Rapid cycling, depression, mania, mixed, it's everything! Blaughhhhh

My eyes are completely burning. I realized I haven’t posted much other than poetry for awhile now so here I am. I have a headache. It’s been a really long day. This may be partially incoherent. I’ve been prefacing a lot of my interactions with people that way lately. Oh well.

So I think it’s safe to say that I have been up for a large portion of the last 6 months. Which is all well and good with me, and in ways is enjoyable. But now, it’s starting to go into this rapid cycling/mixed type stuff, which is not so enjoyable. However, it is reality, so I figured I should document it.

A few months ago my husband and I separated again. Then in January, I started school again. So, there has been a lot of stress and just a lot of demands on me physically and mentally. So that’s just a quick background leading to today.

Stuff is sort of a big jumbled ball right now. One minute I’m bouncing around with the energy of 10 men (ok, women) and the next I’m tired and dazed. For a few days I’ll get very little sleep and be just fine and dandy, and then it switches and I will barely have the energy to get through the day without falling asleep, and on top of that, when I do sleep, it will feel like I could KEEP sleeping for a whole week or more. The constant energy fluctuations are hell on me.

One day I’ll be talking to everyone who crosses my path and listening to everyone’s stories and the next day (literally, the next day) I’ll be sullen and walk into class and not say one word to a soul. I’ll just want to sit and wallow and ruminate. But then hours later, or the next day, I pop up again, and will be laughing and jumping and all of that crazy stuff.

I go from being able to concentrate well in class and “get” the material to being completely distracted, unable to concentrate at all, finding the material confusing and getting bogged down by it, and then stuff just falls through the cracks.

Now the ups I certainly like. But I DON’T like the downs mixed in there. In fact, the fact they are even there at all is kind of starting to make me a bit angry. Also the constant flip/flip/flip like a metronome is starting to wear on me. On top of it, I think I’m starting to notice a few psychotic type things happening and so that is raising a red flag to me. In the past, when I have had longer periods of mania that have psychotic elements, it kind of has the same pattern. Things begin to rise and then I just become more erratic to the point where everything gets confused and meshed together and it becomes hard to distinguish. I visualize it as a ladder, and each day I go up and down the steps and can be at any height at any time not only day to day, but throughout the day as well.

So, lately, I have had the idea of meds on the brain off and on. I really really do not want to take them. So I’m holding out to see if I can manage another couple of months. Once May hits my stress load will lower dramatically because I will be out of school for the summer and I’m sure that will help some.

This wasn’t super detailed because I really just am too tired and headachy to think much. But, wanted to explain a bit of what’s been going on recently. I know my videos have been fluctuating between depressed/rambling/dejected and overly happy/hyper so this was just my quick explanation of recent events.

Nightmares and "The Wall"

I was laying down to put my son to bed and fell asleep awhile ago. I woke up from this nightmare that left me feeling terrible. I was kind of feeling bad already. I haven’t had a nightmare in a long time, though I had them frequently growing up.

I dreamt that I was driving a long secluded highway in my town. It was dark and icy, the road only going in one direction. As I was driving I noticed it was getting darker and darker. I slowed down and asked the people in the car, “Am I going crazy? I can’t see anything in front of me!” They said no, they couldn’t see anything either. It felt almost as if the dark were totally enveloping me in an eerie way, a claustrophobic way, like it was alive and I was trapped. I was driving so slowly because I didn’t want to go off the side of the road into the ditch or the other side into a ravine. Suddenly I noticed something in the road and slammed on the breaks. It was a huge 4x4 just lying there. I could barely get around it without going off the side and wrecking. Once I passed it all I could think of was getting to a point where I could cross and get to the other side of the road safely. As I was driving I saw another 4x4 and passed it, then another and passed it. It seemed like I was going even faster. There were more and more and then there was a huge pile of them blocking the road. I could only tell at the last minute and I swerved out of the way and went over the side of the ravine. My last thought was about the people in the car with me and hoping that they lived. It was complete blackness and there was nothing but the sensation of falling.

Luckily I woke up then. At times in nightmares like this, I don’t awake. Instead, I experience the impact, or drowning, or whatever it may be, and die. Then it’s as if I rise out of my body, trapped inside the dream. It’s a horrible feeling. As it was tonight, I felt extremely groggy and then realized my son was lying next to me, but the disgusting feeling remained.

