. For blind, deaf, or mobility-impaired workers, these accommodations are obviously necessary and most employers can and will provide them. (There is also no question as to whether to disclose these disabilities or not. Visible disabilities are more widely understood than invisible ones.)
 
Accommodations for mental disorders need not be difficult, either. Solutions such as flextime, work-at-home situations, or time off for appointments are more and more being offered to all employees, regardless of ability level, and these can certainly help people with mental illness, too. Other reasonable accommodations might include flexible break times, an office with a door or full-spectrum lighting, or the understanding that phone calls and emails need not be returned instantly. Of course, to receive these accommodations, one must disclose the disorder and negotiate the possible solutions, which can certainly be daunting, if not impossible, for those with anxiety disorders, for example.
 
But what we’re talking about here is not whether to disclose a disability on an application or to an employer. What we are talking about is misrepresenting a potentially disabling condition – or to use the less polite term, lying about it. I don’t have “occasional mood swings,” I have bipolar disorder. My depression is not simply a “low mood,” it can be debilitating. And I suspect that even admitting to a “low mood” might be greeted with something less than understanding by a potential or actual employer.
 
Ayaz Manji, a senior policy officer at a mental health charity in England, said of the semi-disclosure policy, “Anyone who discloses a mental health problem at work deserves to be treated with respect, and jobcentres should not be reinforcing stigma by advising people not to disclose.”
 
He’s right, of course. Disclosing or not disclosing is a hard enough choice for the mentally ill. Lying about one’s condition should not even be a consideration. And isn’t lying on resumes and applications an automatic cause for dismissal? 
 
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Black-and-White Thinking

October 27, 2019

 

My husband used to have only two categories when he reacted to something: It was fabulous or it was wrecked. There was nothing in between. If he cooked a dinner and I said it was “okay,” he heard “wrecked.” If I said “good,” he heard “wrecked.” Only the most superlative of adjectives would convince him that I appreciated his efforts.

Of course, this was a holdover from his childhood, one called “black-and-white thinking” or “all-or-nothing” thinking. And what that is, is a kind of cognitive distortion, a skewed way of thinking that does not represent reality,

Cogbtherapy.com has this to say about the subject:

A cognitive distortion is an automatic way of repeatedly interpreting a situation that causes us to not consider other ways of thinking about it. When we over-rely on cognitive distortions, we usually interpret events in such a way that fuels emotions such as anxiety, depression, or anger. All-or-nothing thinking is one such distortion.

All-or-nothing thinking refers to thinking in extremes. You are either a success or a failure. Your performance was totally good or totally bad. If you are not perfect, then you are a failure. This binary way of thinking does not account for shades of gray, and can be responsible for a great deal of negative evaluations of yourself and others.

http://cogbtherapy.com/cbt-blog/cognitive-distortions-all-or-nothing-thinking

Indeed, my husband was prone to depression and thinking poorly of himself. He would never be as good as his brother, as successful as his father and mother, as artistic or musical or smart as he wanted to be.

Fortunately, he eventually got over this. It’s really tiring to keep thinking of better and better ways to describe dinner. Now I can give accurate feedback, like “satisfying,” or “good enough.” Not everything has to be fantastic.

I must admit that I share in this kind of cognitive distortion. I think it may go with bipolar disorder, which, after all, includes swings from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. But some people attribute it to my having been a Girl Scout or making straight As in school. What I remember is learning it from my parents. When a cousin, for example, screwed up, they would say with a tone of disgust, “Well, I guess some people have to learn from their mistakes.” What I heard was that some people, the good, smart people, didn’t have to learn from their mistakes because they didn’t make mistakes. It was a perfect set-up for making a little girl try to be perfect.

