The Therapeutic Hug
Posts tagged ‘husband’
Burnout Ahead
This was first published seven years ago. I’m glad to say that things are better now.
What do you get when you take two people, three doctors, eleven prescriptions, two pharmacies, and an insurance company?
No, wait – I’m not finished.
THEN add another person, two banks, a credit card company, a missing check, and a disputed charge.
Mix in bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and several months of previous stress.
What you get, first of all, is something that rhymes with fuster-cluck, and then a dangerous situation: Two people under pressure, neither of whom can function well enough to find any solutions, running out of psychotropics.
There is enormous inertia. You make a few calls, get a few responses. Fine, you think. That’s taken care of. Except that days later, it isn’t. There are overdraft notices, nearly exhausted supplies of psychotropics, and occasional fits of tears.
So you take another swing at it. More phone calls. More revolving phone trees. More dropped calls. More suggestions that you really need to get someone else to call someone other else to resolve it and here’s a handy 1-800 number that takes you to a department that never heard of you, your problem, or the companies you’re dealing with.
Yes, they all agree. It’s important that you don’t run out of your psychotropics. It would sure be nice if there were enough money in the account to pay the premium for the crappy insurance. It’s a mystery why no one has any record of the complaint you asked them to file.
Another day. Another no check. Another no drug delivery. By now we’re getting into mixed states: immobilizing depression and nail-biting, catastrophizing anxiety.
You look for possible work-arounds. Maybe the local pharmacy can sell you enough pills to tide you over. But, oopsie! Your bank balance just went from -$53 to -$82. And the insurance won’t pay for drugs at the local pharmacy anymore – only through mail order. Which brings us back to D’oh!
This is not hypothetical. This is happening.
What do we do now?
Well, we split up the tasks. I work on the drugs and insurance end, while my husband works on the banking problem. We both hover over the mailbox, waiting for the check.
We take turns with symptoms. Both of us having a meltdown at the same time is not pretty. I’ve seen it. Trust me on this.
We do all we can do and then stop. For the moment anyway. When the pitch of my voice starts rising to dog whistle range and I start sniffling and tearing up, I know I’m just moments away from becoming incoherent, which may demonstrate the need for the psychotropics, but is not actually any help in getting them.
We try to take care of ourselves. Dan can sleep (I can’t), so he does. He buys me comfort foods (fried rice, mashed potatoes). I decide that this may not be the best time to be reading a new, fast-paced zombie apocalypse thriller and switch to a familiar old standby character study.
There’s never a good time for these cosmic pile-ups to happen, but now is unusually bad. The last few months have brought assorted financial and medical troubles (the two being related, of course), plus the death of three elderly pets within a couple of weeks of each other. Dan is dealing with the fact that the house he grew up in is up for sale. I haven’t been getting as much work as usual. Soon, I will have to look into expanding my client base or finding another line of work.
After I get the drugs. And after they start to work. Whenever that is.
Sorry I don’t have anything encouraging or amusing or informative to share this week. That’s just the way it is sometimes. And now is one of those times.
I Want to Go Home to Bed With My Kitties
What Bipolar Disorder Has Cost Me
We 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.
Bipolars, Rollercoasters, and Sex
The rollercoaster is the most common metaphor for bipolar disorder. But is it really the best one?
After all, a rollercoaster has long, abrupt downward swoops, and anticipatory highs. (At least the ones I’m familiar with. I won’t go on the ones that turn you completely upside-down. I understand the physics, but no. Just no.) Rollercoaster highs crank slowly, grindingly up. Mania isn’t like that. Boom! You’re suddenly at the top.
Nor are rollercoaster lows like the lows of depression. If they were, the downward slide would not be the exhilarating, thrilling part of the ride, and would not immediately be followed by another high. Instead, the rollercoaster would plod along through a lengthy trough, or maybe a tunnel (though not of love), with no idea of when the next up would come.
Perhaps a seesaw is a better metaphor. Its ups and downs are quick, and you can stay stuck in either position for an undetermined length of time. And a seesaw is all about balance.
But no. A seesaw requires a second person to operate correctly, and that is certainly not the experience of a bipolar person. Our brain chemistry or genetics or trauma alone is enough to get us going up and down.