I’m really feeling down anyway, and I think it’s in part because I think so much and come to these realizations about things that I just, frankly, don’t want to admit. It’s usually big things like the meaning of life, love, our experiences in this world, etc. Sometimes there really is a futility to it all that is hard to get around. It doesn’t do any good to cry about it, a lot of times it doesn’t do any good to even care about it. I’m tired of being cynical about life and feeling detached from everything. I want to care, and I think the truth is that I do care very intensely, but it never does me any good, so I eventually stop and put up “The Wall”. Living behind “The Wall” is better than being affected by all this stuff. It’s a weird place to be though, and accepting that you live behind “The Wall” can be incredibly depressing if you actually allow yourself to think about it. Most of the time I try not to. Every once in awhile I tell myself to come out from behind “The Wall” so that I can feel like a human being, but I think ultimately I see that it isn’t worthwhile to, and then I just retreat again.

Memory Lapses, Time Distortion and Cognitive Impairment in Bipolar/BPD & Mental Illness

As I mentioned, I’ve been in an altered state for a while, having all the multitude of things that go along with it. It’s like your world gets flipped and stretched every which way. A couple posts back I mentioned the artistic wordless video I made of what the internal feelings are like, sensory wise. The shifting colors, time speeding/slowing, blackness, erratic moods. If you’re interested, you can view it HERE.

So, I’ve been having quite a few cognitive difficulties as well as memory issues currently. This occurs with both bipolar and BPD (which I have) but also other disorders such as schizophrenia and schizoaffective.

Some might describe it as forgetfulness, which is common, but it is more than that. It’s more like a complete blank, almost like a form of amnesia. I often find myself lately walking from point A to point B and standing there without a clue as to why I am there. Just this morning I went from the kitchen to the bathroom to get something. I stood in front of my robe thinking, is this what I needed? I couldn’t figure it out. I reached in the pocket. Was it chap stick I needed? I couldn’t remember. I just stood there with a total black backdrop in my head. I couldn’t for the life of me remember at all. I decided to just go back to the kitchen. Then I remembered what I needed and went back and got it. The ironic this is, writing this now, it’s only a couple hours later and I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS :/ That’s how bad it is! It happens dozens of times a day, over and over and over and is incredibly frustrating.It's as if once I get to where I'm going, I have no memory or reference point at all.

Similarly related is the feeling of having time distortion. It generally goes along with the memory lapses. I know that I have had conversations with people the last few days but I don’t remember them at all or I remember just bits randomly. I just talked to someone on the phone yesterday and said “Did I already text you that?” I was sure I hadn’t. They said I did. I didn’t remember it at all even though it apparently was a few minutes prior. Later that night I thought about that conversation. I was looking through my phone, and many of the numbers I couldn’t remember even getting the calls, whether they were missed calls or had messages on them. I found the phone call of that conversation. I had thought we only talked maybe 4 or 5 minutes, just quickly in passing. The record said 19 minutes. 19 minutes? What on earth did we say for 19 minutes? I honestly don’t know. It weirds me out so much knowing there is no memory of it. I only recall maybe 2 or 3 sentences that were said. I’ve been puzzling over it but there is no answer, just a strange sort of amnesia there, like the blackness I mentioned before.

I know this all has to do with our limbic system and the complex way that structures like the amygdala and hippocampus work together. Often, outsiders (meaning people without these types of mental issues) will say things like “Oh everyone has that sometimes.” I know what they mean, because yes, everyone is forgetful at times. But not everyone has amnesia for their day to day events, and I have enough insight to realize that this is a distortion of time, place and memory, again, related to happenings within the limbic system and likely other parts of the brain as well.

People often believe that “mood disorders” like bipolar are simply emotion related, but that is untrue. They also involve, as I mentioned: sensation, perception, memory, behavior. Just goes to show how complex our brain is and how many structures interact to form what we consider “normal” or “abnormal” manifestations of behavior and consciousness.

People have mentioned that when they are altered time can seem to speed up or slow down. It is the same for me. I lose track of the day and time completely sometimes. Yesterday, the day of the above mentioned call, I know I was at home with my son for hours but can’t recall if I did anything. I know I watched him playing for a good 3 hours. But the rest of the hours somehow passed without me really being able to recall what events occurred. The things themselves become blurry or disappear and sometimes even the chronological order in which things happen seems to become muddled. I sometimes find I do not know what day it is (Monday, Wednesday, etc.) or even what month it is! I find myself looking outside puzzling over whether it’s June or October despite the fact there is snow on the ground.

The perception of things shifts. A few days back when putting my son to bed, I sat outside his room while he fell asleep (we’re working on getting him to fall asleep alone, without me sitting with him.) I was looking at the carpet and recall how it was almost like a strange hallucination. The carpet appeared to be shimmering, like someone had sprinkled glitter all over it, even though I was sitting in dim lighting. It also appeared to be shaking slightly, a light “quivering” motion like waves of static on a TV or small waves on the ocean (the motion, not the color or appearance.)

