Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘mental health’

Can I? Can’t I? Bipolar and Business

I work freelance at writing and editing, and as many of you know, that life is fraught with insecurity. How much work will I get? How much will I be paid for it? Will the check be enough to cover the mortgage and the health insurance? Anything else, like light and cable and phone, which I need in order to work from home?

Since  I’m bipolar, these questions are laced with more than the usual amount of anxiety. Especially since the progression toward my last major breakdown was a lot of what caused me to lose that 9–5, well-paying job. My attendance became spotty, my attention refused to focus, my relationships with coworkers went downhill, my evaluations took a turn for the worse, and I bailed.

I stayed immobilized for a long time, applied for disability (didn’t get it), then embarked on freelance work.

I’m much more stable now. I’ve have published this blog and my other one for over two years, and proved to myself that I can attend business meetings, at least once in a while. My paying work has built up to the point where we can at least live paycheck to paycheck, but not much more. Time to spread my wings?

So I started looking around for other jobs, in addition to my faithful, steady client who has sustained me for years now. First I asked them if they could send any more work my way. Then I started expanding my platform, as we say in the writing biz.

I joined LinkedIn. And there, one day, I saw a listing for someone who needed an editor. One with exactly my skillset. Precisely my experience. The kind of work I love to do.

But.

It was full-time, likely high-pressured, and 45 miles away (during rush hour). I knew those factors would make it impossible for me to succeed at the job, even if I got it.

But.

I wanted it. I wanted to have back the things I lost after my breakdown – my competence, my confidence, my pride. Oh, and the money too.

But.

Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t let myself apply for it. I didn’t want to trigger the kind of meltdown I had before. I didn’t want another period of literally years when I could do nothing – not work, not take care of myself, not cook, not read. Nothing.

So, with reluctance, I let the opportunity pass by. I went back to my blog posts and my irregular freelance work. I occasionally do some non-paying work for organizations like the International Bipolar Foundation (IBPF), or Sheknows.com, TheMighty.com, and even redtri.com. I lined up a gig editing a friend’s dissertation.

Then, as it sometimes happens, another opportunity appeared – a part-time paid position with a company that already knew my work. Steady work. Pay. Work at home. All this could be mine if I applied, passed the editing test, and was able to work the number of hours per week I rather optimistically said I could. I’ve taken the test (it was two hours long and grueling, the kind I used to give to other people). And now I wait, more or less patiently, never my best quality.

And while I wait, I wonder. Am I even capable of doing half-time paid work at home, plus my other freelance assignments, plus my blogs, plus the novel I’ve written about 1/3 of? Can I do the part-time job (if I get it), without my disorder screwing me up too badly to do it or anything else well? Is hypomania tricking me again? Do I have to give something up to get something better? Will it really be better?

The answer to all those questions is, “I don’t know.”

My disorder surely lost me the 9–5 job I once had. It made me give up the idea of trying for that similar job that seemed “just right.” But at least now I have some ambitions again.

Can I? Can’t I? This balancing act of higher ambitions and lowered expectations is delicate.

 

 

 

 

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Mental Health

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But What Happens in January?

Health insurance is a hassle, especially when you’re talking about mental health. And it’s an even bigger hassle when the government gets involved. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does add a layer of complexity to the insurance process.

For quite a while I was uninsurable, or functionally so. My husband and I both had decent insurance when he worked for the county, but after he left that job, it was all downhill. We muddled through without coverage, paying for our meds out of pocket and avoiding the doctor’s office unless death seemed imminent or we had to have blood work. Mammograms, flu shots, and other preventive services fell by the wayside.

Then came the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Our pre-existing conditions were no longer a factor. My mental health coverage was guaranteed without going through the county’s EAP plan (Employee Assistance Plan, a six-week, take-the-therapist-we-give-you, cure-’em-quick affair).

The only problem (well, the major problem) was that, even with the ACA subsidy, the insurance cost us $650 per month. And my doctor started prescribing Abilify (cost: $800 per month, and wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t on the insurance plan’s formulary of preferred drugs). Fortunately, the generic came out soon after. It still wasn’t cheap, but it was somewhat lower.