Later in life, I found some flaws in that line of thought. My first experience with a grade of D came in high school in Enriched Geometry. The “Enriched” part was having to do three-column proofs instead of two-column proofs, with the third column being the name or number of the theorem of corollary you were using. I thought that was stupid. You could always look up the theorem or corollary if you really needed to know it. As long as you knew how it worked, I thought, that should be enough. So I didn’t memorize them and I got a D. (Many years later, I was able to hang five pictures, four in a square and one in the middle, which proved to me that I did indeed know enough geometry to get by, theorems and corollaries or not).

I also learned that, according to my parents, perfection was only for me, not for other people. When some work friends of mine started living together, I expected my parents to freak at the sinfulness. They didn’t. But when I did the same thing, they refused even to enter the house.

I know that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy specializes in counteracting distorted ways of thinking, and maybe it would have helped me (or my husband) get over it more quickly or efficiently. But the lesson I eventually learned was that I could be not-perfect and it wouldn’t destroy me. I hung those pictures. I moved on from that relationship and my parents accepted me. I did end up in a job (editing) that requires one to be as nearly perfect as one can regarding as many details as possible, and I suppose that’s an example of turning a negative into a positive.

But if – that is, when – I make a mistake or miss perfection by however wide a margin, my thinking isn’t so disordered that I assume I’m a failure. Black-and-white has been replaced by all manner of shades of gray. That’s really where everyone lives.

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Why People Don’t Believe in Mental Illness

October 20, 2019

Some people just don’t believe that mental illness exists. There are reasons for this. Not good reasons, but reasons.

I recently saw a meme that blamed mental illness on capitalism. There was no mental illness per se, only the toxic effects of a culture that compels us to put up with overwork and underpay, exploitation and inescapable drudgery. The stress of dealing with these conditions is what causes us – an increasing number of sufferers – to feel depression and anxiety.

There may be something to this, sort of. Environmental conditions that lead to stress and anxiety can certainly make mental illness worse, particularly those like bipolar disorder and other mood disorders. And, while capitalism may or may not be the cause, the majority of us are working harder with less to show for it than ever before. But the majority of us are not mentally ill.

My mother may have bought into this philosophy. She knew I had mental troubles, but she thought that if only I got a better job, I would be all better. Admittedly, finding a better-paying job that was less stressful would improve anyone’s mood, but it can do little or nothing for a clinical mood disorder.

Then there are people who seem to “believe” in mental illness, but really don’t. These are the people who acknowledge that mental illness exists, but think that it is a “choice” – that any person can choose happiness, health, or sanity merely by an effort of will. Those of us who can’t “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” are simply not trying hard enough. The “choose happiness” people don’t seem to get that for most of us, our only choice is whether to get help from someone else – a doctor who prescribes a psychotropic, a therapist or counselor who listens or advises, or even a friend who reaches out.

And, of course, there are people who acknowledge mental illness, but think it is a good thing, the fount of creative brilliance. They point to Vincent van Gogh and his amazing art. They forget about the suffering, the self-harm, and the suicide.

But, romanticizing mental illness and even revering it do nothing to help people who actually have psychiatric conditions. It’s true that some people with mental disorders – Sylvia Plath and Dale Chihuly, to name two in addition to van Gogh – have created works of great art, beauty, and significance. But it’s certainly valid to wonder what they would have produced if they had not had the trials of mental illness to deal with. Would their work have been less inspired or more? It’s impossible to say. Personally, I believe that mental illness interferes with creativity more often than it enables it.

But the most common reason, I believe, that people don’t recognize the existence of mental illness is that it has never touched their lives, isn’t a part of their perceptions. A relative of mine once watched a talk show where women recounted dire experiences of having hysterectomies. “Those women are such liars,” my relative said. “I had a hysterectomy and it was nothing like that.” Her perception of reality – her personal experience – was extended to the whole world.

Similarly, when someone has no direct experience of mental illness, either by having a disorder themselves or by knowing someone very close to them with the disorder, the reality of mental illness itself comes into doubt. “No one I know has it, so no one does.”