It really stinks because we all need an “anchor” to keep us rooted just in our day to day lives. Date/time/place/events, these things give us a reference point for other things. When the reference points become mixed or start disappearing it can make it difficult to make sense of anything.

External triggers are huge in bipolar and mental illness

So I finally after all these years realized that my outside environment triggers me constantly. There is this misconception in the mental health field I think that certain mental disorders are “all in the mind” or “biologically based” meaning not much influenced by outside factors. Well, that is just WRONG. Saying something is biologically based is kind of nonsense. If you want to break it down literally EVERYTHING we do is biologically based. Eating, drinking, talking, our personality traits, behavior, perceptions, sensations, every single thing about us originates in our brain and nervous system. So yes, everything can be found to have a biological basis. But that discounts the fact that we are indeed influenced by outside factors regardless of whatever our particular biology may be, whether we have this illness or that illness or NO illness. One thing that is really irking me lately is this argument about “bipolar depression” vs. “unipolar depression”. There really is no distinction. Both are influenced by internal and external factors. But instead of digressing, I wanted to talk about triggers, meaning external sources that influence mood or mental state.

I’ve noticed that I’m incredibly sensitive to outside stimuli. Lights, noise, textures, anything that relates to the senses or sensory processing affects me in a huge way. In fact, so much so that it can bring on altered mood state where there were none previously occurring.

Let me give you an example. I’ve been in the throes of some pretty extreme rollercoaster “episodes” if you will for a while. Yesterday I woke up the feeling OK – neither up nor down. I felt slightly bored as I was going through the motions of getting kids off to school, picking up the house etc. I decided to put on some upbeat music. I almost never watch TV but was in the mood for something “poppy” so I turned on MTV. Seeing people dancing and hearing the beats made my mood start rising. Well it rose a little too much, pretty fast. I got up to the edge where excitement and agitation combine.

My heart was racing non-stop, I was short of breath. I felt like I was going to have a pleasure explosion and anxiety attack at the same time. This went on for hours. I was jumping all around and just had to talk to someone, just HAD TO. I started texting random people, a couple that I barely know or don’t know at all. I was really impatient when some didn’t respond immediately and then began to feel irritated that they DIDN’T respond. Why didn’t they respond? I’M FUN!!!! LET’S TALK!!! NOW!!!

So after some people responded I was laughing and LOL’ing non-stop over my phone for a couple of hours, music still playing in the background. I’d dance and laugh and totally just surrender to the feeling of pleasure spreading through my body, sexual surges pulsing in and out.

Then some slow songs would come on and the texting would slow down. FLIP. I’d sit and start drifting off. My heartbeat would go down, and I felt tired and bored yet again. I’d go to some calm activity to try to keep from being bored. Then it would get annoying. On comes my iPod, different peppy songs. FLIP.

Back to sensation overload. I really didn’t want to feel either extreme…I didn’t want to be blah and bored and I didn’t want to be so overly excited or agitated. I was completely influenced by the music and the conversations.

Eventually the day went on and I did my chores. I showered. My husband got home from work. I immediately dragged him into the bedroom for wild sex. I got dressed, we ate dinner. He watched the kids so I could get out of the house. I got in my truck and listened to some music and found myself giddily driving and completely distracted. I went to run some errands. I got to the store and wandered aimlessly, thoughts drifting. Texted some people to “come play hide and seek”. There was nothing to fuel my mind or body in the half dead store at night, no real stimulation or interaction, save with the cashier. I got into my car with a slight headache, went home. Was tired and blah when I got back. Hyperactivity = gone. I picked up a tiny bit and just went to sleep.

I see how everything around me was a trigger. Either a trigger to go up or a trigger to come down. The more stimulation I had, the higher I rose and the less I had the more I drifted down.

It’s an interesting observation, one that I have noted consistently over the course of the last year. So, if you’re reading this and have the same issues, keep an eye on the stuff around you. Beware that you aren’t unduly causing (or severely exacerbating) your own moods. Yeah I know, easier said than done, ha.

HIGH, low, UP, down and in between, CrAzY BrAiN!

Oh geez, where do I begin, where do I begin??? My mind is going all over the place right now and so instead of sitting here talking to myself (like I have been doing the last 15 minutes) I decided to post here and get it all out.

