Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘freelance work’

Structure in My Bipolar Days

I used to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. Work provided the only structure to my days, back when I was able to work in an office. It wasn’t always the same structure, depending on the job, of course. I have worked various shifts over the course of my checkered career—first, second, and third. I adjusted to them fairly well (except when I was working third shift and going to grad school in the mornings).

That all changed when I quit my last office job. I remember feeling so free. I basked in the ability to do freelance work whenever, run errands whenever, go to sleep and wake up whenever. Of course, I was hypomanic at the time, which I should have recognized because of the golden glow that seemed to envelop my days. Naturally, the crash came, along with the absence of freelance work to do. Then, when I fell into a deep depression, anything resembling a schedule fell apart. I didn’t have a specific time for going to bed or waking up, for eating, reading, errands including bill paying, and even showering. Without that structure, I had trouble finding a reason to get out of bed.

Now I’m stable on medication and therapy, and my days have fallen into more of a pattern. I still work at home, but for a company that gives me ghostwriting work. It has a built-in rhythm to it. Most of my assignments are 30,000 words long and due in 21 days. They want us writers to average 1,500 words a day. I divide that up into 750 words in the morning and 750 in the afternoon. I work weekends at this pace, too.

Fortunately, I find 1,500 words a day eminently doable. My daily schedule consists of mornings spent breakfasting, paying bills, keeping track of appointments, or making necessary phone calls (which is my usual role in running the household).

Then, mid-morning, my husband calls on his break from work. Part of the reason is to make sure I’m okay, but most of the time I’m fine and we simply talk, often about what I’ve scheduled for the rest of the week. (I keep track of his appointments and phone calls too. Sometimes I feel like I have a second job as Dan’s secretary.) After we talk, I begin my first stint of writing for the day, my first 750. I’m generally done in time to have lunch around 12:00. Dan calls again in the early afternoon, and I begin my second 750 afterward. When he gets home, we spend time together and have dinner around 7:00.

Those are my daily schedules, which I don’t really need a planner for. When it comes to weekly schedules, I do use a computer app. Our “weekend” is Sunday and Monday because of Dan’s work, but I work on my writing anyway. My calendar is filled with bills to pay by a certain date, appointments we each have to go to (which I remind Dan about), and notes indicating when my 30,000 words are due. I also make note of which weeks are for recycling. (The day before trash day, there’s frantic cleaning.) I have this and another blog that I post in on Sundays. I have a weekly internal schedule for that, too. I start writing them on Tuesdays, have them at least mostly finished on Fridays, tweak and tag them on Saturdays, and publish on Sunday mornings at 10:00.

Having these systems in place keeps me on an even keel which, after all, is my goal as a person with bipolar disorder. My days are predictable, but not boring because I don’t find writing boring, even if it’s on someone else’s topic. Does it seem too regimented? All I know is, it works for me.

This past week, I went on vacation, so for one week, my schedule was largely out the window. I looked forward to staying up late, sleeping late, having meals whenever we felt like it, spending time reading or shopping or sightseeing or watching movies whenever we wanted. Because, as much as I like my structure, I need a break from it at times. Sometimes I take a few days off between book assignments to work on other projects like organizing my jewelry armoire or my desk.

It’s a balancing act, really. Enough structure to keep me focused, but not so much that it becomes a rut. Dan’s phone calls help. Having time in the mornings and evenings before and after I write helps. And my most important routine, of course—taking my meds in the morning and at night. That’s a part of my day’s structure I never want to neglect.

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Mental Health

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What Bipolar Disorder Has Cost Me

black backgroundWe lose a lot when we live with bipolar disorder – function, memory, friends, and even family.

But we also lose something more tangible – money. Or at least I did, and I know that a number of others have experienced this as well. Here’s how it went for me.

Work. I quit my full-time office job (possibly in a fit of hypomania). I had a new boss and had told her about my disorder. Her only question was, “What will that mean?” My answer was, “Sometimes I’ll have good days and sometimes I’ll have bad days.” (It caught me by surprise, so I didn’t have a more coherent or accurate answer.) Immediately after that, I began receiving bad evaluations, which I never had before. Was my performance really declining? It probably was, as I was heading into a major depressive episode.