Sometimes people who believe such things are capable of changing their minds, though. If a woman goes through a profound, long-lasting exogenous depression after the death of her husband, she may have more sympathy and understanding for people who have profound, long-lasting endogenous depression, or major depressive illness, as it’s more commonly known. Or a dear friend’s struggles to help a schizophrenic son may awaken her to what mental illness truly can be. Once it touches her life in some way, mental illness becomes real.

And since, according to statistics, one in four or five Americans will experience some type of mental or emotional disturbance in their lifetimes, the odds increase that people’s personal experience with mental illness will also increase accordingly.

In the meantime, those of us in the mental health community can help spread the word that mental illness does exist, that it affects the lives of millions of people, and that even people who are not directly affected need to understand how easily it can happen to someone they know.

Blaming mental illness on capitalism, overwork, or an insane world may be easy and may make us feel better by comparison, but it will do nothing to address the actual problem.

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“Great Potential” and Imposter Syndrome

October 13, 2019

I was supposed to be this genius. Everyone knew it. My parents encouraged it. My teachers loved me. I learned to read without ever being taught. I picked up foreign languages quickly. In school, I was assigned independent reading and math assignments. I was put up a grade.

My parents tried to find an academically challenging program for me but couldn’t afford private school. Instead, I skated through my classes, earning good grades automatically. No one pushed me to do better because I didn’t seem to need pushing.

But.

By my teen years, my bipolar disorder had well and truly kicked in. I laughed aloud in class at things no one else found funny. I had crying jags and a nervous twitch in my neck (which was treated with Valium). I isolated from all but a few friends. I hid behind books, literally and figuratively. I explored colleges pretty much at random. No one guided my education. I ended up, largely by chance, at an Ivy League school.

But.

By then, my bipolar disorder, undiagnosed and untreated, took over my life. Again I skated through, taking whatever classes appealed to me, without regard to my future. I spent a lot of time crying, isolating, and missing out on a lot of opportunities, both academic and extracurricular.

By the time I graduated, I was in such bad shape that all I was looking for was a job that I could work long enough to qualify for disability for when I was finally put away. That’s how far down the bipolar rabbit hole I’d gone.

Still, I had that Ivy League degree, a not-very-marketable major, and a reason to look for work. I took on jobs doing inventory, cashiering at a restaurant, and answering phones at an advertising agency.

Where was this genius I was supposed to have been? Whatever happened to all my great potential?

Bipolar disorder robbed me of my great potential. Bipolar disorder stole my chance at being a genius. It screwed up my thought processes as well as my emotions and my stability.

I was, however, fortunate enough – or smart enough – to get psychological help and, in time, made strides in coping with Life While Bipolar. I adjusted to the fact that my lost opportunities meant that I would never fulfill that potential that seemed so apparent when I was a child.

In a way, I have some version of Imposter Syndrome. Imposter Syndrome is when you feel that, no matter how much you have accomplished, you are a fraud and that someone will notice and denounce you. Fame, talent, success, love – all are illusory and undeserved. In my case, I feel that whatever I’ve accomplished is not enough, certainly not enough to live up to the great potential everyone including me thought I had. Surely someone will notice and say, “You’re not that great. You’re certainly no genius. What have you ever done with your life?” It’s my lack of success that I’m afraid people will notice and comment on.

However, as a friend of mine has said, “The ultimate remedy for Imposter Syndrome is knowing that they grade on a curve.” Most of us fit in the fat middle of that bell curve. Few of us are on either of the thin ends. So I’m not exactly where I “should” be on that curve. So people guess at where I am and guess wrong. That has no real effect on me.

And in objective terms, I’ve done pretty well. I have a stable, loving marriage and a relatively stable mental condition. I’ve edited magazines and written two books. My bipolar disorder is in remission. Sure, I seldom get a chance to show off my knowledge of contemporary poetry, but that doesn’t affect my moods and nobody quizzes me about it.

I’m bipolar and not a genius. I make my way through as best I can. I am who I am. And that’s okay. I can accept where I am without feeling the need to be something more.