I think I pretty much captured what had been going on for awhile in my last post. My counselor thought I was having a mixed episode, and because of my suicidal thoughts, she has been checking up on me every few days by phone until I get in to see her next week. And I tell you, my moods are varying extremely from day to day and minute to minute. It's BAD. I don't know if it is a mixed episode or if now I am just rapid cycling, or maybe was all along? It's so f*^#ing confusing! AGHHHHHHHH!!!!

So a couple weeks ago, I remember going to a baseball game with my family. I was all done up, in a good mood. During the game, something happened that turned my mood somewhat sour. So I'm sitting there, "watching" the game (but not really paying attention) my mind being somewhere else. During this time I overhear my dad talking to a friend of his, the poor man has had a heart transplant and now needs a kidney transplant. I felt so bad for him. My mind got to racing with thoughts of "Why can't I just give him my kidney? I have 2...I don't need both...I could get tested and see if I'm a match...that would be such a great thing to do..." Hours later on the way home I told my husband some of my thoughts of organ donation. He said "You're probably having an episode...you need to wait a month or so and see how you feel then." I kind of thought, yeah, ok, whatever. I knew in my rational brain it made sense but didn't deter me from wanting to do it. I sat around thinking about it all for the next 2 days.

But anyways, back to what I was saying...I'm in one of those moods where I could just talk (type?) forever...hehehe...I have so much to say you see!!! Anyways, yes, so we got home and my mood was turning more and more sour and there was conflict in the house and I said I needed to get out. I went walking and was literally thinking of killing myself. I walked and walked, late at night, weighing the options...1) go home and overdose 2) call a friend and try to talk myself OUT of overdosing 3) tell my husband to take me to the hospital so I DON'T overdose...I didn't know what to do, I was so confused and really wanting to do myself in. So I went home, told my husband he may need to take me to the hospital. It was BAD for it to get to that point that I was telling him this, seriously on the verge of checking myself in. Oh yeah, I was drinking too. He said we would go for a drive, and we did, and afterward I felt a bit better. I knew I would be alright through the night and if I still was suicidal in the morning, I'd go to the ER.

But in the morning, I didn't feel suicidal. I was depressed but not as bad. That evening we all went 4wheeling and I was pondering it all and thinking, "Why was I suicidal? How stupid." It seemed absolutely ridiculous to me.

So since then I have been having a hell of a time! Trying to stay on some kind of stable path, but I dunno what to expect from day to day. I alternate, depressed, happy, depressed, happy, depressed, super happy, depressed, irritated, and so on and so on and so on...

One day last weekend we went out river boating and I remember sitting there being almost outside my body, it was so strange. I again was thinking morbid thoughts, of how I was a broken, defective person, how all was futile because nothing would ever change, how I knew I was destined to die by my own hand before the time I reach 40 years old, and I was DAMN SURE of it all. I didn't talk to my family and didn't engage them. I just sat there, not noticing anything around me.

Then I go back up again...and I come down again...

Then a couple days ago I was back to working on projects...I cleaned my house and I mean SCOURED it. I cleaned and washed my washing machine and dryer for God's sake. I washed my blinds. Stuff I NEVER do (well, let's face it, I hardly clean anything besides the dishes on a regular basis). I spent ALL DAY cleaning from the time I got up til about 3:30 PM. And it still wasn't completely finished but I had other things to do. Took the kids for a bike ride, made dinner, played outside in the sun with them. Then I made a scrapbook, and was up later drinking and working on it. I did get it finished though :)

And yesterday I felt so good, so happy, I was all done up, wearing some of my new clothes that I drunkenly/manically spent all that money on, styled up my hair (that I just paid $200 to have trimmed and highlighted) and went to town to run errands with my girls. Let me tell you, I was in my own f@#^ing world!!! I pushed the cart around with my brain going all over, splintering out in a million directions. I don't think I even noticed where I was pushing it. Luckily I only needed 1 thing in there and I got it and got out. I was so distracted (by what? I couldn't tell you) I was completely driving on autopilot, I don't think I was even looking at the road. It's a good thing I have driven that road a million times or I would have wrecked. I vaguely remember staring out at dots on the horizon, or following the edge of the trees with my eyes. I felt really batty. So we stopped one more place and went home. Then last night I was watching a movie and in some scenes I felt so overcome with intense emotion...I mean, it wasn't even a good movie, it was a terrible movie! But I remember a scene of the blue sky reducing me to tears, I just couldn't bear the beauty of it. And I gasped and held myself tight and floated away. I started thinking of just running away somewhere, me and my husband taking a random trip, just going, going, gone...