But I wasn’t out of work quite yet. For a while I worked freelance, and pretty successfully. Then my brain broke, and there I was – unemployed. I had savings in a 401K, and we ran through all of that. Then my husband had a depressive episode and we ran through his 401K as well. And the money we got from refinancing our house.

Disability. Sometime in that stretch of time, my husband realized that our money was going to run out. He asked me to file for disability. Many of you know that story. I was denied. I got a disability lawyer. By this time – years later – I was able to work freelance again a bit, and my lawyer told me shortly before my appeal hearing was scheduled that the hearing officer’s head would explode when he learned what my hourly rate was.

Never mind that I could work only a few hours a week – maybe five, in a good week.

Insurance. Then there was insurance. As a freelancer, of course, I didn’t have any. My husband’s good county job had covered us, until he became unemployed too. I’m sure a lot of you know that story as well. No insurance. Huge pharmacy bills, and psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and doctor visits and the odd trip to Urgent Care.

Meds. Then my doctor put me on a new drug which cost $800 a month. I got a couple of months free from the drug company – just enough to discover that it really worked for me and I didn’t want to give it up.

Then, with remarkable timing, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) came along and we were able to get insurance again. It wasn’t really affordable, though, costing only slightly less per month than the new drug. But it covered all our other prescriptions, too, so we came out a little ahead.

Budget. Since then, that’s the way it’s been going – month to month and disaster to disaster. My work is irregular and I never know how much I’ll get in any given month. My husband’s pay is steady, but meager – a little above minimum wage. We have managed to make our mortgage payments and keep the house, which my husband doubted we’d be able to do when I couldn’t work. I know in that respect, we’re way luckier than many families struggling with bipolar disorder.

Our latest disaster came this week, when our only remaining partially working vehicle (no reverse gear) blew out second gear as well. The money we had borrowed and put aside for major dental work that the insurance wouldn’t cover disappeared with a poof – and still wasn’t enough. We had to borrow more from an already fed-up relative. I don’t blame her. She never expected to have to keep bailing out her grown son and his wife when she herself was past retirement age.

Our Future. I don’t see anything changing. My mental disorder is under much better control, but I know I’ll never be able to work in a full-time 9–5 job again. Job opportunities are few for people our age anyway, despite anti-age-discrimination laws. And I’ve never tried applying for a job where I must ask for accommodations to offset my illness, but I’m sure employers find lots of reasons not to hire people who need those. Again, despite the laws.

So why am I telling you all this? Am I just whining and feeling sorry for myself? Well, yes, I am, but that’s not the point, really. Bipolar disorder takes a brutal toll on our emotional lives, our families, our relationships, and more. It can also put us on the brink of poverty, or in our case, one paycheck and one more disaster away from desperate straits. I know that there are bipolar sufferers, including some of my friends, in much worse straits.

It’s stressful.

And we all know how stress affects a person with bipolar disorder.

Badly.

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Mental Health

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Hypomanic, Anxious, and Overextended

My hypomania and my anxiety are fighting each other. Here’s what happened to start the quarrel.

There wasn’t much work for me over the holidays and into February. The transcription company that I freelance for didn’t have many assignments to give out, and, being part-time, I was low on the list to get them. Plus, one of the company’s biggest clients was leaving. And my husband and I got COVID, so it was impossible for him and difficult for me to work.

The job at the transcription company isn’t great. I make a few hundred dollars a month, which is a good supplement to my Social Security and my husband’s pay. I’m really a crappy typist, though, so it takes me longer to finish assignments than it does for most people. I work only four days a week, but it feels like full-time.

But, with the job likely to go away entirely, my anxiety was triggered. I figured it was time to look for a new part-time gig, maybe one that wouldn’t be as taxing.

I started my job search and eventually found a company that was hiring remote online tutors, which seemed perfect for me. My bipolar disorder makes it difficult for me to work in an office, especially in a 9-to-5 job. I’ve done it in the past, but don’t think I could anymore.

Then good news came – the transcription job wasn’t going away after all. A new client had signed on (though the work hasn’t started to come in yet, so I have no idea what the pattern of assignments will be).

I didn’t want to give up on the tutoring job. (I haven’t started yet, as they are still processing my paperwork.) I figured I might be able to do both, tutoring on the three days per week that I wasn’t transcribing, or in the mornings between assignments. The tutoring gig requires only five hours per week, though you can take on more.

