Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘journaling’

When Journaling Doesn’t Work

If there’s one thing people tell you to do when you have a mental health issue, it’s to start a journal. They may not call it that. They may say it’s a place to write affirmations, or things you’re grateful for, or aspirations. But what they really mean is a journal, a written record of what’s going on inside you.

But sometimes that doesn’t work. You may not be in touch with your inner feelings yet enough to know what your dreams mean or whether you need to explore your inner child’s trauma. It may simply be too soon.

Writing isn’t a bad idea, though. It just may be a mistake to call it a journal or to try to make it a way to explore your inner life. But there are other things you can do while you’re waiting until journaling is right for you.

One avenue you can try is other forms of writing. Don’t even think about your difficulties and how to solve them. You can get to that later, probably with the help of a therapist. For now, just write poetry. About anything. Your cat. The tree outside your window. The guy you just met at a party. Literally anything. Don’t try to be deep. Don’t try to write something meaningful, something for the ages.

Just put words on paper. Lord knows, they don’t have to rhyme. And don’t show it to anyone. The idea isn’t to impress anyone with your innate poetic talent. It’s just to get used to the idea of putting words on paper. Sure, it will feel weird at first (especially if you do try to make it rhyme). You don’t have to set any kind of goal like writing a poem every day or even every week. Just every once in a while, sit down at your computer (or, if you must, sit with a legal pad under a lilac bush) and write a poem. Or revise one you wrote the week before.

If you feel so inclined, try setting your poem to music. Strum that old guitar you haven’t dug out in months, or noodle around on GarageBand. Don’t make it a chore. Try it, just for the heck of it. Or you can decide to scrap the poems and just play around with music. There’s nothing that says you have to write poetry. What you’re doing doesn’t have to involve words at all.

Or, if none of that appeals to you, pick up a pencil and doodle, the way you do when you’re on infinity hold on the phone. Start with boxes and squiggles. If one of them starts to look like a pirate chest, go for it. See if your doodle turns into that, or something else. Draw a cartoon face. Then draw a setting for it. Is this your pirate? Is it a bartender? Is it an astronaut? Or take an empty candy wrapper and tape it to a sheet of paper. What can you make of it? Is it the body of a bird? Does it remind you of a ballet dancer’s costume? Does it begin to look like the tree outside your window? Just keep doodling.

The point of all this is not to create Great Art or to spur Great Revelations about your inner life. The point is simply to let yourself play—with words, with sounds, with sketches. Or pottery. Or katas. Just get used to the idea of letting something inside you come out. It doesn’t have to be important and meaningful. If it’s meant to be, that will come later.

I tried to start a journal once. It was pathetic. I recorded my daily activities, which at the time consisted largely of deciding whether to get out of bed that day. I recorded what I felt (depressed). Each page, each day, was the same. It was boring and no help at all. I was a dud at journaling.

Instead, I started this blog. In it, I was free to write about myself, but also about what I saw and heard in the world around me—what other people thought about mental illness and whether I agreed with them. Things I’d heard in the news and how the stories made me feel—outraged or comforted or confused.

It wasn’t journaling. I learned a lot from it, though (primarily that journaling wasn’t for me). No affirmations. No dream analysis. Over the years, though, it’s given structure to my week and a place to say things that aren’t necessarily profound. To ask questions and grope for answers.

Go thou and do likewise. Or go thou and do something else. The medium doesn’t matter.

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mental health

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Tracking Your Moods: Low-Tech, High-Tech, and In Between

Many therapists and people with bipolar disorder recommend journaling as a practice that allows you to track your moods and figure out what your triggers are. And many individuals do well with journaling.

I didn’t, however. I tried starting a journal of what I was doing and what I accomplished daily. It rapidly turned boring and whiny. My entries looked like this:

Accomplishments:

  1. Paid cell phone.
  2. Forced myself to finish work assignment.
  3. Finally got off that stupid level of that horrible Candy Crush.

Writing is what I do, but journaling, especially when depressed, was an unrelenting series of pitiful nothing. Instead, I started this blog (on 1/7/14). In my blog, I could write about anything. Still, it wasn’t much good as a way to track my daily moods.

Technology is starting to address that problem. Recently some inventions have come on the market that promise to help you track your moods not just daily, but hourly (or even more often). Most of these devices resemble what would happen if a Fitbit and a mood ring had a child.

Most of them claim to monitor your moods by tracking your heart rate and/or your breathing. (One notes that it tracks your steps too, so you don’t need an extra device to do that. Another promises to monitor galvanic skin response, pulse, and skin temperature, which sounds more like a lie detector than mood tracking.) Then you take that data and compare them with what you were doing at the time and voilà – a mood journal.

Of course, these devices make certain assumptions – for example, that when your heart rate is elevated, you are anxious or tense. Needless to say, there are plenty of other things that can raise your heart rate and breathing. Sex, for one. Or running. Neither one of which is necessarily a source of anxiety for everyone. There is, as far as I can see, no way for the device to tell when you are depressed. They appear to assume that everything except anxiety is normal.

Then there’s the fact that you still have to journal. The devices work on the theory that you can look for patterns in your breathing and respiration, then figure out what you were doing when that happened. Upgraded devices and apps are planned that will add calendar and location functions to make this easier. But if you’re in your house the whole time the moods are happening, it won’t tell you much.