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Permission to Be Depressed

October 6, 2019

Depression can be so riddled with guilt. Why am I not able to fake being okay? Why do I isolate when what I need is interaction?

Sometimes what I need is to give myself permission to be depressed. I have bipolar disorder 2, with a heavy depression component. It has overwhelmed me many times. I have fought against it, given in to it, tried to make compromises with it, tried to ignore it – almost any reaction you can imagine. Then I learned how to give myself permission to be depressed.

This is not quite the same as giving in to depression. It involves acknowledging that I am depressed and allowing myself to feel the feelings that I have. Of course, I don’t give myself permission to be permanently depressed. In a way, it’s more like giving myself permission to practice self-care and not to force myself to smile and bull my way past the depression. I recognize that I am depressed and do what I need to do to get through it. That may be staying in bed. It may be crying. It may be wallowing in sad music. These are things that I’m likely to do anyway when I’m depressed, but giving myself permission to do them is surprisingly freeing.

I used this technique probably for the first time when my husband and I went on a “barefoot” cruise vacation. It was something we both enjoyed and both want to do again someday.

But I knew from the beginning that depression might overtake me – probably would, at that time in my life – even while I was doing something enjoyable. Naturally, I didn’t want the depression to ruin the whole vacation, so I decided to give myself permission to do what I needed to do to cope with those feelings.

Most often, that involved retreating to my bunk for a nap. This enabled me to get away from other people when I was feeling overwhelmed and unable to socialize. Sure, I missed some of the onboard and shore activities, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed them anyway while in the metaphorical fog and darkness. I enjoyed what I could, then let myself not do what I didn’t feel up to doing. I didn’t try to make my husband stay with me and miss all the fun. There wasn’t anything he could do for me anyway. If the other passengers thought it was odd – and they did – they barely mentioned it to me. My husband told them I was tired. Seasickness was also a believable excuse.

In a way, having bipolar depression at that level is like having the flu. I feel bogged down and logy, inclined to cocoon, rest, and stay away from other people. I realize this is not always possible, but if it is, I can allow myself to do it. Fortunately, this spell of depression wasn’t so bad that it completely incapacitated me as it has at other times in my life. I was still able to feel enjoyment at some times, though not at others.

At other times, I’ve had to give myself permission to have anxiety. If a situation makes me anxious, I acknowledge that I am nervous, and do what I need to do. I can’t “think away” my anxiety, but sometimes I can get myself out of the situation at least temporarily. I do not have to sit and be anxious while people around me argue or shout at each other, one of my anxiety triggers. When I recognize how I’m feeling (which takes practice) and give myself permission to feel the way I feel, I’m better able to come up with coping mechanisms, such as leaving the room to get some fresh air or making myself a cup of tea.

You may notice that when I give myself permission to be depressed or anxious, part of my solution involves avoiding other people. That’s sometimes a hard thing to do. Isolation can certainly make depression worse, but it can sometimes also be necessary if pushing through, trying to smile, mingle, and socialize will make the depression worse in the end. And I have learned that if I try to do that, the depression comes along with me. Once a friend told me that it was like having a separate person with me, a person called Misery. Better to give myself permission to stay home and give myself some self-care.

What I can’t do is give myself permission to stay depressed or anxious. Giving myself permission is a very limited-time offer. It doesn’t work for those really lingering, midnight-dark depressions that last for weeks or months on end. Those, I have to fight. And while I’m depressed, I don’t give up on meds or therapy. Those are necessary to alleviate the depression instead of resigning myself to feeling it.

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In Remission

September 29, 2019

My bipolar disorder is in remission. I know I’m not cured. There is currently no cure for bipolar. But I’ve reached a point where I’m stable enough that I don’t expect a crash or a buzz to descend on me at just any old time.

