Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘blogging’

Hypomania and Exhaustion

I’ve done so much. I should feel exhausted. I do feel exhausted. Why do I keep doing so much?

The answer, of course is hypomania, or maybe a mixed state.

I had been thoroughly depressed over my writing, as I sent out query after query to agents, and getting back rejections or the horrifying limbo of “no response means no.” I kept doing this for nearly four months, until I had apparently run out of agents to query. (I know that can’t be literally true. There are thousands of agents in New York alone, but I had been through all the usual lists and gone pretty far down the Google pages.) Yet I trudged along, depressed but pushing myself. Get the queries done. Get my work done. Get these blogs done. Go to bed. The same the next day. Call it functioning depression. I was still in motion, doing what I told myself had to be done, but enjoying none of it (or anything else).

Then I got an invitation to try out for some work-for-hire (which is sort of like ghostwriting, only different). Instantly, preparing submissions (three of them!) for this gig consumed me. And I kept on with the queries, the work, and the blogs. But I was tipping over into hypomania.

I wrote the submissions insanely quickly, when I knew I should have taken the time to analyze them, polish them, try a couple of different drafts. But no. I found myself pushed to get them done and get them out there. Or rather, I pushed myself to do it.

My submissions were rejected, but this time instead of slipping back into a funk of depression, I wrote a nice note saying that if another opportunity like this came up to please consider letting me apply again. They responded to the note, seeming astonished that I had sent it, and complimenting me on my attitude. Nothing like a pat on the head to keep the juices flowing.

It was at about that point that hypomania truly hit. I focused everything on my writing. I reworked the first three chapters that I had been submitting to agents and submitted them to still more. I started taking on extra work assignments. I took only brief breaks to eat a bowl of soup, then plunged back into it again. I had trouble getting to sleep and trouble sleeping, even though I was so exhausted that I turned in early each night. And I woke early, ready to keep on keeping on.

Then the miracle happened. I got a positive response from an agent. They wanted to see more of my work. I tweaked the newly revised first three chapters and sent them in. Now I’m waiting, nearly bouncing out of my chair, for them to respond. I just know that they will want to see the whole novel and become my agents. I do know that the deal is a long way away from being sealed, but hope after so long of slogging through my depression, hypomania has taken control.

I am (sort of) still contemplating my WIP (work in progress, a sequel to the novel that might now become real), thinking I need to rethink it entirely or try a different plot altogether. I am still taking on extra work, though it exhausts me. During my brief breaks from work, I scour the internet for presents for my husband’s birthday, and spend more than I had intended for more presents than I had planned.

And I am writing this blog post the day before I need to post it, rather than the three to four days I usually allow myself to write it. And I still need to polish the post for my other blog. And pay bills. And find a place for us to get a health check that’s required by my husband’s employer. (I have already set up appointments for our vaccine shots.)

I think it is most likely that if the agent rejects my work after all this, I will once again sink into depression – the I’m not worthy anything, I’m a fool to have put this much energy into it, I should just give up kind. Cutting back my activity to the bare minimum – work and blogs. Sleeping more, enjoying it less. Enjoying everything less. My old familiar functioning depression that is only possible because of the meds I take that don’t allow me to swing too far down.

I know people who, when you try to tell them about hypomania, tell you to enjoy it while you have it. They don’t know how wrong they are.

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Mental Health

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How Depression Sneaks Up

I had a blog post all written and ready to go. It was about my fluctuating moods and my writing, and how they affected each other. Some of what I wrote is still true. The depression I suffered during my early years and the exceedingly depressive poetry I wrote during that time allowed me to learn something about how poetry works and something more about how depression works.

I wrote about how hypomania affects my writing, and that is still true. Hypomania pushes me to do my writing, even when I don’t feel like it. In fact, at times it pushes me into doing more writing than I can probably handle. Case in point: This week I wrote three samples for a work-for-hire outfit when I should have been writing or at least outlining my WIP (Work In Progress), a sequel to the mystery I have already written and have been sending around to agents.

And last night, that’s where I hit the wall. I figured out that I have sent out about 180 or so query letters and gotten only the most minimal results – rejections that said I had an interesting premise that was not right for them. Most, though, have received plain rejections or the dreaded “no response means no.” I am now second-guessing myself and everything about the manuscript.

Last night, the depression caved in on me. I spent the night in bed, not sleeping except for nightmares, and not wanting to get up in the morning.