The next year we switched plans. Unfortunately, the new company, a co-op, went under and we were transferred to yet another plan. It was no better than the previous one. In many ways, it was worse.

Prescriptions, for example. After getting them filled at our pharmacy for a certain number of months, we were told that almost all our meds MUST be ordered for home delivery, or the insurance company would not pay for them.

Which would be fine, as they were maintenance drugs. Except that meant paying $1100 for three months of generic Abilify, in addition to the monthly premium for the insurance. I can’t scrape together a lump sum like that, so through GoodRx coupons (https://www.goodrx.com/?c=criteo_au&utm_campaign=activeuser) and the local Kroger, I managed to get my prescription for under $200 per month.

Then the real fun started. My husband’s meds and my non-psychotropics went through the mail-order system easily. The ones my psychiatrist prescribed, not so much.

I’ve just spent the time between November 19 and now trying desperately to get the mail-order place and my doctor’s office to talk to each other, fax each other, send smoke signals or carrier pigeons to each other, to get me my drugs. As I gradually ran out of meds, which I’ve written about before (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-kO).

I finally got a little action when I went to my doctor’s office, camped out in the waiting room, talked to one mail-order person on the phone while the receptionist talked to another one on another phone, and the nurse worked the fax machine. Then I went home, called mail order again, jumped up and down, threatened to hold my breath until I turned blue, asked for the supervisor, talked to the actual pharmacist, and almost burst out sobbing. Yesterday I got my pills.

This time when I had to pick a new insurance plan or renew my old one, I found one that was almost exactly as crappy as our previous one, but at one-third the cost. And the company representative says that all generics can be bought, at either the pharmacy or via mail order, at the same low co-pay. Including generic Abilify.

We’ll see.

The next problem is, as I’m sure you’re all aware, the president-elect and Congress have sworn to repeal Obamacare as soon as they get into office, whether or not they have a plan to replace it.

What will happen then?

Will I be able to get affordable insurance?

Will I be able to get insurance at all? (Even crappy insurance is better than none.)

Will it cover mental health services? Outpatient? Inpatient? Both psychiatrists and psychotherapists?

Will it cover psychotropic drugs at the same rates as others? Or will the meds that really work for me not be in the formulary of preferred drugs?

And how long will it be before even the crappy, but lower-cost, insurance that begins on January 1st, disappears?

I’m guessing (hoping) that our insurance won’t vanish immediately, given the pace at which the government usually moves. But repealing Obamacare (though not replacing it) has been touted as one of the first things the new administration will do. And anxiety is one of my psychiatric problems. How long will I have to wait, unknowing, to learn what those answers will be?

Generally, I have anxiety when I don’t know what’s going to happen. I catastrophize, then feel at least a little better when the answer comes. (It’s usually not as bad as I had anticipated.)

But this time, when the answer comes, will it lessen or increase my anxiety?

And will I be able to afford the medicine that keeps my anxiety in check and the psychiatrist who prescribes it?

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Mental Health

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Blogging While Bipolar: What I’ve Learned

Next month, this blog will be three years old, an unruly toddler of a blog with jam on its face and a sticky plush animal grasped in its fist. Except for one dry spell of about a month during the first year, I have posted every week in both this and my general purpose blog, Et Cetera, etc. (janetcobur.wordpress.com).

My husband often tells me that he’s proud that I am doing this and that I have stuck with it so long and faithfully. (He doesn’t often read my posts, but that’s another matter.)

nightblogWriting while bipolar is not always easy, but blogging has taught me a few things about myself.

Blogging is a substitute for going outside and having a social life. While it’s generally true that my disorder has abated over the years, at least from its worst, I am still unable – or perhaps unwilling is more accurate – to go outside for more than a doctor’s appointment, or a brief errand and lunch with my husband. But I am still connected to the outside world through my blog. I have friends, I have conversations, I get feedback. I have special blogging friends like Bradley, Raeyn, and Dyane. (I also live vicariously through Facebook, but that’s another story.)