A pogo stick? The spring gets squashed and then rebounds. But it’s a rhythmic bounce, not one that you don’t see coming until you’re in it. (If then.)
The basic problem with most of the usual metaphors is that they involve fun at some level. Bipolar is not fun. Oh, the mania may be enjoyable – for a time. But the gut-wrenching drop does not make you go whee!
So how about a soufflé? It can rise or fall, and you never quite know which it’s going to do.
Or a computer? It can open up the world, but is going to crash sometime, inevitably when you most need it to work.
I suppose we could split it up. Mania is a fountain and depression is a ditch. Depression is a b&w rabbit-ear TV and mania is streaming with 1000 services. Mania is a battery and depression is a dead battery.
The root of the problem is that no metaphor can adequately explain bipolar disorder. Even Spoon Theory, useful as it is, explains only the effects, not how the disorder itself works. A metaphor may capture one half of the experience – the ups or the downs – but not the reality of both.
If it’s not possible to explain bipolar disorder with a metaphor, why do we so often try to? Because, really, only people with bipolar know what it is like, and the experience even differs from person to person. A psychologist or psychiatrist may understand the mechanisms and the causes and the complications and the medications. But she or he is essentially watching from the outside.
My husband didn’t really “get” depression until he fell into depression himself which lasted a couple of weeks. “Now,” I said, “try to imagine that feeling lasting for months.” He couldn’t, but at least he was closer to understanding.
My mother-in-law, who doesn’t “believe in” mental illness, now has a clue too, since she experienced a profound reactive depression.
Neither of them really “gets” mania.
Maybe the best metaphor is that bipolar disorder is like sex. You can’t adequately explain it to someone who’s never had it. And even when you’ve had either sex or bipolar disorder, you only know what it’s like for you. You can generalize your experience and share commonalities, but basically, every case of bipolar is something a person goes through alone, or maybe alone together, as Jenny Lawson says.
Bipolar disorder.
It is what it is.
Distract Me!
I recently saw a meme that said being happy was different than being distracted from sadness. I couldn’t deny that they are different. But it seemed to me that it was saying that being distracted from sadness was a bad thing. And I don’t believe that, necessarily.
Sure, happiness is better than sadness, and something to aspire to. But it’s not always possible, especially for those of us who struggle with bipolar, depression, and other mood disorders – despite what the positive thinking people say. (I don’t think that “smiling depression” is a good coping mechanism to recommend. It denies reality and doesn’t help someone realize that they should seek out the help they need.)
But when I’m down in the depths, distraction helps. Unless I’m in the total Pit of Despair, it short-circuits my overthinking, relieves (at least for a while) my brooding, and even gives me something I can smile at, if only momentarily.
Where do I find distraction? First, there are other people. There’s my husband. He has the ability to make me laugh at the silliest things. We sometimes toss a soft toy back and forth at each other, exclaiming, “Eeee!” It’s really a stupid game, and not one we play every day, but when you’re not expecting Eeee to fly through the air and bop you, it’s definitely distracting. We giggle like fools.
Another one of my go-to distraction providers is a friend named Tom. He’s a singer-songwriter and improv comedian who has dozens of different songs and jokes I’ve never heard. If I’m too much “in my head” and can’t get out, I can call Tom. Once when I called him, I just flat out said, “I need to be distracted.” “Look at the grouse! Look at the grouse!” he instantly replied. I had no idea it was from a Three Stooges routine, but it was absurd enough to ease me closer to where I needed to be.
That’s an important point, too – the ability to ask for distraction. It’s good to have people around who respond and help. Sometimes a calming voice is all it takes. My Uncle Phil has the most soothing voice, and he has many times centered me by distracting me with stories about anything – using computers for business, tarot cards, religious stories, or whatever. My friend Leslie grounds me by expounding on esoteric subjects – epigenetics, for example – if I ask her to. We’re perpetually told to reach out when we need it. This is just another way to do that. If you don’t want advice or commiseration, reach out for distraction.
Of course, there are other distractions like music, television, movies, and even pursuits like gardening. Doing something you have to concentrate on, like needlepoint, keeps your mind focused, and can be a great distraction if you are able to do it. And there are the cats. They’re so completely unconcerned with whatever’s troubling me that they can’t help but draw my attention away from it too.