I still get moods, of course. They’re just not severe or long-lasting enough to be symptomatic. Yesterday, for example, I spent several hours wrestling with phone trees and people who wouldn’t switch me to a supervisor when all I was trying to do was straighten out a couple of bills that contained errors. Afterwards, I felt frustrated, cranky, and a bit sad. But those were normal emotions, based on what I had just gone through. After a nap I felt better, and dinner blew out the remaining cobwebs. Napping is definitely better than staying in bed the entire next day.

Of course, I didn’t achieve remission alone. It took years of doctor visits, therapy, and medications to reach this state. I am particularly grateful for mood levelers. For me, they actually do what they’re intended to do. They keep my moods within an acceptable range, or at least one that’s acceptable to me.

Too many people fear mood levelers, I think. Level moods sound boring – as though there are no variations, just a blank, straight line. That simply isn’t so. Mood levelers have pushed the spikes that used to go wild in either direction to a less extreme range. If you think of mood as an EEG, mood levelers prevent the lines from going off the charts, settling them to fluctuate within a middle range that most non-bipolar people have naturally.

I think the term “mood leveler” scares some people. They seem to think that such a drug would make them perfectly level, robotic, unchanging. They fear that any spark of personality or creativity would be lost.

That’s not the case. Instead, with level moods – and especially for depression-prone bipolars – a person has much more ability to explore his or her creative side.  I know that’s true for me. Now that my moods are stable and level, I’m able to get more writing done, but also to tell whether the work is good or needs serious revising before I post it.

My doctor recently increased the dosage of one of my medications, a mood leveler, because I was having trouble with hypomania that wouldn’t let me sleep. And it worked. I am now getting seven to eight hours of sleep each night and have enough energy to at least face the day, if not always to conquer it.

Don’t think mine has been a case of spontaneous remission. I’m not sure I believe that’s possible with bipolar disorder. It’s taken a lot of years and a lot of work to get to where I am today. For example, it took literally years for assorted doctors and me to find a combination of chemicals, a cocktail of psychotropics, that would work for me. And during all that time, it was as if I was not medicated at all. Only the right combo of drugs and dosages would unlock my brain and level my moods.

So, here I am, in remission – and I love it. My moods aren’t blunted, they’re leveled. I am not as fearful now that my extreme moods may return and wreak havoc on my life. Oh, I still have some symptoms and side effects that remind me I’m not cured. But now I know that remission is possible, with work, with luck, and with the right mood levelers.

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Nothing to See Here

September 22, 2019

Many people with SMI are afraid that it shows, that other people can see automatically that there is something wrong with them. They feel as though they stand out in a crowd. Everyone notices them, and probably talks about them.

I have the opposite problem. My bipolar depression makes me feel invisible. It’s not just that SMI is often an invisible illness. It’s that I myself seem to become invisible. I think of myself as a particularly ineffectual ghost, frightening no one and unable to affect anything in my environment. Some people call this dissociation.

At first, I made the best of it. I’m especially invisible when I’m out in public and reading a book. So I found that if I was at a business convention and wanted to remain invisible, my best strategy was to sit alone at a table and read a book. Only once did a man approach me while I was so engaged. No one else ever did.

Apparently, though, I don’t need a book to disappear. Maybe it’s anxiety that makes me keep quiet when people around me are discussing something interesting. Maybe it’s my instinct not to be noticed so I won’t be subject to derision or worse. Either way, I can’t seem to catch anyone’s eye or add my bit to the conversation. I blend into the crowd, even if it’s only a crowd of three or four.

It’s almost like there’s some aura around me when I’m out in public that says, “Don’t notice me,” like Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility. I do not use my invisibility for pranks or mischief, though. I don’t use it intentionally at all (except for using a book, as I mentioned).

Why do I think this invisibility is part and parcel of my bipolar disorder? It could be imposter syndrome at work. I feel so unworthy that I don’t want anyone to see me for what I am. Or it might be the anxiety component of my hypomania that keeps me from presenting myself more assertively. Or maybe people can see that I have a troubled mind and simply look away.