I need structure, and blogging gives me that. I used to post randomly, whenever I felt like it. Pretty quickly I discovered that Sunday was the day when my blog got the most traffic, so I made that my official blog post day. Working at home as I do, I tend to lose track of where I am in any given week. Is it Tuesday? Thursday? It’s hard to tell. But having a writing schedule clears that up.

On Monday and Tuesday I pre-write – think about articles I’ve read or conversations I’ve had and jot down a few titles or ideas or URLs. On Wednesday I begin writing. My goal is to have a rough-ish draft by the end of Thursday and a nearly finished one on Friday. Friday and Saturday are for tweaking the writing, selecting a visual, and tagging. Then Sunday, I proof and post. (I also tweet a quote from my most recent post on Tuesday and a quote from an earlier post on Wednesday, plus a “coming attractions” post on Friday announcing Sunday’s topic.)

It’s a loose enough schedule that I can build in actual paying work around it.

For me, blogging and other forms of writing are better than journaling. My journaling quickly turned into whining. It was boring, even for me. I need real content to interact with, whether that be my blogs, a memoir, or the mystery novel I’m working on. Writing engages and invigorates my poor broken brain, giving it something to do other than wallow or turn to mush.

Even when I think I can’t write, I can still blog. Back when I was able to work full-time, I wrote and edited for magazines and textbooks. I used to boast that I could write 1000 words on anything. Blogging is more forgiving. I can stop at 500 words if that’s all I have to say. I can pick my own topics instead of writing to order based on someone else’s priorities. And that schedule I mentioned? It’s not an actual deadline, so I don’t have to worry about it whizzing past. When the pressure’s off, I can almost always make my Sunday goal.

Blogging validates me. I have two degrees in English (one from a pretty classy university) and worked in educational publishing for about 20 years. Then my brain broke and it all went away. Now that I’m writing regularly, I feel that in some way I’m using both my education and the skills I’ve built up.

By blogging, I prove to myself that bipolar disorder may have taken away some parts of my life, but it can’t have everything.

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Mental Health

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Furry Friends and Helpers

I’m sure we’ve all seen memes that say the best therapist has four legs and fur. When I’ve been feeling cranky, I have occasionally written responses to the people who post them. They demean the very hard and real work that psychiatric and psychological professionals do. And after all, what do the memes really say? “Have a mental illness? Just get a dog.”

Still, there are circumstances in which an animal can help a person with a mental or emotional disorder. It’s not as simple as going to the pound and picking out a pup, though. For an animal to assist a psychiatric (or other) patient, there are a number of hoops for the person to jump through.

Most people nowadays are used to the presence – or at least the idea – of service animals such as seeing eye dogs. Less common are Therapy Animals, Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) and Psychiatric Service Animals (PSAs). But they all have parts to play in promoting and maintaining mental health in persons with bipolar and other emotional disorders.

Therapy animals are most often used with geriatric patients and children with emotional disturbances. In some nursing homes and convalescent centers you find programs that bring small animals to interact with the residents. Even farm animals – chickens, lambs, piglets – may spark memories that had been hidden away for years. The animals help residents get in touch with those memories and caregivers get in touch with residents. Libraries sometimes bring calm, well-behaved dogs in so that children can read to them. The soothing presence of a well-trained dog can help a child self-regulate her or his emotions – and get reading practice at the same time.

Emotional Support Animals are dogs or cats (or, less commonly, other animals such as miniature horses or guinea pigs) that live with and provide comfort to a person with a psychiatric disorder. Typically, in order for an emotional support animal to be allowed in rental housing, documentation such as a letter is required from a physician or mental health professional stating that the animal’s presence alleviates symptoms of a patient’s psychiatric condition – one that qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Regulations covering comfort or emotional support animals apply mostly to residences and airlines, but not other places where service animals are allowed, such as stores, restaurants, and public buildings. There, health codes trump emotional support.

Some folks confuse Emotional Support Animals with Psychiatric Service Animals. They think that “training” a dog to offer a kiss on command, or jump in their lap, or be hugged is a task qualifying the animal as an official service animal. While these are indeed ways that an animal can calm a person in distress, service animals, including psychiatric service animals, must receive special training that teaches them how to alleviate the symptoms of an ADA-defined disability.