I’m not saying that one should distract oneself to the exclusion of working on one’s problems. That way nothing which is necessary gets done. We all know that dealing with our difficulties is the path out of the pit.
And I’m not saying that distractions always work. Dan used to tell me terrible jokes to try to jolly me out of my depressive moods. When that didn’t work, he would tell the same joke again in hopes, I suppose, that I had merely misunderstood it and would think it was funny the second time. At that point in my life and my illness, not even Eeee would have gotten through. I’d have let it bounce off me. Or hidden it so he couldn’t try it again.
I’m hardly going to say that distraction can replace therapy and medication. But as an adjunct, I can’t see the harm in it. If you’re at a point where you’re able to, look at the grouse!
Following My Moods
When I was a teen and undiagnosed with bipolar disorder, I had a weird reaction to people around me – I would pick up their moods and personalities and found myself mimicking them. I suppose it was a way for me to try on other personalities that I might someday integrate into my own, when I was stable enough to do so.
When I was a little older, I began journaling, which quickly turned into blogging. My journals were repetitive and boring, consisting mostly of “Felt depressed. Went to post office.” It didn’t seem helpful to me, though I know journaling is helpful to a lot of people. It helps them express what is happening to them and how they feel about it. In that way, it’s like a diary. Going back over a journal after, say, a year or so of writing (not necessarily every day) can help a person track their moods and their triggers. People can note their physical surroundings and emotional response and note whether seasons or weather, food and drink, interactions with certain persons, or other life circumstances have an effect on their moods and can help identify events that bring on depression or mania.
There are variations of this. One friend of mine used Facebook as his “diary.” He would look back through a year of his posts and conversations to determine when depression had struck him (there were fewer posts during those time periods).
In my own case, my husband and I have noticed that our moods follow each other’s. When I am depressed for a few weeks, he becomes depressed, too. When I am hypomanic, his mood lifts and he finds more joy in his own life. We do things together, like baking or watching our favorite TV shows together or going for day-long or even weekend getaways.
The same is true the other way around. When Dan is depressed or angry or just plain surly, I find it extremely difficult to maintain even a level mood. His mood creeps in and takes over mine. I sometimes try to maintain a level mood when this happens, but it is very difficult. I find myself struggling not to lose whatever peace or joy I have. I find myself frustrated by his depression or annoyance, to the point where I want to tell him to snap out of it. (I try not to do this. It doesn’t help anyway.)
If we both hit lows at the same time, or experience anger simultaneously, it gets fairly ugly. That’s when we fight, or both retreat to our rooms, or spend time away from each other, indulging in our own pursuits. Admittedly, such contemporaneous moods don’t hit very often, but when they do, it’s hell.
Both of us have learned techniques to respond to these “following” or simultaneous moods. We generally need more space or alone time. We ask each other for what we need and if the other is able to give it (hugs, for example). We offer what we are able to do, if there is indeed anything we realize might help.
Mostly, though, we just wait for the moods to pass and for both of us to return to a level state. I continue taking my meds and writing my blogs.
Interestingly, it was my husband who first noticed these “following” moods. Over the years, he has become pretty perceptive about both our feelings. It may help that he has studied and even worked in psychological settings for a while (no, that’s not where we met), but I think his real education has been living with me for almost 40 years. In all that time, you begin to notice patterns.
At one time my blogs did record my day-to-day (or week-to-week) feelings and actions. Sometimes they still do. But anymore, I find myself exploring other aspects of bipolar disorder and mental illness in general. I don’t believe I’ve said all there is to say about my feelings and symptoms, but this blog has allowed me to stretch out and consider the wider world of mental health.
Apparently, my husband is getting better at it too.
Laughing Out Loud
There’s nothing funny about bipolar disorder. In fact, one of the ways that I know I’m having a spell of bipolar depression is that my sense of humor flies out the window. Nothing brings a smile or a laugh – not my husband’s awful jokes. Not my friend Tom’s silly songs. Not a funny movie like Arsenic and Old Lace.
I have been in a spell of depression for a little while now. As I mentioned last week, part of it may be reactive depression. But here’s the thing. Reactive depression feels the same as bipolar depression. You have the same sense of misery, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, anomie. But you know what caused it and that it will end pretty soon, relatively, unless you tip over into a true depressive episode, which can last a lot longer than that.