And tonight I've been sitting here for the past 2 hours looking up vacation information. What the heck am I doing?!?! We're going on vacation in 2 months. But I want to go NOW dammit, NOW! I looked through the Carnival Cruise site (we went on a cruise before and had a good time) and I'm like, it would be so easy, just book it and next week we could be on a plane and whisking away to some white sand beach, ahhhh, it would be wonderful...(now, this isn't the first time something like this happened...years ago before I was diagnosed, I did the same thing with my friend, I needed to GET AWAY and would have gone immediately had she not needed to save up cash, but we did go - not as soon as I wanted - but it was an awesome, albeit very impulsive, trip...) anyhow I digress again, I feel so excited at the prospect of going on this damn cruise, hahahaha. I know we don't have the money to go especially after my husband and I collectively blew through $3000 more than usual on our credit card last month....ahhhh f@#$.

So yeah that's where I am...I don't think it helps that I am drinking every night or every other night. I find myself waking up having memory lapses and not remembering parts of conversations, emails, movies, things I did the night before. The worst thing is it happens even when I don't drink! Even on sober days I wake up feeling like there are pieces missing and I don't know why or where they went. I find that this entire last month or month and a half is a jumble, because I am finding it hard to put things in chronological order. There are pieces of this and that, and what? who? when did I do that? What did I do? I don't know...hmmm...well...it must have been this! It sucks. I don't know if it's all my fault or only partially my fault.

I have been taking my meds though. LOW dose, 2.5 mg of Zyprexa. Needless to say I will probably have to increase. I see my psychiatrist tomorrow. Well, hmmm, it should be an interesting visit :P

Oh yeah and I just noticed, IT'S FRIDAY THE 13TH!!!!

*NOTE: It's 2 years later, and I have since been diagnosed with borderline in addition to bipolar. I can clearly see the BPD symptoms interspersed with the manic symptoms I was having reading this back. The happiness, impulsiveness, distraction = bipolar. The confusion, dissociation, suicidal ideation = BPD (or, I should say, bipolar and BPD as they are currently known/classified). Should be interesting to see a couple years from now, how much more I will have learned and come to understand about all these various mental states I experience.

Perfectionism, emotional dependence and self image

As I mentioned in my last blog, I've always been an emotional person. I really do feel that my emotions rule my life. Which is not to say that I cannot think about things logically and rationally, but by far my emotional state is the biggest motivator of my behavior. Because of this, I've acquired a lot of maladaptive coping mechanisms to try to function in life and get my emotional needs met.

From as early as I can remember, I have struggled with perfectionism. I held myself to an incredibly high standard and expected myself to do everything right all the time. Whenever I made a mistake I would beat myself up terribly. Of course, children don't analyze their feelings and recognize their motivations for doing things. But I have come to see that this desire for perfection stemmed from an emotional need to be loved, accepted and affirmed. I felt if I was perfect that I would get these things, and therefore would be happy. Of course it never really worked out that way. The harder I tried to be perfect, the more I would fail and negative feelings would consume me. I would feel stupid, ugly, worthless. In my adolescent years, I continued in this pattern of seeking perfection...I felt that if I did everything right all the time, people would love me, and give me those emotional things that I needed. I never really felt that I got that and so as a result, the negative feelings would return, I would become anxiety ridden, depressed and hopeless. In my adult life, nothing really changed. I felt if I was perfect, I would be able to acquire the love and acceptance that I so desperately craved. Nowadays my perfectionism has gone the opposite way. I realize I cannot be perfect. I realize I am doomed before I start. It keeps me from doing a lot of things because I fear that I will fail and be unworthy. It is a hindrance to me, but I don't know how to stop the feelings, how to stop this incessant need to be perfect.

Again, relating to my negative ways of coping, I have come to realize that I am extremely emotionally dependent on others. All my life I have been a person who is very sensitive...someone who needs a lot of assurance from others, particularly those close to me. I have tended to latch onto one particular person and rely on that person for everything I need. At times it was friends, other times it was romantic relationships. I would wrap my life around that one person, do everything with them, to the point where everything else just fell by the wayside. I really believe that I have relied so heavily on others because I have not been able to provide myself with the emotional things I need...I expect others to do it for me. I have trouble comforting myself, feeling secure by myself, feeling like a worthwhile person. So I cling to the one person I feel can provide those things to me. At times it has backfired. I have been dependent on people that did not treat me well, that hurt me very deeply. But I simply was afraid to be alone. I needed someone to take care of me and so I tolerated the bad treatment. It frustrates me so much to realize this because I don't want to be dependent on others. I wish I could make myself feel better. But at times, I become just like a child, seeking out that love, comfort, support, protection, feeling like a helpless invalid, unable to care for myself. It is a difficult way to live.