Then I got a lead on a job editing, which is my real love when it comes to work. And I began to wonder whether I could do that in addition to both the tutoring job and the typing job.

Of course, that’s hypomania talking. I don’t get hypomania very often and when I do, I have a hard time recognizing it. My husband sometimes notices it before I do and gently reminds me when he sees me starting to go overboard. “You’d be awfully busy,” he said, looking dubious. It made me stop and think. For one thing, it made me think that it might not have been a good idea to buy the new computer that the tutoring job would require. For another, my time off with him is precious, and I wouldn’t like losing that.

The typing job is supposed to get rolling again, but I like it the least, as it isn’t a good use of my real skill set. But I’ve been doing it for several years now, so I’m kind of used to it. The prospect of having no extra money coming in scares me, though, enough that I am really considering getting that second part-time job. That’s my anxiety talking as well as my hypomania.

Realistically, I ought to just stay with the job I have and hope that the new client works out. Now that that is a possibility, maybe I should give up the idea of more work. But the uncertainty that I’ve recently experienced tells me that I ought to have another way to jump, just in case.

Which will win – my anxiety, my hypomania, or my husband’s common sense? I really want that editing job . . . .

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Mental Health

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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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Workplace Adjustments I Would Like to Have Had

by Chinnapong / adobestock.com

I missed out on the heyday of the ADA. People didn’t become as conscious of accommodating people with disabilities until much later. And even then, the most common accommodation was wheelchair ramps. But there are some workplace adjustments or accommodations I wish I had available to me, back when I worked in an office.

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), persons with disabilities are entitled to accommodations to make it possible for them to work. Most of us think about certain kinds of lighting, closed captions, or specialized chairs. But what about when you have an invisible disability?

The ADA definition of a disability is one that impairs an individual’s ability to – among other “major life activities” – learn, read, concentrate, think, communicate, and work. Certainly, a number of psychological or psychiatric conditions qualify as producing trouble in these areas. In my case, my bipolar disorder made it difficult to do many of those in your standard office work environment.

But would the ADA have made accommodations available to me? The ADA does include some mental illnesses in its list of disabilities. Examples of mental disabilities commonly considered under the ADA are:

  • Major depressive disorder
  • Bipolar disorder
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder
  • Schizophrenia

Examples of accommodations or work adjustments for those with psychological disabilities include, among others:

  • Flexible Workplace – Telecommuting and/or working from home.
  • Scheduling – Part-time work hours, job sharing, adjustments in the start or end of work hours, compensation time and/or “make up” of missed time.
  • Leave – Sick leave for reasons related to mental health, flexible use of vacation time, additional unpaid or administrative leave for treatment or recovery, leaves of absence and/or use of occasional leave (a few hours at a time) for therapy and other related appointments.
  • Breaks – Breaks according to individual needs rather than a fixed schedule, more frequent breaks and/or greater flexibility in scheduling breaks, provision of backup coverage during breaks, and telephone breaks during work hours to call professionals and others needed for support.

Of course, in order to receive accommodations or adjustments, it’s necessary to reveal to someone – at least your boss or maybe the HR department – that you have a psychological or psychiatric disorder.

My own experience of needing accommodations at work was not great. In the job I held the longest, I only mentioned my depression (as it was then diagnosed), to my immediate supervisor. He was sympathetic, but the work environment was not exactly conducive to my needs.

One of the things that I could have used in dealing with the anxiety that went along with my depression was privacy. At first, that was not even possible, since my entire department was located in a cube farm, where no one had any real privacy. Even the fact that I was an editor and needed to concentrate on my work did not win me a private space.

Later, when we moved to an office that had actual offices, I snagged one with a door. The only problem was that I was not allowed to close the door, or at least looked askance at when I did.

An ideal situation for me (aside from being allowed to close my door) would have been permission to work from home. There was one person at this office who had this privilege, but it was never considered for me. Admittedly, this was very much pre-pandemic, but most of my work was done on a computer, and I had one at home that was compatible with the office computers. It wouldn’t even have been necessary for the company to supply me with one.

Another accommodation that would have helped lots would have been a hotel room to myself at business conventions, which would have allowed me time and space to decompress after a long day of being “on,” meeting and greeting, and being sociable and respectable. Unfortunately, that was a privilege reserved for the men. (As I understood it, the salesmen were booked into double rooms as well, but winked at when they rebooked them into singles.) This may have nominally been due to my sex rather than my mental condition, but not having a solitary retreat from the clamor of a convention definitely had a deleterious effect.