Because my identity is invested in being a writer, though, I did get up (late), sent a few more queries, and got to work on rewriting my blog posts, which I had determined were wretched. In the blog post that I abandoned, I had pontificated about how keeping a schedule kept me going with all the writing projects and various other work I do. 

I had also crowed about my relative stability and how that was helping me keep that schedule, which was supposed to be keeping depression at bay. I found out that I lied. The fact that I have maintained functionality for some time did absolutely nothing to prevent the depression that hit me.

Admittedly, this is probably a reactive depression, with my lack of success being the trigger. The thing is, it’s awfully difficult to tell apart from endogenous depression. In fact, I have known the first to melt into the second. At first you have a clear cause that would depress anyone, then you find it clinging to you long after what would seem to be reasonable. (This is subjective, of course. What is the “right” length of time to be depressed over 180 rejections?)

What’s left? Self-care, of course. Trying to sleep if I can, and squeezing in a nap if possible. Eat something, even if it’s only some guacamole and chips or a bowl of soup. Take my meds religiously. Try to cling to that schedule even when I don’t want to.

But the truth is, I’m running out of agents to submit to. I’m running out of energy to try. And I’m running out of the frame of mind to keep me functional. I’ll be okay, I know, but it may be a long, hard climb. 

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Mental Health

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Time Flies When You’re Bipolar

Finding stability is difficult when you have bipolar disorder. The days seem to melt into one another, either life in dense fog or life on a tightrope. You can’t remember whether you’ve eaten that day or showered that week or when you need to pay that phone bill.

And forget those lists of self-care things you should do. Contemplating even one (“go for a walk outside”) leaves me feeling defeated. It involves too many steps – getting out of bed, finding clothes, getting dressed, and then the actual walking. Most of the self-care lists contain things that are next to impossible for a truly depressed person to do (wash one dish), or too mundane to engage a manic person’s psyche (nap, complete one craft project).

For myself, I get lost in the week, since I usually measure time by weeks. What was I going to do on Thursday? Isn’t there a call I need to make this week? Do I need more groceries this week? I can also get lost in the month sometimes – Is it time to water my plant? Do a breast self-check? Pay a bill? Most of these I can handle with small nudges. Water the plant on the first day of the month. Pay a bill when I get an email or call about it.

When I worked in an office or a restaurant, there were ways to measure days. Casual Fridays were a dead give-away, for instance. But there were no weekly group meetings or, in the case of the restaurant, even specific chores or a consistent schedule for each week. I used to be able to pinpoint Thursdays because it was chicken-n-dumplings day at the Hasty Tasty.

But since COVID I no longer go out to work or to the Hasty Tasty or get dressed for work (I work in pajamas at my desk). I can sometimes tell time by my husband’s days off – Thursday and Sunday – but even that gets confusing, since I measure by when he goes into work (Wednesday, for example, and Saturday evenings) and he counts by when he gets off (Friday and Monday mornings). “Thursday into Friday” or “Sunday into Monday” is too much for my poor glitchy brain to handle.

I have better luck when I measure by my own work. I have off Thursdays and the weekend. Sometimes there is no work on a particular day, and sometimes I take on extra work on Thursdays or over the weekend, so it’s not completely reliable.

I do try to stick to a schedule when it comes to my writing, though. By Tuesday, I try to have an idea for my blogs. Wednesday I firm it up or do research, if needed. Thursday, I write a draft, since I don’t have my regular job to do. Fridays I tweak the draft. Saturdays I proofread and add tags. Sundays I publish. Mondays I check to see how well my blogs have done. Since my novel is finished, I have added doing three queries a day, first thing in the morning. And when I don’t have regular work, I try to either do research for my next novel, or write scenes that I know have to go in it somewhere, though not in order, since I don’t have an outline firmed up.

I suppose self-care encompasses going to bed. I usually get in bed by 9:00 or 10:00 and read to unwind (I know that this is not recommended, but it’s an essential part of my daily cool-down, whatever the day of the week it is). After I start to get sleepy, I take my nighttime pills and read a little more until they kick in. I usually just awake naturally, unless I have a work assignment that’s due early in the morning. Then I set an alarm.

These are the techniques I use to keep grounded in my days and weeks. When something unexpected happens, such as my husband’s days off being switched, I get back into the trap of not really knowing what day it is.

But as for self-care, I don’t schedule a massage or take up yoga or call a friend (I keep in touch on social media). It’s all I can do to get through a week at a time and be grateful for that.

