Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘healing’

A Bipolar Breakup

A recent issue of BP magazine had an article on surviving a breakup as a person with bipolar disorder. It noted that “a split can trigger manic or depressive episodes.” It also noted that “there’s typically a period of destabilizing upheaval as the newly single adjust to life on their own, perhaps in different surroundings.”

I can vouch for the mood episodes and destabilizing upheaval. My senior year in college, I experienced a breakup that was not just destabilizing but devastating. At the time, I was not diagnosed, but it’s now clear that I was in the grip of a major depressive episode, between not having any idea what would happen to me after college and the train wreck that was the relationship.

The article also described how to maintain stability, avoid dangerous rebounds, and prioritize self-care when a relationship ends. They advised readers to avoid rebound relationships, not stop their medication, see or seek a mental health professional, avoid isolation by using their social support network, take their time, and allow themselves to heal.

This is no doubt good advice, but it’s easier said than done. I wasn’t able to put all of it into practice. I had no mental health professional (and wasn’t ready to look for one), and was unmedicated, unless you count the benzo I was given for my TMJ problem and the wine our neighbors poured for me.

As for rebound relationships, I met the man I would eventually marry the weekend before I left where I was living to return to my home state. But it’s hard to call it a rebound relationship, as for over a year, we saw each other only twice, but simply corresponded. So I guess you could say I took my time.

However, one year wasn’t all I needed to heal. Neither the flashbacks and nightmares nor the crying were finished in that time. I had to repair my relationship with my parents. I had to realize that I needed psychiatric help and begin that journey. I had to rebuild my social support system and find the wherewithal to interact with them.

When you consider everything, it took more than a decade. By the time my “rebound” guy and I got married, I was still not healed. He had to cope with my distress as I tried to shake off the memories. He tried to understand my longstanding depression (but really couldn’t until he experienced a depression of his own). The people in my support system soon realized that I would back out of plans, often at the last minute, and that if I did show up, I could be preoccupied and uncommunicative.

The good news is that I finally did heal. My husband and I now have a strong relationship unclouded by the specter of that failed one.

So, what would I advise someone to do in the aftermath of a bipolar breakup?

First of all, take the time you need to heal, and don’t worry if it doesn’t happen quickly. The death of a relationship engenders grief. And as with the death of a person you cared about, grief takes as long as it takes. There is no official timeline or cut-off point. I’m not saying you should dwell on a past relationship, but that there are many facets to such a breakup, and you may have to heal from one after another. You can’t rush it, so don’t try. Unresolved memories and grief can pop up again when you least expect them.

Next, while you’re taking your time to heal, also take the time to do the work. Find a therapist or psychiatrist and go to your appointments faithfully. If they give advice (they may not), take it. If they give you homework, do it. If they say something that resonates with you, think deeply about it. See where it fits into your life and your situation. If it doesn’t seem to do so, discuss it further in a later session.

Finally, don’t overlook “glimmers.” These fleeting reminders of the things that remain good in your world are worth treasuring. What they are will be personal to you. The sight of a blue jay flying past your window or hummingbirds fighting over a feeder. The smell of cinnamon rolls baking. The sound of a song you love being played over the sound system of a restaurant you visit. The cuddly warmth of a blanket or a hug. The taste of your favorite kind of chocolate. Use all your senses to identify the presence of things that bring you, if not joy, at least a smile.

Give it time. You will get over that relationship.

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Mental Health

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Baby Steps Toward Healing

Once I attended a weekend photography workshop. One of my photos received praise as being innovative and interesting, one based on a technique I had seen a friend use. The rest of my photos missed the mark. I was frustrated by my lack of progress. The instructor reassured me, advising me that I should take (or was taking) “baby steps.” That photo provided a brief glimpse of what I could do if I kept at it.

My therapist has also reminded me of this numerous times. And she’s been right. Almost all the progress I’ve made in dealing with being bipolar has been gradual and incremental.

The baby steps process was long and arduous, lasting for years. The first step was taking Prozac, which helped me for a while, then didn’t. Most of the progress I’ve made with medication has been in tiny, discrete steps. My prescribing psychiatrists have never done anything quickly, which is in one way a blessing and in another a torment. They would try me on one drug, then wait to see the results, then try a different dose or a different drug altogether. Lather, rinse, repeat until progress at last occurred.