After 17 years at that job, I was let go, most likely because I was considered “unreliable.” At the next office where I landed, I had a boss who understood bipolar disorder (as I was then diagnosed) and who was satisfied with my work.  Never a bad evaluation – until that boss left. “I’m going to miss you,” I said. “I know you will,” she replied.

I realized what she meant when I revealed to my new boss that  I had bipolar disorder. “What does that mean?” she asked. Taken aback, the only reply I could think of was, “Sometimes I have good days and sometimes I have bad days.”  It wasn’t a great description of my condition and set me up for problems. After one year of my mother’s health and my psychiatrist appointments requiring me to miss work, and my missing work in winter owing to living at the bottom of a snowy, icy hill, I received my first bad evaluation. Nothing about my performance had actually changed since my work with the first boss. I could have easily worked from home and occasionally was permitted to, but my work was dubbed sub-par once I did.

(Not that it’s a big thing, but I would also have appreciated being able to take a “brain break” such as doing a crossword puzzle, instead of a cigarette break, since I don’t smoke. And not being asked work questions when I was on the toilet.)

After that, I went freelance, worked at home nearly all the time, and was only required to attend a meeting at an office once or twice a year. I have worked that way since and it suits me. It’s only now that I’ve become my own boss that I’ve been able to get what I really need when it comes to work.

 

References

https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/americans-disabilities-act-amendments-act-2008#:~:text=The%20Act%20emphasizes%20that%20the,shall%20not%20require%20extensive%20analysis.

https://www.sfglife.com/blog/top-10-causes-disabilities-us-and-why-you-need-disability-insurance/

https://adata.org/factsheet/health

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/mental-health/maximizing-productivity-accommodations-for-employees-with-psychiatric-disabilities

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/cms_011495.aspx

https://www.ada.gov/pubs/adastatute08.htm#12102

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I Hate My Job, But I Don’t Hate My Life

The other day I found myself thinking, “I hate my job. I hate my life.” But then I stopped. The truth was that I do hate my job, but I don’t hate my life.

There have been times when the two thoughts absolutely went together. I well remember getting up in the morning and thinking, “Now I have to go to the bad place where they make me unhappy.” Unfortunately, the thought would color my whole day. Instead of unwinding after a rotten day – or a whole series of them – I brooded about what came before and dreaded what would come the next day. I was caught in a loop of bad thoughts and they wouldn’t let me go, or enjoy, or relax. My life seemed to stretch out into an unending series of more of the same.

Of course, that was when I was deep in bipolar depression, improperly medicated, and unaware of self-care. Oh, the job was indeed pretty terrible. I was an editor, a writer, and a proofreader, tasks and occupations I normally enjoy. There’s something wonderful about taking something mediocre and making it good, or even taking something bad and making it better. Once or twice I even got compliments on the job I was doing.

But at that time, when I hated it, the job was a misery. A reorganization had put the editorial department under the marketing department, which had been true in fact for a long time but was now formally acknowledged, with a resulting new chain of command. Anything I wrote was essentially a puff piece for some advertiser. Three senior editors were fighting over my time and attention, each determined that I should work on their project first and foremost.

I wasn’t quite ready for a major breakdown, but I was close. I hated both my job and my life.

Now I have a tedious and basically unfulfilling job. I transcribe audios of boring business meetings and lawyer consultations, relieved only by the occasional podcast. On top of that, I’m a really crappy typist, so it takes me hours to do a job that others could zoom through. Add in foreign accents and mumblers, and you get a job that brings me no joy, but only a modest paycheck.

But for some reason it also suits me. I work four days a week, at home in my pajamas. No one is looking over my shoulder. If I make my deadlines (and I do), I can expect fairly steady work, except during the holiday season. I earn enough to supplement my social security without going over their limit on extra income.

I also have medications that stabilize me and a much better knowledge of self-care. Working at home for only one boss is part of that. So is taking meal breaks whenever I want them and spending that time with my husband. Eating nutritious meals. Letting myself say, “I hate it! I hate it!” after a particularly trying assignment. Reading a book before I go to bed. Snuggling with the kitties. Allowing all these things to seep beneath my skin and feed my soul.