 

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Mental Health

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Bipolar Conversation

This morning a podcast called Bi-Polar Girl was uploaded, and I was the interviewee. (You can find it on Apple, Amazon, and other podcast sources.) Here’s a look at what was like.

  • Prepping. Before we recorded the podcast, my anxiety kicked in, and I tried to overprepare. I bombarded the hosts with emails asking what I should be prepared to talk about or what questions they were going to ask me. Basically, they told me we were going to “wing it” and have me tell my story.
  • History. The thing we talked about most was when I started showing signs of bipolar and when I was diagnosed. I explained that I was showing signs of it as early as my high school years, how I decided to seek treatment after college, and how I was mistakenly diagnosed with major depression for years before receiving the proper diagnosis and medication.
  • Meds. We discussed medication in some detail – pill-shaming, how every person reacts to meds differently (so it’s useless to “recommend” a particular drug to friends or support group members). We talked about the side effects of various medications, including the fact that the most-feared one seems to be weight gain. One particular point of discussion was how many people are afraid that taking medications to treat their disorder will stunt their creativity or turn them into “zombies.” Snowflake (one of the hosts) and I agreed that our creativity and ability to work were actually improved while on medication, because it enabled us to focus and do more creative work.
  • Family. We also talked about the fact that I have no children and my reasons for that. (We also introduced some of our pets during the Zoom call, or they introduced themselves. Just try to keep an animal out of a Zoom call.) I shared that I felt it would be unfair to a child to have a nonfunctional mother, that I was afraid of going off antidepressants while pregnant, and postpartum depression afterward. Snowflake shared her story of medications, potential side effects, pregnancy, and postpartum depression.
  • My publications. I talked about my blog and my books, Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us. In particular, we discussed gaslighting, which features in my second book, and how people with bipolar are more susceptible to it. Both Snowflake and I shared how we had encountered gaslighters in our own lives.
  • Groups. Chacoman, the other host, questioned me about whether I was involved in any local or regional support groups, and I had to admit that I’m not. Now, during the pandemic, group meetings are problematic at best, but I don’t react well to groups at any time, due to my anxiety (which is how my hypomania manifests). In my case, outreach is limited to my blogs and books, and membership in online support groups.
  • Miscellaneous. We got off topic a number of times. I don’t want to make it sound like the interview was all serious or grim. We also talked about our pets, positive relationships, college memories, and even politics.
  • Plans. I talked about how my next book will be a mystery, with a bipolar main character, and received positive feedback on the idea.

All in all, it was a good experience, worth overcoming my anxiety for. I had only participated in a podcast once before, a not-altogether-successful interview about my first book with an interviewer who had obviously not read it and was more interested in whether any of my family members were also creative. (It was supposed to be a podcast about first-time authors.)

This was not the same sort of thing at all. I told my story, as the hosts had recommended, and we had a genuine, far-ranging conversation about not just my own experiences with bipolar disorder, but with how others cope with it as well. Actually, I learned a lot about myself, from how much my anxiety – and especially social anxiety – still affect me, to how much my teen years illustrated my journey into depression.

So, here’s a big thank you to Snowflake and Chacoman for the opportunity to share with them and their audience. I would absolutely do it again. It helped me step out of my comfort zone and, I hope, will help the listeners as well. It’s a form of outreach that I had never considered, but one that I found valuable – and just plain fun!

 

 

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Mental Health

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How I Became a Mental Health Blogger

Of course, blogging didn’t exist when I started writing. It was quite a journey ending up where I am today. Even mental health services were a big blank to me when I was young, something that no one I knew experienced or even talked about, except to make jokes about going to “Wayne Avenue,” the location of the nearest insane asylum (as we called it then).

But it’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t write. Childish poems fueled by voracious reading. Hideously depressive poems fueled by burgeoning bipolar disorder. (I still commit poetry from time to time, writing sonnets and villanelles about bipolar disorder.)

But before I returned to poetry with more structure, I indulged in free verse – unrhymed, unmetered verse that relied on the juxtaposition of images rather than formal style. I studied creative writing in high school and college. But the bipolar disorder was undeniably with me, influencing the topics I wrote about: “Two Ways of Looking at the Same Pain” and “Whiskey on the Knife,” a poem about self-harm, are two examples.

As my poetry developed, it started reading more and more like prose, strung out in sentences that relied on line breaks with twists and jarring pauses to create poetic effects. Eventually, I gave up on poetry and simply gave in to prose. I made my living doing prose, and nonfiction at that, writing for magazines about education, technology, child care, and even martial arts.