I am slowly learning to make myself seen and heard. I find that calling people by name makes it easier for them to see me. It seems to signal them that there’s another person in the vicinity. And once I even set up an occasion where I would be the center of attention, speaking about my bipolar disorder at a signing for my book.

I also use my writing to make myself “visible.” This blog (and my other one, http://butidigress.blog) and my books give me a presence, though not a physical one, even at a distance. When I see likes and follows and sales, I know that someone has noticed me, or at least discovered that I exist.

I sometimes think that going out in public more – practicing being visible – might help. But actually, that’s when I feel the most overlooked, the most unseen and unheard. The most lost.

Perhaps what I need is to go out and meet a specific person, someone who expects to see me. Then I could be guaranteed of one person who would see me.

But it has been suggested to me that I may not want to be seen at all – that I would prefer to fade into the background, not put myself forward and disappear from the stresses of being seen. Perhaps that is true, or at least once was.

Now I think I would prefer to be seen, flaws and all. If someone cannot tolerate the sight of me, a mentally disordered person, or glances over me as if I did not exist, I think I shall insist on being seen. I will use my voice, my (admittedly glitchy) brain, and my human physicality to assert that I exist, that I matter, that I have something to say.

And in social situations I will try to assert myself (if politely) to join the public discourse and add my two cents, whether the subject is mental illness or the latest bestseller.

I exist. I deserve to be seen. I will not remain invisible.

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Hypomania, Shopping, and Sleep

September 15, 2019

I hate shopping. Loathe it. Grocery shopping. Clothes shopping. Shoe shopping. Practically the only thing left for me is online shopping, and that can be treacherous – and not because I can so easily spend too much money.

Online shopping can push me over into hypomania. So can thinking about online shopping.

Recently, our house was destroyed by a tornado. We lost everything. And we have to replace everything. (Fortunately, our insurance company is paying for most of the lost items, as well as rebuilding the house.)

When I first got the inventory of things that needed replacing, I was too overwhelmed to do much about it. A window-shopping trip to La-Z-Boy left me bereft of spoons, as shopping always does. So I turned to the internet.

Do you have any idea how many companies are willing to sell me chairs, sofas, rugs, computer desks, jewelry armoires, electric fireplaces, and even walking sticks (to mention but a few items)? Lots. Lots and lots. Now I even get messages from many of them on my email and Facebook feed.

I have spent literally hours browsing online. And then I try to sleep. It’s an instant case of “Hamster Brain,” as my friends and I call it. I can’t sleep, even with my prescribed sleep aid and prescribed benzo. My mind starts whirling and my thoughts start racing.

Hypomania takes over. Oh, I don’t run to my computer and start ordering stuff. I’m keeping hands off my PayPal account, for the most part. But I lie in bed, eyes closed, trying to picture every purchase in what will be its new setting. I compare various color schemes for each room in the house, then change them each night – gold, brown, and cinnamon for my study? Blue and green with coral for the living room? And, oh, God, what about the bathrooms and the kitchen? I even arrange the furniture in my head – which wall will the computer desk go against? What will go beside the chairs? Tea cart? End table? Should we have a corner breakfast nook or a proper dinette set?

And how do I explain to my husband what my visions are? I can’t even decide between boho and country comfy. I can’t even define for him what I mean by boho. How do I keep him from sprinkling the house with 50s pieces (now called mid-century)? How can I integrate his treasures without spoiling my visions?

Most nights now I am up until 2:30 at least, which is when I take the benzo. When I wake, though, the hypomania is not over. It’s back to the computer with a new thing to search for, adding item after item to my favorites lists, comparing prices. I spend hours doing this. I email pictures back and forth with my husband as he gets caught up in my frenzy. This afternoon I spent several hours online buying replacements for books that were ruined. Tonight may be another case of no sleep till who-knows-when.

I’d like to stop, or at least slow down. Realistically, I don’t have to do anything now. I certainly don’t have to order or even browse choices. The house will not be rebuilt until at least the spring and we have no place to store any purchases until then. It’s silly to make decisions now, when between now and then thousands more choices will become available.