I don’t belong to the regular-massage-and-decadent-chocolates school of self-care. Maybe I’m a simple soul, but I prefer the everyday comforts that make my life not a misery and help me appreciate what I can of my situation. Not that I’ve got anything against either massages or chocolate. But to me, they are special indulgences rather than a part of my daily self-care.

In the end, medication and self-care are what keep me going, hating my job, but not my life.

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The Perils of Working Full-Time Again

Working full-time is a bitch. Working full-time while mentally ill is even worse.

I work as a writer and editor, but lately I’ve been working mostly as a transcriptionist. Dan works as a clerk in a big box store and grocery. Neither one of us makes very much money at this.

Both of us used to work in more professional settings. Neither one of us is able to now. Working at home in my jammies suits me fine. I don’t know that I’m capable now of dressing up like a competent businesswoman and going to an office where it’s all people-y and I have to be professional and appropriate for eight hours straight. My husband suffered serious burn-out and depression and can no longer handle a managerial position.

The freelance lifestyle has been a godsend for me. Mostly, when bipolar depression hit, I could declare myself a “mental health day” and not work. Most of my deadlines used to be flexible enough to accommodate an iffy schedule. Now not so much.

The transcription job changed from part-time to full-time when the financial crunch crunched. It involves listening to the audio of assorted business meetings, podcasts, and the like and typing them. And there are definitely deadlines. Often very tight ones, but always very specific. I can’t get away with saying, “I’ll have this for you Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.” In fact, I have to take the tightest deadlines I can get because they pay better. I’ve been taking extra work on my days off, too, just for the extra bit of money. But it’s wearing me down, mentally and emotionally. (Sitting at a desk all day isn’t doing wonders for my back either.)

So here I am, dealing with many of the difficulties of full-time work – setting an alarm to wake me up, working when I don’t feel well enough, not being able to take breaks when I need them, fighting the stress of tight deadlines. I am fortunate, and I know it, to be able to work at all, what with the bipolar and the anxiety. I shouldn’t complain. But the freelance market is tight these days and transcription is almost all I can get. It’s leaving me feeling battered and afraid. The work is said to slow down drastically between Christmas and New Year. But the bills don’t, of course.

Dan’s work is less mentally stressful but more physically challenging. Working third shift requires him to sleep most of the next day just to recover and his depression is kicking in as well. His brush with mortality and enforced inactivity depressed him further. Plus, he has to deal with me and my mood swings, from resigned numbness to hypomanic panics. We’ve often said that when both of us are emotionally afflicted at the same time, things get pretty ugly. Neither one of us can truly be there for the other, or only in small bursts.

But until or unless our circumstances ease up, here we are – fighting our way through full-time work and part-time mental function. I just keep pounding these keys and he just keeps stocking those shelves. There’s no time off for bipolar and depression.

 

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The Golden Glow and the Spoons

art board cooking flowers

Photo by Aphiwat chuangchoem on Pexels.com

Hypomania is as insidious as it is enjoyable.

I remember when I quit my 9–5 office job to go freelance. I remember when I made the decision. I had gotten my first bad review, ever, shortly after disclosing my bipolar disorder to my new boss.

I remember driving around shortly thereafter, running errands in the middle of the day. I felt the warm, golden glow that goes with either happiness or hypomania. I could wake when I pleased and work when I pleased. I could run those errands when I wanted. I could take my mother to her doctor’s appointments whenever I needed to. I could make and go to my own appointments as necessary.

Best of all, I felt as though I had enough spoons to do all this. I was able to keep up with the work and the errands and the appointments and, hey, if I got tired I could take a nap in the middle of the day.

But.

Eventually the glow wore off and the spoons ran out. Hypomania dumped me back into the depression I was oh-so-familiar with. I had more work to do and less energy to do it. My mother’s problems increased and I had to take over her finances as well as my own. I was teetering on the edge of a major depression, and then I fell off that cliff.

Anymore I don’t trust hypomania. First of all, I can’t distinguish it from actual happiness, competence, or satisfaction. I always question its sincerity and watch out of the corner of my eye for the coming crash. In other words, when I’m happy I can’t even enjoy happiness without reservation.