Progress in therapy has likewise been gradual over the years. First there were therapists who diagnosed me with depression, which was certainly true, though not the whole picture. And they helped, or at least a number of them did over the years. I learned a lot about depression in general and how it applied to me in particular. I also learned about relationships, and those insights helped my marriage.

Finally, I was given an accurate diagnosis of bipolar disorder 2 with anxiety. That was where the steps toward reaching some resolution regarding my medication really started. That was also when I started working with the therapist who reminded me about baby steps.

Although I had made steps toward healing in the past, I had taken a deep and protracted plunge into depression before I started going to her. Several years of it had left me immobilized, despairing. At my lowest point, I described myself as “pathetic.” There were going to be a lot of baby steps needed to get me out of that miserable place.

So we went to work. I liked the kind of therapy she practiced – non-directional, non-judgmental. (I had had problems with therapists who weren’t like that in the past. Needless to say, I made no progress with them. In fact, I even took steps backward.) There was a long way to go.

Dr. B. frequently reminded me of the importance of baby steps and, eventually, how far those steps had taken me. I learned coping mechanisms. I learned new ways of thinking. I learned to accept myself with the reality of my bipolar disorder, but without the constant misery. And, by the time my proper medications had kicked in, we were making some even bigger steps. But all my progress was built on a foundation of many, many baby steps along the way.

I think all therapy consists of a lot of little steps. I don’t know anyone who has had a great revelation that instantly moved them further along with their healing. I only got glimpses of what my situation could be like if I persisted. And along the way, I regressed at times, needing to re-learn the lessons I had been exposed to and re-taking the steps I had already accomplished. Progress is like that – two steps forward and one step back – especially with a disorder as cyclical as bipolar.

Anyway, I still go to therapy and still take baby steps toward whatever my future holds. I realize it will take a long time – probably the rest of my life – but I’m dedicated to the process.

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Mental Health

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The Biggest Gaslighter

The subject of gaslighting is big these days. Everyone from your ex to the president is called a gaslighter. But what is gaslighting, really, and who is the biggest gaslighter of them all?

I’ve written quite a bit about gaslighting and here are the basics: Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse. The gaslighter denies the other person’s perception of reality. The gaslighter tries (and often succeeds) in making the other person feel that she or he is crazy. Gaslighting is very difficult to escape from. Healing from the effects of gaslighting can take a long time, even years.

By those standards, I maintain that bipolar disorder, or maybe mental illness in general, is the biggest gaslighter of all. Think about it.

Bipolar disorder is basically your own mind inflicting emotional abuse on itself. It denies your reality and substitutes its own. It makes you think you are “crazy.” It is very difficult to escape from. And healing from it can take years.

First, let’s consider bipolar disorder as emotional self-abuse. Bipolar disorder uses your own brain to make you miserable. It takes control of your emotions and often your behaviors, and uses them in a destructive manner. Emotional abuse inflicts a conditional called “learned helplessness” on a person. The abuser turns positive and loving just often enough to keep the victim hooked – to keep the victim believing that the abuse is really his or her own fault. Bipolar disorder can relent just enough to let you think you are over it or gives you enough euphoria to make you think that your life is just dandy. These are lies, of course.

That’s the other thing that bipolar disorder does – tells you lies. Bipolar depression tells you that you are worthless, hopeless, and pathetic; that nothing you do is right; and that nothing you can do can change that. It’s a big suckhole for all your emotions, but especially good feelings. And those are lies. You are not worthless. You do many things well. You can escape depression’s clutches. Depression – your brain – tries to substitute an alternate reality for your own.

Bipolar mania lies too. It tells you that you are delighted and delightful, able to accomplish anything and indulge in any behavior without consequence. It lifts you up to a realm of unreality. Again, this is your brain telling you lies, ones that can adversely affect your health, your relationships, your finances, and more. And these lies you want to believe, because they are so seductive and at first feel so good.

These lies are denials of reality. No person is as worthless as depression makes them feel. No one is as invincible as mania says you are. Taking these lies seriously can cause profound damage.