Legitimate tasks for PSDs (psychiatric service dogs) include counterbalance/bracing for a handler dizzy from medication, waking the handler at the sound of an alarm when the handler is heavily medicated and sleeps through alarms, doing room searches or turning on lights for persons with PTSD, blocking persons in dissociative episodes from wandering into danger (i.e., traffic), leading a disoriented handler to a designated person or place, and so on.

In The Possibility Dogs: What I Learned from Second-Chance Rescues About Service, Hope, and Healing, author Susannah Charleson recounts how rescue dogs – the unwanted, unlikely-to-be-adopted dogs that languish in shelters or are destroyed – have been matched with persons who need them.

One of the stories she tells involves training a dog to help a person with OCD. The dog was taught to identify when the handler had returned to the stove three times (to check the burners). Then the dog would interrupt the person, leaning against her leg to distract her. For a person who could approach a door but not go outside, the dog brought a leash to encourage leaving the house for a fun activity.

By the way, forget about cats as service animals. Just try training a cat to do anything it doesn’t want to do. (I know that cats have been trained to run obstacle courses for agility competitions, but that doesn’t really qualify as a service for an individual with a disability.) If you are able to register your cat as an Emotional Support Animal or get a medical/psychiatric recommendation, you may be able to have your cat live with you in a pet-free community, or have the fee for a pet waived. But that’s about it where cats are concerned.

So, animals can’t be actual therapists, but they can assist in treatment and life skills for people who need help with mental disorders. When I’m less cranky, I keep scrolling past the pet-as-therapist memes and feel grateful that my cats offer me emotional support, whether they’re trained to do so or not.

 

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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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Mental Health

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Self-Care and Sleep: Fact or Fiction?

Every article you see about self-care for bipolar disorder will tell you, Get enough rest or Get enough sleep.

Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.  – Thomas Dekker

But what did Thomas Dekker know? For many of us, proper, beneficial sleeping is easier said than done.

Neon light owlEven with my prescribed Ambien and Ativan, I’ve done the wide-awake-at-3:00-don’t-get-to-sleep-till-5:30 thing. And the unsettled-from-nightmares-afraid-to-go-to-sleep thing. (Also the just-one-more-chapter thing, but that’s my own fault.)

Then the next day I have to take a mega-nap (http://wp.me/p4e9wS-iO), which leads to guess what? More insomnia.

But this coin has another side as well. There are days when all I do is sleep. A full night plus (at least 10 hours), then a mega-nap, then right back to bed after dinner.

I don’t think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. – Michael Ian Black

I know that part of my problem is my husband’s work schedule – third shift – and wanting to be awake at least at some of the same times that he is.

Another part of the problem is my medication. If I wake at 8:30 (yeah, I work at home) and take my meds, I’m down for the count again until at least 10:30. Or 11:00. Or even noon. I hope my clients think that I run errands in the morning or work on my projects with chat, IM, and phone turned off so as not to be disturbed.

And then there is my meal schedule, which is just as erratic as my sleep schedule. Most days I try to eat at least one good, full, hearty meal (another self-care recommendation, though they usually advise more than one meal). But after I eat – especially a hefty meal – I get postprandial torpor, the technical term for why you fall asleep on Thanksgiving after eating all that turkey. (And you thought it was the tryptophan.) And there comes another nap.

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.  – Gaston Bachelard

But recently, it’s been the not-able-to-sleep thing. There’s a Tarot card that symbolizes the feeling – the 9 of Swords. In the Rider-Waite deck, the image is of a person sitting up in bed, hiding her face, with nine parallel swords floating in the background. I always refer to it as The Dark Night of the Soul. (The 6 of Cups usually means something like Childhood Memories, but for me it means “See Your Therapist.”)

(Note: I had a rather irregular introduction to the Tarot deck, and for me it acts sort of like a Thematic Apperception Test. I apologize to those of you I have just offended in one way or another.)