If I keep going at the pace I’m at now, I will be supremely sleep-deprived by the time I actually need to make purchases. And between now and then I see myself with a copy of the floor plans, making little cut-outs of different-sized furniture and trying them out for size and fit like those sliding puzzles we used to do as kids.

I see my pdoc this weekend and I’m going to ask him what to do about the hypomania and the lack of sleep. I get hypomania so seldom and it usually goes away so quickly. It’s impossible to think about it continuing at this level and going on for months.

Of course, it’s too simple for someone to tell me to calm down, not to think about it until the time comes. This is hypomania. That’s exactly what I can’t do. Once again, my brain is in control and running riot. And it won’t shut up, not even when I really need it to.

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Where Is My Home?

September 8, 2019

You know that feeling of dislocation you get when you’re bipolar and depressed? Like you don’t belong anywhere. Like you just don’t fit in. Like even the things around you aren’t real. That has happened to me concerning one of the things that gives most people contentment and grounding and even joy: home.

I’ve never been literally homeless, unless you count the day I spent in a Red Cross shelter after a tornado destroyed our house. I have no idea what it’s like living on the street, though I know a lot of the seriously mentally ill do. It’s just that none of the places I have lived have felt like home to me.

Maybe it’s the fact that I have real difficulty bonding with things and places (and, even at times, people). Making the emotional investment seems pointless when everything seems unreal, when anything can be taken away or even just disappear, like so many things have: my stability, my capacity for positive emotions, my ability to feel.

I don’t remember the house my family lived in when I was born. I don’t even remember how old I was when we moved into the house where I grew up. I have a vague memory of standing on tiptoes, trying to peer over the counter and into the sink, so maybe four? Whenever it is you’re that tall. 

That home is the only one that ever felt like home to me, and I had to stake a claim on a space within it to feel that. One day, in a burst of hypomania, I decided to move out of the room I shared with my sister and lay claim to the other bedroom, one that we saved for visits from Grandma, which happened once a year or less. One roller and some yellow and orange paint later, I had a room that no one else wanted to stay in. It was mine, one square corner of the house.

But inside I always believed that I belonged – could belong – somewhere else. When the time came for college, I attempted the “geographical cure” and moved out of state to what I thought would be a more stimulating environment, one conducive to fitting in.

It worked about as well as the geographical cure ever does, which is to say, not very. All the time I was there, I never experienced anything that felt like a home. I lived in a different place every year: dorm room, sorority house, rented apartment, and a house with other people. (That house was designed, built, and possessed by someone else. There was never a chance that it would be my home.)

After college came a series of apartments. I don’t remember even trying to make them more homelike. In one of the places, I remember hanging bedsheets over the windows instead of buying curtains. Not even clean, new sheets. (One astute friend remarked, “You didn’t think very much of yourself back then.”)

Next came marriage and another series of rentals. Someone else had a key to them and could – and did – come and go whenever they wanted. Eventually, we landed in a house we had a chance to buy from the owner. But it was dark and shabby and pedestrian and fed right into my recently diagnosed depression.

The desire to find a home of our own grew. We managed to find a house that was above our price range, really, but irresistible. This was a place, I thought, I could finally call home.

The only thing was, it wasn’t a home to us. My husband still thought of his parents’ house as “home.” This house, as special as it was, wasn’t his home and therefore wasn’t our home. I loved the house, but felt somehow detached from it. It had all the comforts of home, but something was missing. Something inside me. This was the house that the tornado destroyed.

We moved from shelter to hotel to rental house, which is where we’re living now. All the furniture and even the dishes are rented too. We’ve hung some of our art collection on the walls, which has helped, but there is no way that this can ever fill that need in me for a home.

Our old house is being rebuilt. We are working with an architect and a contractor to make it a space that we have contributed to, helped shape, and will get to furnish, pretty much from scratch. I have hopes, especially now that my bipolar depression shows itself less often, that this can be my home. There will not even be the specter of Dan’s parents’ house, which has been sold, his ties to it broken.