As a result of this, I struggle with defining who I am, with my sense of self. If others treat me well, I feel good, competent, worthy. If others treat me badly I feel bad, empty and worthless. At times it even has nothing to do with other people. At times it shifts without reason. My idea of self fluctuates frequently from one extreme to the other. I find myself questioning, who am I? My perception of myself changes, my goals, my core values, everything. I go from being extremely conservative to extremely liberal. I go from being intensely religious to completely non-religious. Again, I go from seeing myself as awesome, wonderful, perfect, to horrible, ugly, unworthy. This constant fluctuation leaves me feeling confused and lost. At times I feel so certain of who I am and at others I feel I don't have the slightest clue. I could be pushed in any direction the wind blows me.

So I am struggling with all of this now, all of these non-bipolar related issues. I don't know if I will ever be able to work them out, if I will ever be able to change. I don't believe that medication is the answer...I realize these emotional disturbances have probably been caused by environmental factors rather than some chemical brain imbalance. The question is, when you have always been this way, how do you ever fix it?

Feeling broken

Well I don't really know where to begin. I've been going through a rough time lately. I'm feeling pretty depressed, pretty down. But I don't really think it is bipolar related.

I realize that I have always been an emotionally unstable person. As far back as I can remember, even into early grade school I recall having emotional problems. Getting older, into adolescence, I had a very dysfunctional home life, and that only contributed to my feelings of emotional instability. I remember being about 15 years old, going through hell, and thinking "When I get older, things will get better." But the truth is, they never have. I'm turning 30 this year and mentally, I don't feel any different than I did back then. I suffer with anxiety, perfectionism, dependence, unstable self image. I feel as if there is an empty hole in my soul that I have been searching all my life for something to fill. And at times, I do feel better, and I'm able to function, and I don't think about it. But ultimately, it is all just a cover, and the emptiness always returns. I regress into a helpless, child like state where I need others to care for me, to protect me, to validate and affirm me. I try to alleviate the feelings of anxiety and self loathing in unhealthy ways, by both isolating myself as well as clinging onto the people close to me in my life. I have always been a person who is extremely sensitive, someone who needs a lot of love, a lot of affection and affirmation. Most of my life I don't feel that I received that which in turn, has magnified all my emotional issues. I feel lonely, confused, lost, broken. I have a pervading sense of being worthless, useless and empty that continues to plague me no matter how old I get or how much time passes. I wish I could be a "normal" person...a well adjusted person, a functioning person. But at times I just don't know how. I feel like I'm constantly using defense mechanisms to prevent myself from feeling so much negativity. Everything ties into everything else, and if only it could be a simple fix to say "Do this and that will go away" but with our mental health it is never that easy. The mind is the seat of all we are as human beings. When our minds are fractured and broken, it affects every part of our lives. So I'm left here now, not knowing what to do, feeling helpless and longing for elusive happiness and stability.

Gone off my meds

So here is the latest news - I have gone off of medication. After I started going high I did not want to come back down. So, I stopped taking my Zyprexa. Granted, I have been on a small dose for months, only 2.5 mg so it wasn't technically like going from a high dose to nothing. It's been about a week and a half or so since I've gone off and it's been a little crazy. I went from being UP to being in a complete daze, to being sooo angry to having delusions about aliens mind controlling me with medication. I haven't been sleeping well at all, I'd been falling asleep around 4 am and getting up around 8. Then I went 2 full days without any sleep simply because I couldn't. That was rough. It all passed though.

I do think I am going through medication withdrawals however. I've researched it a bit and found many other people who have gone off Zyprexa have experienced the same things. The biggest one is nausea...I feel queasy pretty much all the time and was actually vomiting this morning. Also my anxiety levels are sky high and my heart is just racing half the time for no apparent reason. The insomnia is still there, and I feel this strange sort of confusion in my brain that I don't know what to attribute to.

My psychiatrist does not yet know I have gone off my meds...I don't see her until April 10. I know she will likely be upset with me, she does not agree with me wanting to go med free. But ultimately, it is my life and I have to do what I feel is best for me at the time. I have been thinking about medication a lot, and realized that in a way, I feel that medication has stolen a part of my personality away. I've always been a super emotional person...very sensitive to things around me. I always felt things so intensely, good, bad or otherwise. Since being medicated, I really haven't felt that. Every day was the same...no real ups no real downs, just plugging along in the middle. I really feel that a miss that part of me. Additionally, since being on medication I have noticed my motivation is extremely low. I pretty much stopped doing any sort of hobbies...I stopped talking to a lot of people...I just had no will to do it. So I'd sit around day after day, in this mediocre state. I want to feel that desire to do things again...I want to live again. I think going off medication will help in that regard. In fact, I haven't written anything in nearly a year and just this last week, I started writing again. It's nice.