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind. – William Golding

Anyway, a recent event caused me a fair amount of trauma that I had to suppress at the time, and it came out immediately as bloody horrible nightmares the next time I slept. I haven’t had any more of those since, but I suspect they’re still lurking at the back of my brain.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep. – Aldous Huxley

I guess what I mean by all this is that sleep as self-care is wonderful, if it cooperates. But there are so many things that can go wrong and screw it all up – grief, guilt, depression, sorrow, anxiety, fear, loneliness, restlessness, obsessive thoughts, worries. It doesn’t feel like something that I have much control over.

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Mental Health

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Reaching the End of My Cope

Helpless Woman Holding RopeAnymore, I don’t very often have days when I can’t get out of bed, but this week I had one. It doesn’t matter now what caused it, but I am feeling the lingering aftereffects. Today I had no choice but to get out of bed, and I thought as long as I’m up, I might as well blog.

(Actually I can blog in bed too, since my tablet will take dictation, but it’s not optimal.)

I had been headed for bed-bound all week – the slowly creeping whelms; the feeling of being nibbled to death by mice; the recent trauma of two pets’ deaths; a game I couldn’t win, couldn’t break even, and couldn’t get out of. Expected relief came three days too late.

Aside from not eating, not getting out of bed meets many of my needs – quiet, rest, naps, not having to fight off the numbness and care about anything. And yes, there’s some feeling sorry for myself in there too. I won’t try to deny it. Staying in bed is a big messy wad of self-pity, anhedonia, lack of energy, trying to stave off thoughts, and generally not being able to give a shit about anything. It is more than sadness. It is as J.K. Rowling described the Dementors: You feel as if you will never be happy again. In other words, there’s nothing worth getting out of bed for.

When I was searching for images to go with this post, I entered “end of rope.” I guess I expected to see cute kittens dangling and inspirational quotes like “Hang on Baby, Friday’s Coming!”

Instead, what I found were endless images of nooses. Nooses by themselves or with people in them. Overturned chairs under nooses. Photos, illustrations, every conceivable image of nooses. According to the visual imagination of illustrators and photographers, “end of one’s rope” means suicide. There were some images of frayed or broken ropes, but the nooses were in the lead by at least four to one. (There were also a few nautical pictures with coiled ropes, but they weren’t statistically significant.)

That’s not what I mean by “end of my rope” – not dangling kittens OR nooses. Staying in bed all day, being unable to function, is a long, long way from suicide. Indeed, I find it a mechanism that staves off thoughts of nooses. Staying in bed admits of the possibility that tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I will have the wherewithal to drag myself out of that bed. Or that something will force me out of the bed and I will have to respond, as it happened today.

Hence the title of this piece. I have not reached the end of my rope – certainly not to find a dangling noose at the end of it. I have not reached the end of my hope, because I believe that some day (I hope soon) I will be out of the bed (at least as far as the sofa, and then who knows?). But when I stay in bed all day, I have reached the end of my cope.

This is not exactly the same as reaching the end of my spoons, because I don’t use up any spoons by lying in bed. And I don’t really know, or perhaps don’t believe, that I will have a new supply the next day.

I expect that some people will beat me up for being so useless as to give up for even a day, to be unable even to try. I know I’m beating myself up over it too. But today I am out of bed, for at least part of the day, and I am writing. That means there’s at least an inch of rope left. An inch of cope.

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Mental Health

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The Comfort That Remains

Here I am, caught between reactive depression and clinical depression.

If you’ve been reading my last several posts, you know that I’ve been having a rough month. Several months. It’s been a real challenge to my hard-won quasi-stability.

3ff82b43-7ccd-4bde-8219-be5598c73452Last week, my 20+ year old cat, Louise died. The week before that, my husband’s 17+ year old cat died. So now I am trying to deal with those reactive feelings of grief and loss, without losing myself in the eternally waiting Pit of Despair that is clinical depression.

In doing that, I am trying to find things that remain to take comfort in.

I take comfort that my husband was here with me, to help me through.

That Louise had a good, long life spent in our loving care since she was a tiny kitten.

That she died peacefully, at home, in my lap, with me petting her.

That I had a chance to say goodbye to her.

That I know she loved me as much as I loved her.

That her presence and her purr helped calm me and helped me when nothing else could.

That she gave me a constant presence through a third of my life, and all of hers.