Bipolar disorder took that away from me. After being diagnosed with clinical depression for years, I finally was identified as having bipolar 2. It was treatment-resistant for many years and during that time I was often unable to write.

My mental health blog, which you’re reading now, grew out of a journaling exercise. I began by listing what I did each day – not much, as I was stuck in a major depressive episode and not able to do much. But once again, what started as something else turned into prose. And by that time blogging was a thing.

I started blogging largely as an exercise for myself, to explore bipolar disorder, its symptoms and treatments, and my particular version of it. I set myself the task of posting once a week, a schedule that I still keep. I wrote short essays and longer pieces, whatever I was thinking about at the time. Hardly anyone read the blog. I sometimes wonder if the title “Bipolar Me” was a turn-off, but really that summed up my knowledge about bipolar – my own experiences.

Slowly, I started finding my voice. and finding things to say with it. Things other than what was inside my own head. Oh, I still wrote about my symptoms and my meds and my coping mechanisms, major depression and hypomania, mood swings and roller coasters. But I also started approaching the wider world of bipolar. Bipolar in the news. Bad science reporting about bipolar. TV commercials about bipolar meds. Bipolar disorder and gun violence. All of this was still through the lens of my own experience, as I have no degree in psychology, counseling, or biochemistry, for that matter.

And I started reaching a wider audience. My writing appeared in The Mighty, Invisible Illness, IBPF, Thought Catalog, Medium, and as guest posts on other bloggers’ sites. Eventually, I had enough material to make Bipolar Me into a book of the same name. And then a sequel, Bipolar Us. Both are still available on Amazon and through other outlets.

I know I’m not in the same league with mental health bloggers like Pete Earley and Gabe Howard. They are true activists and influencers, as well as terrific writers. Their work reaches thousands of people with information, analysis, inspiration, and more impact than I will likely ever have.

But I won’t give up blogging just because I’m not the best. I’ll be here every Sunday, posting my bipolar thoughts and opinions, sharing my bipolar experience, and chronicling my bipolar life.

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Mental Health

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Hitting the Plateau

Back in September, I wrote about my bipolar disorder being in remission and how much I loved that feeling. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I’m not in remission. I’ve had significant setbacks, though not long-term ones. At one point I felt broken, but when that lifted I felt jazzed. Maybe I’m on a baseline and never wander too far off it. Maybe I’m stuck on a plateau, halfway between mental illness and mental health.

I ask myself, will I get any better?

It’s like when I had my second back operation (micro-laminectomy). When I went for a follow-up visit to the surgeon, I was no longer in pain. But I was slow and uncertain when walking and felt keenly that my physical capacities were diminished. “Will I get any better, or is this it?” I asked.

“You’ll improve,” said Dr. West. “It will take a while, but you’ll feel better.” And he was right. I did. But I still have some pain at times and sometimes I walk with a cane. I may be better, but I’m clearly not totally well. I’m not bitching (much). I know that once your back goes out, it never gets back to 100%. And I am truly grateful every day that I don’t suffer the excruciating pain of a bulging disk and a pinched nerve.

My bipolar disorder is like that. I am no longer suffering on a daily basis. My meds are working and haven’t changed much in years. My mood levelers are doing their job. But I still have symptoms. There are still things I can’t do, or do only with great mental effort. I’ve never been at 100% and don’t ever expect to be. And I am truly grateful every day that I don’t have the in-the-depths lows, the ever-edgy anxiety, for more than a few days at a time.

But I wonder, am I stuck on this plateau forever? Is this as close as I’ll ever come to mental wellness? Or maybe, I think, mental health is an illusion. I can’t remember a time when I was unaffected by my disorder. The plateau itself may be an illusion. Maybe I am still improving, in such tiny steps that I can’t see the change. Maybe a new medication or treatment will come along and remove more of my remaining symptoms. (I’m not counting on that, though.)

My bipolar disorder feels like it’s running a low-grade fever. I can get done my work and my blogs, but little more. I don’t feel in the least joyful. It may be that this is just real life getting me down –  the weather, politics, the endless details and frustrations I have to deal with while we’re rebuilding our house. Perhaps this is just a normal mood swing like everyone gets or a reactive depression to the aforementioned stressors.