And make no mistake, bipolar disorder makes you think you’re crazy, or at least ask yourself if you are. The out-of-control emotions, the out-of-control behavior, the mood swings, the despair, the euphoria feel crazy. You know your emotions aren’t under your own control and you don’t know what to do about it.

But just as there is healing from gaslighting, there is healing from bipolar disorder. The first thing to do in either case is to remove yourself from the situation. For gaslighting, that can mean breaking up with a partner or even moving away. Breaking up with bipolar disorder is even harder. It likely means starting medication and therapy.

With gaslighting, there can be a tendency to go back, to think that it really wasn’t all that bad. And there were undoubtedly things that drew you to the gaslighter in the first place, plus the intermittent reinforcement of loving apologies that make you deny your own perceptions of reality. And with bipolar disorder, the work of healing is so difficult that you may want to stop doing it – skip your therapist appointments, stop taking your meds, retreat to your emotional cycles, which at least are familiar.

But both gaslighting and bipolar disorder don’t have to steal your entire life. You can get away from the gaslighter. You can find healing from bipolar disorder. At the very least, you can improve your life and not have to ask yourself all the time: Is this real? Am I crazy? Getting treatment for bipolar disorder can break the hold it has on your life, disrupt the cycles that have you feeling perpetually out of balance.

But there’s the big difference between bipolar and gaslighting. You have to run away from gaslighting; you can’t change it. You can’t run away from bipolar disorder.  You have to face it and do the work to find remission and healing.

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Growing May Take a While

I saw a meme the other day that said, “Grow through what you go through.” I thought to myself, “This is going to take a while.”

Now, I’m not saying that the meme promotes a bad idea. I just mean that it’s not as easy as the meme makes it sound. Memes are like that. They encapsulate a difficult and painful process into a succinct platitude that never captures the reality of what it purports to express.

It is certainly possible to grow because of bad experiences that you have gone through, and I have surely done this. But it hasn’t been quick or easy. Not that it is for anyone, but especially not for people with serious mental illnesses.

Bipolar disorder, and bipolar depression in particular, often leads one to recall and obsess about the very things one would most like to forget. (Of course, this happens with unipolar depression, too.) It’s like having a recorder in your head that replays the most painful, embarrassing, humiliating, or devastating events in your life. And there is no “off” button or even a “pause.”

Getting through something is not the same as getting over something. And growing through something is something else again. It takes as long as it takes. There is no way to rush it or to speed it up.

Take grief, to choose an example that most people with and without mental disorders are familiar with. I saw a TV show once in which various characters were concerned that the hero had not “gotten over” the death of a friend as quickly as they thought he should. I remember thinking, “That’s stupid. There’s no arbitrary limit on how long a person should grieve.” I know that in days past, a mourning period of a year was customary, with restrictions on dress and activities. That’s stupid too. It may take a few months or a year or the rest of your life, depending on how close you were to the deceased and the circumstances of her or his death.

Deaths don’t have to be physical, either. The death of a relationship can be just as soul-searing, as traumatic, as a literal death. It’s still a loss and one that you may have put your whole heart and soul into.

Of course, it’s great if you can grow through the experience. It’s possible to acquire a new depth of spirit when you go through something traumatic. You can emerge stronger and more resilient and more compassionate because of the experience. I think that’s what the meme was talking about.

But if the trauma – the death or separation or other experience – is fraught with pain as well as grief, then growing through it can be even harder and take even longer. A son whose abusive mother dies has feelings that can hardly be expressed, a jumble of emotions that’s almost impossible to articulate, much less grow through. The end of a relationship with a gaslighter may evoke relief as well as grief, conflicting emotions that can impede growth. These and other situations can call up memories and feelings that one wants to escape, not dwell on. But processing them seems perhaps the only way of growing through them.

That process cannot be rushed. It may take years of bad dreams and flashbacks – at least it did for me – as well, perhaps, as a period of therapy that, like grief, takes as long as it takes to make progress in growing through whatever happened. From outside the situation, it may seem like the person is wallowing in the pain or grief. But on the inside, the process of growing may be occurring at a rate that you can’t see or understand.

In other words, if a person has been through a trauma, don’t expect him or her to “get over it” on what you think is a proper timescale. Some plants, like dandelions, grow incredibly rapidly. Others, like oaks, grow incredibly slowly. For each, it takes as long as it takes.

 

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