We have two cats now – Dushenka and Toby. They are young and healthy, but of course our time with them is not guaranteed. I know that, just by having them and loving them, we are inviting future grief into our lives, along with the joy. That’s just how it is.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on animals, humans, and what we share with each other. I know this is likely to happen again, and soon, for our dog is also aged and nearly ready to go. It’s hard. Is it harder when your brain doesn’t work right and tries to tell you that sorrow doesn’t end?

I don’t know.There’s no scale by which to compare pain, and loss, and despair, and grief. We each go through it the only way we can.

I hope that soon, at least a few of the clouds will part and I can feel something besides sorrow, express something other than pain. Maybe next week’s blog will be about healing, or coping, or sharing strengths.

Those are all things I need to be doing – that we all need to be doing.

Someone remarked this week that a recent post (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-k8) was not about healing. It reflected, the commenter said, all the privileges I have – money (or those who can lend it to me), drugs I can take to help me through a crisis (too many, according to the commenter), a supportive husband. And that’s all true. I have these privileges and more besides – a home, work that I can do without leaving the house, insurance, a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist. Some of these come to me because of circumstances I don’t control, and some I have had to work very hard for, as I have worked hard for the ability to heal, a little bit at a time.

There are still things I cannot do – leave the house more than twice a month or so, shop for groceries, see the dentist without massive panic, stop taking the psychotropic meds that allow me to think, have a healthy sexual relationship. I expect that some of these will get better and others won’t.

But, no matter our symptoms or their severity, we as people with bipolar disorder are all in this together – or as the Bloggess would say, alone together. Maybe I have an easier time of it, but that’s far from saying it’s easy for me.

I still experience grief and sorrow, depression and anxiety, irrationality and immobilization, pain and despair, relief and help, struggle and hard work, love and loneliness.

And always, I look for the comfort that comes when I need it most, or expect it least, or believe I’ll never feel again. We all do.

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Mental Health

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Work Hacks

Yay me! I just finished a big project (or at least the first phase of it) for which I will be paid actual money!

I am very fortunate/grateful that I am able to do freelance work at home, on my own schedule (mostly), using my education and skills, in my pajamas. Telecommuting is so way cool!

I can’t work an eight-hour day in an office any more (and likely won’t again). I can only concentrate for a max of three hours at a time, and some days not even that. Occasionally, if there’s a tight deadline, I can manage two sessions, or one and a half.Just Get Through It message on a dry erase board encouraging you to stick with your project or challenge during a stressful time in your work or life

Of course motivation is a factor. Deadlines and money are two really good ones. But sometimes I have to force myself – or trick myself – into doing actual work. This was true even when I did work in an office.

Anyway, here are some of my techniques – work hacks, as I guess they’re now called.

Taking breaks. Now of course, I can take breaks whenever I want, from a quick game of Candy Crush to an actual nap. My brain and body let me know when it’s time. They just crap out.

When I worked at the office, I tried taking crossword puzzle breaks at my desk. But apparently smoking was the only permissible break activity. Hiding in the bathroom didn’t work. People were known to track me down and ask questions anyway. (“Do you mind if I wipe and flush first?” Sarcasm seemed called for.)

When I got twitchy, I walked around the third floor or even more than one floor until I calmed down. The trick is to carry a clipboard or a few manila folders and walk sort of briskly so it looks like you’re going somewhere and doing something. It works best if the office has more than one room.

Pretending to work. I developed this technique at the office, but it can also be used at home. I would say to myself, “I don’t know how to get started. I’ll just write one sentence, so if someone walks by my cube, it looks like I’m working.” It was surprising to find that once the first sentence was on the screen, I knew what the second one should be – or that the first one was horrible and I could revise it, which also looked like work. Once I built some momentum this way, I was rolling. I don’t have anyone looking over my shoulder now, but the idea is the same – one sentence is the minimum, then see what happens.

Bribery and rewards. These are actually more or less the same. If I do X amount of work, I can check my email or eat a cookie or call a friend. I get to feel virtuous for working and satisfied by the little treat.