One way I keep track of my hypomania is by being aware of the number of spoons I have. If I’m flying on a hypomanic cloud, I feel replete with spoons. It never occurs to me that I will run out. When I’m experiencing garden-variety happiness, I still suffer at some point from lack of spoons. No matter how many pleasing things are scheduled for the day, I know deep inside that I cannot simply dive into all that bounty. My joy is measured out, as the poet said, in coffee spoons or in this case metaphoric spoons which I always visualize as small white plastic ones.

Stability for me does not mean that I can ignore my supply of spoons, either. I may be on an even keel, able to do most of what I want, but inevitably the spoon depletion hits, sooner or later. There is simply no more that I can do, much as I want to. And if I force myself past that point, I will surely pay for it in exhaustion, irritability, or isolation.

Spoons, therefore, run my life. If I am too happy, I have to watch for incipient spoon depletion.  If I am level, I know that I must still keep track of the spoons I use. And if I am low, my spoons can disappear altogether, to the familiar point of not being able to get out of bed.

I think the trap of hypomania is the worst of all. On a high like that I can lose track of my spoons – even forget that they are necessary. Fortunately, I don’t get the full-blown version of mania. I fear I would squander spoons recklessly, leaving me a terrible absence of any.

Spoons are a useful way to explain the energy demands of chronic and/or mental illnesses. My husband and I speak spoonie shorthand. But I wish I could experience that golden glow, that haze of happiness, that feeling of floating, without having to keep one eye on the spoon-meter.

 

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Mental Health

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The Disability Tapdance

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Once I applied for disability for my bipolar disorder and I was turned down Then I took the process as far as I could with a lawyer and he eventually advised me to give it up too. Here’s my story.

I had gotten to the end of my proverbial rope and we had gotten to the end of our money. For over a year I had been sidelined by unremitting depression. There was nothing I could do and nothing my psychiatrist prescribed or my therapist said had helped. We had been living on my husband’s salary and what was in my 401K from when I had last been able to work.

At last my husband pointed out that we couldn’t hold out much longer. He encouraged me to apply for disability. I knew that there would be lots of hoops to jump through and that there was no guarantee of succeeding. But Dan was willing to go with me to the Federal Building and help me get through it. I certainly wasn’t capable of managing it on my own.

Between the two of us, we had looked up what sorts of documents I would need and had acquired them. I was glad we were able to do this because going back again and again for missing documents would have been a horror. I had my appointment with the intake person and went back home to wait.

There were more forms to come. My psychiatrist had to fill out a long one, of course, or write a letter, I don’t remember which. I had to pay him for his time and trouble in doing that but at that point it was just another step that needed taking.

The big step was the psychological interview where I had to perform my little song and dance and convince someone that I was truly disabled. Fortunately, the appointment was not downtown in the Federal Building but in a relatively nearby office building that I knew how to find. Then the hoop-jumping and tap dancing really began.

They tested my memory. They told convoluted stories and asked me questions about them such as the order in which things happened and why the characters did what they did. They were confusing.

They tested my spatial perception. They had me put together those cubes with triangles on them to match patterns they showed me. I still don’t know what that had to do with bipolar disorder.

Then came factual knowledge. I was good at that one. I admit I guessed when they asked me how big around the equator was. I knew the easy stuff like who wrote Tom Sawyer and such.

By the time they got to the word association test, I was very tired. First they gave a pair of words and asked what they had in common, easy ones like truck and train. Later they gave difficult pairs of words that seemed to have nothing in common, like acceptance and denial, but I was supposed to come up with a commonality anyway.

Finally, an interview. I remember the woman asking me if I knew what the saying, “What goes around, comes around” meant. I replied, “As you sow, so shall you reap” and she looked at me funny.

A seemingly endless time later my claim was denied and I got a lawyer to pursue it. By that time so much time had passed that I was coming out of the depression and was able to work a few hours a week. How much did I get paid per hour? he asked. “Thirty dollars,” I said, explaining that I could only work a very limited number of hours. It didn’t matter. As soon as I said thirty dollars the judge’s head would explode, evidently. Lawyer Joe recommended I drop the claim and I did. At least I was getting some work and some income even without disability.

It seemed that for me to get disability I would have had to be together enough not to need it, but sufficiently disabled that I would. Catch-22, as Joseph Heller said.

 

 

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Mental Health

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