(One brand of these devices is available only from an employer, health plan, or EAP, which, if you ask me, is pretty creepy. If there’s anyone I don’t want to have information about my moods, it’s my employer.)

My friend Mike came up with an in-between solution that uses both higher-tech and lower-tech approaches to monitoring his moods. Over a period of several months, Mike had been on four different drug regimens for depression. Not all of them worked, and he was unsure which did the most good.

His idea was to go to his social media and chat apps and take a look at when he was the most active, engaged, and responsive. Then he looked at what medication he was on at the time. He noticed, for example, that in the first few weeks of April, he was posting more about accomplishments and responding to others’ posts and chat messages. A quick check of his pharmacy records and he had a pretty good idea of which medications were working best. No journaling involved – the evidence of his increased energy was right there in front of him, already recorded. And no $150 expense for an emotional tracking device.

Maybe journaling is right for you. Maybe a wearable mood tracker is the thing that will help. But don’t overlook the tools you already have. Think about them in new ways and you may already have a handle on understanding your moods and meds.

Sources

https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/spire-wants-to-be-the-fitbit-for-your-emotions

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239743

http://nerdist.com/sentios-feel-wristband-fitbit-for-your-emotions/

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mental health

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Advice for the Bipolar Writer

Writing can be therapeutic – and more.

Writing can save your life – or someone else’s.

Every one of us, depressed, manic, or bipolar, has something to say.

I say, “Say it!”

Although I’ve never been one to respond to that ancient exercise in which you express your unspoken thoughts to an empty chair, I am a proponent of expressing your unspoken thoughts. I just think writing is a better way to do it.

Getting your thoughts and feelings down on paper or preserved in pixels is a positive, life-affirming action, even if your thoughts might not be. Giving voice to your inner workings can help you understand yourself and your brain better.

And if you choose to share them, they can help others too.

There are many different kinds of writing you can explore and experiment with until you find the one or ones that are right for you. Here are a few you can try.

Journaling. Many therapists recommend journaling to keep track of your moods and mood swings. You can also keep track of your exercise and sleeping and eating patterns in your journal. These factors may help you pinpoint physical symptoms that accompany your emotional ones. And you can get a read on how your meds affect your symptoms and how troublesome the side effects are.

Unsent letters. I have a separate file in my computer for these, just so I remember not to send them. I write letters not to send when I need to vent at or about a person, but am not sure whether I’m overreacting. I can express my feelings without taking the chance of ruining a friendship or hurting a loved one.

Sent letters. Sometimes, after you’ve let those letters or emails sit for a while, you decide that you do need to send them – or at least parts of them. Letters or emails are often the best way to communicate regarding difficult topics because you can think about what’s important to say, consider the best way to say it, and revise if your thoughts are not coming out the way you want them to. You still might want to wait a day before you send them, though.

IMs and comments. When you read someone’s post or a comment that really resonates with you, don’t hesitate to let that person know. If you don’t understand something in a post, just ask. If you disagree, feel free to do so politely. These are chances to open a dialogue, get more information, or correct misconceptions. They can lead to friendships if you comment regularly, but even a word or two of support or thanks can mean a lot to the writer.

Blogging. I started blogging because my journaling was boring and whiny, and I decided I had more important things to write about. There are basically two kinds of blogging about bipolar disorder. One is to share your experiences – your mood swings, your triggers, your relationships, your healing, your thoughts and meditations. The other is to write about issues related to bipolar disorder – treatments, stigma, social policy, news items, books, or opinions. Of course, you can combine both types of writing in your blog, which is what I try to do.

Blogging is powerful. It lets both professional and untrained writers speak their truth and share their thoughts. A blog about bipolar disorder has a “niche” audience – people interested in the subject themselves or because they have a friend or relative with the disorder. This means that you will likely never rival the Bloggess in numbers of readers, but you can touch the lives of hundreds of people.

Blogging does not have to be difficult. You can post every day or every week, every month, or just when it suits you. You can write informally or in a more academic vein. There are a number of platforms, such as WordPress and Live Journal, that make it easy for you to get started, and to make changes as your blogging needs evolve. You can add illustrations and video clips, and links to news stories or other blog posts. Eventually, you may want to have your own personal web page to host your blog.

Fiction and poetry. If you don’t want to put your own experiences out on the web for anyone to see, you could try transforming them into fiction or poetry, or inventing characters and plots that resemble you not at all. Many magazines and other outlets use short stories and poems, and works that feature bipolar characters and themes are not common. Fiction and poetry can be ways to reach an audience that might otherwise never learn about the reality of bipolar illness and its effects on people and relationships.

Longer works. You could even write a book (which is something I’m trying to do). There are many genres to choose from, including nonfiction, memoirs, and novels. Aside from Abigail Padgett’s Bo Bradley series of mysteries, there isn’t much fiction featuring bipolar characters that are true-to-life and not stereotyped. These are long-term projects and, truthfully, you (and I) may never finish them or have them published. But just the effort is worthy.

Whatever form of writing you choose, get started! Whether you write for yourself or for a larger audience, you can make a difference. And if you feel the desire, you should definitely try.

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