So I'm not advocating this route for everyone...certainly, some people need to be on medication all the time and I myself admit that at times I have needed it. But as a human being with free will I have to make up my own mind about it, just as everyone else does. Taking meds or not taking meds is a personal choice. There are some people that can function without it...there are some that can't. If the day comes when I feel things have gotten out of control, I know they are there for me, and that is comforting. But for the time being, I have to give this a shot. I need to try to find my happiness again.

In an unrelated note, it has been brought to my attention that there is a problem with the comments on my blog. Some people cannot post them and I cannot respond to comments either. I don't know what the glitch  is, but if you feel the desire to contact me, you can do so through my youtube channel. Find me under BipolarStateofBeing.

Been having some hallucinations

Well, for the most part I have been doing alright lately. The most recent thing is that I have started having hallucinations. I had some hallucinations during my first manic period before I was hospitalized, and it's kind of weird now because I am not having and episode. I am not manic, I am not depressed. For the most part life is going along fine.

A couple weeks ago I was out and about and I remember hearing something and being weirded out about it...I thought, "Wait a minute...was that really even there?" and then I blew it off as an isolated incident and didn't pay it much attention. Then a couple days later I was out with my kids and smelled the scent of burning rubber, or burning oil or something to that effect. I realized at the time that it was not really there, and again thought "This is weird" but I blew it off.

A few days later, I was laying down to go to sleep and was kinda of groggy, half asleep/half awake. And suddenly I heard the doorbell ring. It jolted me and I thought "Oh my god, I forgot to lock the door!" So I jumped out of bed and locked the door and sat up for a couple minutes. I swear I heard footsteps outside walking around my house and was completely paranoid, convinced someone was outside trying to break into my house and rob me or rape  me or some such thing. After a couple minutes of being totally freaked out, I went back to bed. And I laid there thinking about it and wondered, Is this really real? I mean first off, who would ring my bell at 1 am? Nobody. And if someone WAS trying to break in, they wouldn't ring the bell! They would just try to come in a window or something. The thing that really tipped me off that it wasn't real was that my kids would have woken if they heard the bell...and they were in bed, sound asleep. So I thought, Ok, this wasn't really real.

A few days passed...I thought, Ok, it's all over now. Not quite. A couple nights ago I was in that half awake/half asleep state and swear that my kids were walking above my head. I heard and felt their footsteps all around me and wondered "Why are they walking on my head?" Then I heard their voices talking to me, but inside my head. It weirded me out so I looked around and no one was there. My kids were awake but were in their room and nowhere near where I was.

So now I am totally confused. I do have a sleep disorder, narcolepsy. I generally do not have symptoms, I would consider my case to be a mild one. I have had symptoms off and on over the years but usually not severely. Hallucination (in conjunction with sleep) is a symptom of narcolepsy. So that COULD explain why I have had the last couple of hallucinations. But it doesn't explain the hallucinations I had while awake. I am just really thrown for a loop right now because I don't know what to make of it or what to attribute it to. Is it my bipolar? Is it my narcolepsy? Is it both? I really don't know. I do have to say that the hallucinations while half awake are much more disconcerting than the ones while I am awak for some reason. Maybe it is because they are so sudden and so jarring to me.

I don't know if upping my dosage of medication will help. If it isn't bipolar related, it probably won't do much good. I don't see my psychiatrist again until April. It isn't bad enough for me to make an early appointment though, so I am just going to wait to see her. I do have a feeling it will continue to happen though. So I am keeping an eye on it, and documenting it, to see if some sort of pattern will emerge.

Insomnia and apathy due to meds

Well, it's almost 1 am and I can't sleep so figured I would post an update. Winter has set in and we've had crazy weather, warm with freezing rain so for a few days, no one has been able to go anywhere. It's making me even more stir crazy than I already get in winter, which is bad. I got some natural light bulbs to put in the lamps here to help my mood and energy. I think it's working a bit, however, I don't think you are supposed to use them into the night hours, which may be why I have insomnia right now!