Forcing myself. If I’ve got a really tight deadline, I have to apply some internal pressure, especially if it’s one of those I-don’t-think-I-can-get-out-of-bed-days. Everyone in this house likes to eat. (The cats insist on it.) My pay will cover the mortgage, so we won’t be living under the Third St. bridge next month. This is dangerous, because I am a great catastrophizer, but sometimes it’s the only thing that works.

Artificial goals and lying to myself. If I can just do five more pages I can quit for the day. I know I can make it to the end of this section (that would be the lying part).

Stupid work. There are a lot of fairly pointless tasks that must be done anyway, but can be done by rote – adding headers and footers and page numbers, alphabetizing, running spell-check (or typing-check, as I prefer to think of it), that sort of thing. To me, that counts as actual work, and some days it’s all I can manage.

Unfortunately, none of these are effective for housework. No one pays me for that.

 

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Mental Health

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Looking Back – But How Far?

Silver pocket clock in wooden box isolated on white“Look at where you are now compared to where you were when we started. Look how far you’ve come.” This is what my therapist frequently tells me. And she’s right.

When I first came to see her I was a total mess. It is a measure of my progress that I no longer refer to myself as “pathetic.” it has been months – years –since I have used that word to describe myself.

And she is right to point out my progress. Not only am I no longer the despondent, distraught, weeping mess that came to her, I am now a person who has acquired coping skills – at least a few – that I can use in everyday life without much prompting from her.

But when I look back at how far I’ve come, how far back should I look?

Do I look back to my childhood, when there was something wrong with me that I didn’t understand? Do I look back to the everyday traumas that a typical person would have dealt with, if not easily, then at least adequately, that often left me a crumpled figure in the corner weeping copiously and, yes, pathetic.

Since those days, I’ve learned what my disorder is, and have learned to anticipate and deal with some of those everyday traumas.

Do I look back to my teenage years, when I had little clue how to make and keep friends? When I was an outcast for my oddities?

Since then I have rediscovered old friends and made new ones that love and support me, many of whom are just as odd as I am.

Do I look back to my college days, when the bright promise of my intellect was dulled by my inner turmoil, when I missed out on opportunities because I was not capable of reaching out to grasp them?

Since then I have tried to make the most of opportunities that come my way, and to use my talents as best I can.

Do I look back to my first significant other and how that relationship shredded what I had managed to accumulate of self-esteem and confidence?

Since then I have been trying to recover as much as I can of what I lost. And I now have a stable, supportive, long-term relationship.

Do I look back to the days when I first lived independently, teetering on the edge of financial disaster? The days when I could barely function in the world of work and living, when the loss of a job put me deep in the Pit of Despair?

Since then, I have learned to accept help from others and to know that the Pit of Despair is not my permanent home.

Do I reflect on the job that sustained me for many years, until my emotional state became so fragile that I was no longer reliable enough to do it?

Since then I have gotten work that I can do reliably and found a niche for myself in the world of work.

Do I look back to that dreadful time when my brain broke, I became unable to work at all, unable to take care of myself, unable to function in anything like normalcy?

Since then, I have been rebuilding my life – not as good as new, but the best I can.

Admittedly, the distance I’ve come since then has been vast. I can’t take the credit for it, however. Medications, therapy, a support system, a supportive husband, lots of reading about depression and anxiety and feminist issues and bipolar disorder have helped me survive and helped me grow.

Like many people with bipolar disorder I often have the sense that all along I was faking it, that during the periods when I seemed to be functioning best, I was actually pretending. Sometimes I think that’s what I’m doing now.

What’s that they say? Fake it till you make it?

But how do you know when you’ve made it?

I guess it’s when you look back and remember, but no longer viscerally feel, what you went through. I still have unanswered questions, unresolved conflicts, and unanswered puzzles from all those former times.

I no longer think that I will get answers to all of them. I suppose their purpose now is simply to be mile markers, measuring the distance I have come. I can look back if I choose to, or not. I can look back at who and what I was, or as my therapist says, how far I’ve come. But I’m not pathetic anymore.

So this is how far I’ve come. Can I look back without fear? Without despair? Sometimes I can. And that’s not something I’ve always been able to say. It’s progress.

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Mental Health

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