But yesterday I laughed. And that was a good thing. It didn’t pull me completely out of my depression, but it let me know that escape was possible, and maybe even starting.
It happened like this:
My husband and I were sitting on the couch, watching TV. I was not enjoying it. Then a commercial came on about “man-boosting” pills that increase testosterone. It promised everything: strength, leanness, stamina, and outstanding performance in the bedroom.
Dan turned to me and said, “Hey, honey. Maybe I should try some of that. Improve my performance in bed-woo-woo-woo!
I turned and looked him straight in the eyes. I said, in a solemn, deadpan voice, without a trace of a snicker: Woo. Woo. I never got to the third Woo because we both dissolved in giggles. And it felt good – not only that I could laugh, but that I could make him laugh. Just thinking about it made us laugh all over again.
Today I am back to feeling overwhelmed, if a little less miserable, but still functioning on some kind of level. I don’t think my depression is over with. But for just a moment, I saw a ray of hope. Yes, it was over something stupid. Yes, I delivered the line with a flat affect. No, I didn’t know it was going to be that funny. I even thought Dan might be offended that I was making fun of him. But the important thing is that we both laughed.
What I’m saying is that laughter, by itself, is not a cure for depression, however much the memes and the positive thinkers tell you that it is. But if laughter happens to you, it at least reminds you that the depression will end sometime – maybe quicker than you think. The giggles are building blocks that will help you climb up out of your hole, or at least see that there is a way out.
That’s a lot of philosophizing about two words (or syllables, really), and I’m not sure the magic would happen again if either one of us said Woo. But I am taking the memory of that moment with me, for whatever strength it can give me and whatever amusement will stay with me when this depression ends.
All Mixed Up
Leigh-Prather/Adobestock.com
As I mentioned a few posts ago, my psychiatrist and I are working on a medication change that will, I hope, pull me out of bipolar depression. The medication that we changed was a mood-leveler, which sounds like a productive way to start.
We’re increasing the dose, which means it shouldn’t take the time it would for the old drug to “wash out” of my bloodstream (and/or brain) while we’re waiting for the new one to kick in. I’ve been that route before, and it’s miserable.
While I haven’t noticed my moods becoming exactly stable since the change, I have noticed certain effects. I am able to get through the minimum of what I need to do each day, though nothing more. And I have noticed that I am getting irritable. This does not happen so much when I’m depressed. When I’m depressed, I don’t care enough about anything to be irritable.
In fact, irritability is one of the ways that hypomania manifests for me, before I get to the euphoria/super-productive/reckless spending stage. I get snappy with my husband about all his annoying habits, like never giving me a straight answer to a simple question. (What are you watching? A movie. What did you get at the store? Food.) I think he thinks he’s being funny, but I find it frustrating. Not that I don’t have annoying habits too, especially when I’ve either depressed or irritable.
So, I guess in one way, the irritability is a good sign. It doesn’t mean I have level moods yet, but it seems to mean that I’m not totally stuck in the depression. (I explained to my husband what was happening with me, and he seems to understand more. Though it remains to be seen if he’ll answer simple questions informatively.)
I think what I’m experiencing is a phenomenon know as mixed states. If to be depressed is to care about nothing and mania is to care about everything, a mixed state is some hellish combination of the two. Imagine being immobilized and jumpy all at the same time. That’s what it’s like, paradox that it is.
I haven’t had mixed states too often in my life, though I have had emotions that swerve drastically from happy to depressed in an instant (which is an extreme version, I think, of what’s known as ultra-rapid cycling). This is something different, though.
Now, I use up all my spoons early in the day and nap, or I stay up but go to bed at around 8:00. Ordinarily, if I went to bed that early, I’d read for a couple of hours, but these days half an hour or 45 minutes is it, tops.
Still, I think (or hope) that this mixed state of affairs is a step along the way to level moods that are higher than the numbness and not-caring of depression. It’s not comfortable to go through, but then neither is depression or mania, even hypomania.
It’s been about six weeks since the change in my medication. Within another four to six weeks, it will likely become apparent whether the change, once set in motion, will have an outcome I can live with. Until then, I need to spend my spoons as wisely as I can and try to remember not to snap at my husband, even when he’s being annoying.
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!
Janet Coburn
Bipolar Me 
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