Currently I'm dealing with ambivalence/apathy in a big way. I believe part of it is my medication. Truthfully, I haven't felt like myself in a long long time. Most days I just feel sort of "there" and this has been going on many months now. It's a crappy feeling. I think I've been confusing some of the way I've been feeling with depression when in fact some of it has been effects of the medication. I'm on Risperdal and Abilify right now, and I am going to talk to my doc about going off the Risperdal totally. As a side story, it originally made my hormone levels high...so high I started producing milk as if I were pregnant. Ewwwww. (I always seem to get the rare side effects). So I am supposed to only be on it now as a "placeholder" for something else. We did a blood test of my prolactin levels (hormone that makes you produce milk) and the normal range is between 10-40ish. My levels were 150. So yeah...that alone makes it not the greatest med for me. Add to that, it makes me foggy, confused, unable to concentrate, unmotivated and just overall "blah" and you can see why I want to go off it. I really am tired of feeling this way. I am ready to get back to myself again...the me before meds. I don't know if I can without stopping them entirely. It's something I've been contemplating a lot.

Need to address buried issues

So I’ve been charting my moods again. I started doing this after I got out of the hospital but fell off the wagon because it’s one of those things you just forget to do. Well I’m back at it again at the suggestion of my psychiatrist and I’ve noticed that in general, over the past 2 weeks my mood has improved from severe depression to mild depression and even up to normal on some days. So I was thinking “Wow, this just keeps getting better!” And then I go and have a day like today. Ugh.

I’m feeling down today for personal reasons I don’t really want to get into. But all  of this has brought a lot of things to mind that I think I need to discuss with my counselor. As you know from my sidebar, I vlog on YouTube about living with bipolar, and I also watch others vids on bipolar and other issues that are pertinent to me, mainly other mental health topics. Anyhow, I was watching tonight and some videos really hit home to me and made me realize there is still a lot that is buried that I have not discussed with anyone. There are some things that I have basically kept to myself and tried to deal with, thinking it was something I could change or that I was just being weak. But now, I’m beginning to wonder if some of these issues stem from other emotional issues/areas and not from environmental factors like I’ve been believing. If that is indeed the case, there may be ways I can work on these issues instead of trying to muddle through with all these feelings and live with them by changing all the physical things around me.

Still trying to make sense of bipolar diagnosis - want to go back to life as it was

A brief update – went to see my psychiatrist yesterday. I told her what was going on and she said she wasn’t sure if I was rapid cycling or not. I guess only time will tell. She didn’t really agree with my counselor about the mixed state, she said that she thought it was a part of the mania I’ve recently been experiencing. Ugh. Who knows! Just one more confusing thing. It’s like, where does one thing stop and another begin? There is no line of demarcation. It’s all miscellaneous criteria that is written down in a manual by people who do not experience these things and therefore, how much could they really know? Maybe it really doesn’t mean anything at all. Again, who knows. I could go back and forth all day.

She agreed that my meds probably were not working well and that I should go back on the anti-psychotic meds…I can’t go back to Risperdal, although it worked well, because of side effects. So now, starting today I am trying Seroquel. It’s supposed to be sedating, just like Risperdal. We’ll see if I can handle it or if it makes a difference.

As you can tell I’ve started video blogging too, I’m digging watching other people’s stuff on YouTube also. It’s so helpful to know others are out there experiencing the same stuff. And knowing others can relate to my situation also feels good…I know I’m not totally alone.

I’m not sure when the next time I’ll post will be. In a way all this talking is helping me but in other ways I feel like I’m going around in a circle. I talk to my psychiatrist, my counselor, people around me, then there are my own thoughts to contend with…it tends to add to the confusion rather than simplify. I’ve been having a lot of conflicting thoughts today, one being that I feel the diagnosis of bipolar is really starting to define me, and I don’t want that. I had a lot of “normalcy” in my life before about a year ago…it wasn’t like I was in a perpetual state of confusion and flux. I want to go back to that. I wouldn’t have even gotten treatment had it not been for my spiral out of control. I always dealt with things myself, and that’s pretty much what I want to do again, just take things out of other peoples hands and put them back into my own.

I get so caught up in going to doctors every week or two that it doesn’t help much…in fact I feel like I’m talking so much I’m only making myself worse! Everyone tells you “monitor your moods” and “pay attention to warning signs” and all this other stuff, and it’s sort of like, you have to be on constant guard and I don’t like it. I mean really, what’s the deal with being a little “up” or a little “down”? I think that unless I’m so up that I’m literally “off the map” as my psychiatrist says, or so depressed I want to kill myself, that I should just forget about everything else and go about my life. A part of me doesn’t even want to keep taking meds. I want to just remove this label of bipolar and return to the time when I was contently ignorant. I want to return to my life as I knew it. Ahhhhh…I could go on forever. But I won’t :)