That’s one of the constant worries once you have bipolar disorder – not trusting your feelings or your feelings about your feelings. Every setback scares me that I’m teetering on the edge, ready to plunge off that plateau. Realistically, I know that I am as stable as I’m likely ever to be.

My superpower seems to be overanalyzing. I may really be in remission.

Depression lies. Anxiety lies. So, perhaps, does the plateau.

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Mental Health

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On Stigma Fighting and Political Advocacy

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend in mental health circles. It’s a question of philosophy on some levels. What should we, as people concerned about mental health, mental illness, and society, be doing with our time and energy?

The two choices boil down to fighting stigma and political advocacy. They each have their motivation and their adherents.

The stigma fighters (including the organization Stigma Fighters) maintain that the way to make things better for the mentally ill is to erase the stigma that surrounds mental illness (particularly serious mental illness, or SMI). And there’s no doubt that there is stigma. The mentally ill are feared and blamed for violence in society. They do not get jobs or lose jobs because of their conditions. They hesitate to enter treatment for fear that friends or family will find out.

While mental illness is no longer the “secret family shame” that led to family members being “put away quietly,” kept locked in the attic, and never mentioned, many families do still find that mental illness – in themselves or their loved ones – is something to hide. Something not to discuss in polite company. Something to ignore the existence of.

People who fight stigma usually do so with information and education. Celebrities – even the British royal family – speak openly about conditions such as bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, OCD, and other of the more common diagnoses. You undoubtedly have heard the PSAs on television that explain that mental health is important and that seeking treatment is not something to be ashamed of.

Are the stigma fighters making a dent in the stigma? It’s hard to say. At least they seem to have opened a conversation about mental health, mental illness, treatments including medications, mental illness among men, suicide, and other problems we face.

Still, the political advocates say, all that stigma fighting has done nothing to increase the number of psychiatric beds available or the number of psychologists caring for rural populations, the homeless, or people with schizophrenia and other psychoses that are foreign to most people’s experience. What we need are people who will bring up these and other issues with legislators and influencers at the local, state, and national levels; who will present proposals that may do some good in increasing access and funding; and who will advocate for improvements such as training for first responders in how to address mental health concerns.

And it’s true. All these things – and more – are needed. We may debate the wisdom of involuntary commitment or compulsory medication, but they are certainly topics that need to be explored if a consensus is ever to be reached. Most people in the mental health community admit that the system is broken and needs to be fixed – or possibly re-thought from the ground up.

Where do I stand on this debate? I feel that one or the other is not enough. It’s not an either/or situation. It seems to me that unless there is some real progress made in fighting stigma, the voting public and the legislators will not understand the realities of mental illness, the need for change, and what needs to be done to fix the system. Unless we engage in spreading information and changing people’s minds about what being mentally ill means, support for policy changes will be thin on the ground. And unless we come up with some solutions that people understand and support, nothing will change.

Myself, I work mostly in the stigma fighting camp. I don’t have the political acumen, contacts, and energy that real activism takes. I know it is vitally important, but it is not something I can do very much or very well.

What I can do, through my blogs and my books, is help with the information and education, spreading the word about mental health and mental illness, and helping alleviate the stigma that accompanies them. I also intend to start looking for opportunities in my writing to comment on the larger societal issues and proposed solutions and help with education about them as well.

To solve the problems surrounding mental illness, we must all do what we can, and what we do best.

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Mental Health

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Nothing to See Here

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) 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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Mental Health

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Helping Someone Else

My husband used to work in a community correctional facility – essentially a jail. The residents were considered nonviolent offenders technically on parole for mostly drug crimes, but things could still get interesting. Mostly he didn’t talk about his work because he would try to dismiss it from his mind every day as he went by a certain overpass on his way home from work.

One day, though, I was bitching in disbelief about something that had happened at my work – another editor had put his table of contents in random order instead of numerical. I was appalled by the stupidity of that.

There I was ranting about it. Then my husband said, “Boy, that’s tough. All I did today was break up a fight and spot a guy who might have a septic wound. But you – the table of contents out of numerical order? Wow!” That put me in my place.

My husband was someone who helped other people. For years after he left the job, people would come up to him when he was out and about, and reminisce with him. They’d tell him about how well they were doing, how they were clean and sober, how they had jobs, how they had improved their lives. They always said thank you to my husband.

This morning when I woke up and checked my email, I found something I wasn’t expecting. There, nestled in amongst the spam, was a response to a post that I wrote back in January, about passive suicidal ideation (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-Me).