Will this house be the home I’ve been looking for? Will I be able to fall in love with it, to bond to it, the way you do to a special person? I don’t know. I haven’t really had such a space in my life.

But maybe this is my chance. Maybe this will be the place I truly belong. My home.

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Mental Health

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Do Distractions Help?

September 1, 2019

Well, not when you’re driving, certainly. But when you have bipolar disorder, sometimes they do.

Of course, bipolar disorder is a distraction from life itself. And that’s not good. But every once in a while, it’s worthwhile to give bipolar a taste of its own medicine. Now, I’m not saying that distractions are good when you’re trying to meditate or in a therapy session. But sometimes, when you’re locked in your own head, you need something outside of you to unlock it.

Personally, I need distractions a lot. And, given the popularity of coloring books and fidget spinners, so do a lot of other people. Fortunately, I have found many ways to be distracted. Some of my favorites are music, bad jokes, cooking shows, sleep, and cats.

These don’t always work when I’m in the depths of depression, though I try them even then. But when I’m hypomanic, buzzing around without a landing site, they can help.

Music gives me both a chance to focus and a place to dissipate my energy. There are plenty of songs that express my feelings of depression, but also a number that encourage me to let out the feelings of flying, of soaring, of digging life – Little Richard’s version of “Get Rhythm,” for example, or the songs that have punctuated my life with my husband.

Again, bad – or even good – jokes are no help to me when I’m depressed. But when I’m obsessing about some anticipated (perhaps never to materialize) crisis, they can pull me back from the edge. (Once I called up a silly friend and said I needed a distraction. He said, “Look at the grouse! Look at the grouse!,” a joke I didn’t get until later, when someone explained it to me.)

Cooking shows keep me grounded in a way. So does actual cooking. I’ve found that when I’m tense and about to lose it, making a cup of tea or heating a pan of soup grounds me, even if I have no desire for tea or soup. Making it for someone else is even more grounding. Cooking shows, even if I have no intention of ever trying the recipes, have a similar grounding effect. Unlike movies or dramatic shows, I know that nothing terrible will happen, unless you count a chef cutting her finger.

Sleep may be hard to do when my brain is whirling, but if I can accomplish it, my brain gets a reprieve and perhaps even a respite with a hot-n-juicy dream (though not nearly often enough). I love the feel of cotton or flannel nightshirts or pajamas. I love the quiet and the dark. I love the giving up of the stresses of the day and surrendering to temporary oblivion.

Even sleep in the middle of the day soothes me. If I’ve been unable to sleep the night before, a mega-nap the next day can reboot my brain and replenish my spoons. It may seem like an escape (and in some ways it is), but sometimes escape is what I need.

And as for cats, they help me in so many ways. I find watching them wash themselves hypnotic and comforting. I find snuggling with them in bed soothing. I find their antics infinitely distracting. I find caring for them takes me out of myself and requires that I focus on another being.

If I’m able to focus (which is not always the case), I find reading a suitable distraction as well. I have a few “comfort books,” old favorites that I can return to with an assurance that nothing too alarming will happen. I can lose myself and my anxieties in the struggles and triumphs of others. I can find distraction in tales of things I will never experience, like mountain climbing or space flight.

I have tried some of the tried-and-true distractions as well. I have several coloring books and a plethora of colored pencils. I have sudoko and mahjong programs and word puzzles on my computer. I have my writing, which, while not always soothing, does refocus my concentration and provide an outlet for any troubling feelings I may be experiencing.

Being bipolar, I find that my brain is both my enemy and my friend. It sustains me and betrays me. And it provides me ways to escape from its less sustaining moments. After all, if I didn’t have distractions, I would be locked within my brain with no relief from the tricks it plays on me. I’m glad that there are ways that I can escape, at least for a little while.

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Mental Health

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