In the reply, the person told of having thought about suicide but not acting on it. The response ended, “I’ll follow your advice and seek professional help.”

It’s difficult to describe what I felt then. Mostly, it was gratitude that my writing had helped someone, combined with not a little surprise at receiving a response at all. Sometimes writing is like shouting down a well. You never really know if anyone even hears you or if you’ve made a difference. Most of the time when I write this blog, I have no idea how the posts will affect my readers, if at all. But this time I knew – at least if the person followed through – that I had actually helped someone.

When I started Bipolar Me, it was to share my experiences with bipolar disorder and my thoughts on mental illness and mental health. If my writing resonated with someone, good. But I wasn’t writing with the intention of being inspiring, or helping people solve problems, or being a “good example.” I’m not a professional and the kind of advice I give (when I do) is largely commonsense – don’t stop taking your meds, seek professional help, thank your caregivers, and so on.

I’m not going to break my arm patting myself on the back here. There are lots of people who do the work of caring for the desperate and hurting every day. I am privileged to know some of them and to have even been helped by some. There are people like Sarah Fader and Gabe Howard who are advocates and activists for the mentally ill, who go out on a limb to do something to help the whole mental health community.

But today, for just a moment, I felt that I had really touched someone, really helped. It was a good feeling.

So there it is. I started this blog for self-centered reasons, to chronicle my own struggles and occasional victories. If it helped anyone, fine. If not, I still had stories to share. But now I find that having helped someone else has made a difference – in the other person, in me, in the world. Now I believe that my blog and my book could do more of that.

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Mental Health

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Riding the Mania

This has been a couple of good weeks for me. Either that or I’ve been riding the wave of mania.

In the past, I’ve written about how fleeting the feeling of hypomania can be (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-df). One pinprick and it bursts, leaving nothing but the air. Maybe that’s because I was hypomanic or rapid cycling at the time. Or maybe it was just a temporary feeling of joy that lasted only a few minutes and then retreated in the face of disappointment.

It’s difficult trusting your feelings when you have a mood disorder. I always have to ask myself, is this feeling a reaction to the real circumstances that surround me, or is it just a glitch that occurs between my synapses? It’s tiring questioning all your emotions all the time.

I’ve been stable for many months now. I’m not symptom-free. I still find it difficult to do daily tasks or leave the house, though lately, I have gotten up, groomed, dressed, and out of the house – including a record of three or four times in one week, rather than once or twice a month. But I have been feeling what feels like genuine happiness.  Contentment. Energy. Productivity. Engagement. Can I trust this?

Since over-thinking is one of my superpowers, let’s take a closer look. Do I have any of the symptoms of mania or hypomania to go with my lightened moods? Hypersexuality? No. Racing thoughts? No. Risk-taking behaviors? No.

But I have been overspending. Maybe. Our finances have improved of late, so there’s no real harm in buying a few things that I’ve been putting off. And my purchases have not been excessive – nothing over $30, and that was a birthday present for my husband. Still, I have been beset by the feeling, right before I hit checkout, “I shouldn’t be doing this,” or “I don’t really need that.” Again, my feelings are questionable. Maybe my purchases are influenced by hypomania and the stable part of my brain is warning me. On the other hand, the purchases may be modest and reasonable, and my questioning a holdover of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” from when our budget had no room at all for discretionary spending.

Then there’s my writing. I’ve written a couple of extra essays and guest blog posts in addition to my regular two blogs per week. I’m getting them done early, too. Once I even decided a post I was working on wasn’t very good, so I wrote a new one to take its place in a single day. I renamed and redesigned my other blog (newly christened “But I Digress…,” still available at janetcobur.wordpress.com). But is what I’m writing any good? It’s hard to tell. My stats on blog readership haven’t been as good as usual, but the editors were happy with the guest posts I wrote. The rewritten post was selected for special treatment on Medium.

It’s been observed that I could over-analyze a ham sandwich. But I am tired of examining every mood and emotion to be sure it isn’t pathological. Having unstable emotions is not a pleasant thing to live with, but neither is this level of self-doubt.

I saw my psychiatrist last weekend and he thought there were plenty of good things happening in my life – my published book (amzn.to/2RLU8hP), the extra writing, an upcoming podcast (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-Pi), a science fiction convention to attend – to explain my good mood. If he isn’t worried, why should I be?

All in all, I’m very tempted to say, “what the hell,” and ride this wave until or unless it crashes.

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Mental Health

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