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.

Awareness is crucial in managing bipolar disorder off meds

Our circumstances can make us depressed. Seems like a fairly obvious statement, yes?

Sadly though, this fact is overlooked in the mental health field a lot, and even in our own personal lives. I know after being diagnosed with bipolar, I started to buy into all the messages out there – I NEEDED meds, it was bipolar that was making me depressed, I should monitor my moods so that I could alter my meds, etc. Sure, I had counseling but it mainly focused on – bipolar! Everything in a round about way came back to bipolar. I thought I was gaining clarity by listening to these messages. After all, these doctors and nurses and counselors were the experts, right?

During that time I was making videos a lot and still journaling so I have a lot of detailed accounts of how I was feeling and what was going on in my life. It is amazing to me looking back how unaware I was the vast majority of my life! I had a great deal of INSIGHT into my FEELINGS but very little AWARENESS of WHY I felt that way. I made one video about depression in 2010 and how nothing was going on in my life to make me depressed, and that it must have been bipolar. Yet, I was completely unaware of my surroundings and how they were affecting me.

During that particular time I made that video, I recall exactly what was going on, and my life was NOT going great at all. My husband and I were having major conflicts. It had been going on for months though so I think I just discounted it as having an effect on me, when I now see it was one of the main causes of my depression. Also, we were living with relatives at the time which was becoming stressful. We were looking for our own house, also stressful. I was taking care of twin 2 year olds, stressful. I can’t believe I didn’t take all that into account when looking at my mental state and the way it would fluctuate!!! I just thought, ohhhh, it’s bipolar…that stinks…maybe tomorrow would be better. In a way it kept me from addressing things in my life that were affecting me, because I was putting too much emphasis on the wrong things (bipolar/biological/medical problem) and not enough on other things (relationships/family life/stress level).

I guess I felt compelled to make this blog today because I think the current message in the mental health field is doing a disservice to those diagnosed with depression or bipolar. Here is my 2 cents…

I believe that many mental illnesses (including depression and bipolar) begin with an inherent sensitivity. This is something currently being researched in the mental health field and I do believe this is barking up the right tree, so to speak. I believe this sensitivity makes a person more likely to be affected by external stimuli. This can then manifest as many different things – anxiety, depression, mania.

For example – take an average person and a person with bipolar. Put them in a situation where they are going through a break-up. The average person will feel sad and maybe even depressed. The bipolar person may dwell on it incessantly, feel suicidal, perhaps even attempt suicide. The same stimuli but much more intense emotions related to that stimuli. (Keep in mind this is just a random example, of course this isn’t true of every average person or bipolar person! I’m just making a generalization.)

So, if I were to go to my psychiatrist and tell them all this, (in my fictional example) one of the first things they would be concerned with is: medication! Upping meds, changing meds, etc. They have the viewpoint that these things must be dealt with by pharmaceuticals. I used to believe that and I went along with it all. Now, I feel differently.

So many times over the course of my treatment, everything got lumped under the category “It’s because you have bipolar.” Is it? Well, no not really. Does being depressed because I have marital conflict mean it’s related to bipolar? Hardly. If I addressed the bigger issue (marital problems) could I help mediate the effects on my “illness”? I say yes.

Bipolar or not, we are all human beings. We feel low when we get divorced, lose a friend, have a family member that dies, lose a pet. Now, those are BIG things. But even little things affect us too. Having a stressful day at work. A sick child. An upcoming deadline. Interpersonal conflict. Too often, these things are not addressed in psychiatry or in counseling as far as ways to cope with these issues in healthy, non-medical means. Somehow, everything always comes back to an illness, even if it is a legitimate problem. To this day, within the bipolar community, whenever I say things that others view as extreme, they caution me that I must be having an episode. I deeply appreciate the care and concern. But it really goes to show just how ingrained the idea has become even within OURSELVES and TO ourselves that mental illness is WHAT we are. That we are helpless. That we cannot change or improve without meds. That any sort of variation means we better get some new meds, pronto, and that will help our situation.

Now, I think at times, medication plays a role but that often, when we learn to be aware of ourselves, our moods, our surroundings and WHAT is causing these feelings we can address them in a more pro-active way. Many people in the mental health system (including myself) did everything “right”. We went to counseling, we took the meds, we followed the regime for YEARS. But that is only addressing one small piece of the puzzle. We are multi-faceted individuals and must deal with our lives in a holistic manner, instead of focusing everything on ONE THING – our illness. That doesn’t help us, but instead keeps us trapped in a cycle we can never get out of. I often wondered WHY I wasn’t getting better despite doing all the “right” things (and believe me, I have heard the same thing from others about a million times! People want to know WHY these meds aren’t fixing their depression or their mood swings, WHY they aren’t getting better. Ultimately it can lead to a worse feeling of depression, because on top of the initial depression, there is depression for having “failed” to get better.)

I am now almost a year off meds and am so much more aware of myself than I was at the beginning of my mental health journey almost 5 years ago, and I am so thankful for that. Like I said, I could identify my feelings but not WHY I felt that way. I now understand: all the variation of mood, how various social cues trigger my moods or affect them (positive or negative), how the behaviors I engage in affect me, how all of this affects others. It’s not something that occurs overnight but is a learning process that occurs over time and with observation. Does that mean I’m now “fixed”? No. But it puts me ahead of the game because I can anticipate things before they happen. I can be prepared. I minimize the chances of being caught off guard. When bad things do happen, I can learn from them and try to adjust things/situations in the future. I know my weaknesses and limitations and try to take those into account when making plans or scheduling particular outings or things of that nature. For example, I now know that working hard on something can trigger elevated mood or “mania” for me. So, I don’t avoid working hard, but if I notice signs, I can either enjoy the ride or if it becomes extreme, back off and try to do calming activities to mediate the excitation happening in my brain. If I start feeling depressed and notice I’m ruminating on negative thoughts, I can purposely cut off the train of thought and engage in something more uplifting – some happy music, or watching a funny video, or talking to a close friend. If I weren’t aware of the effects of my environment on me, I couldn’t do any of these things! Awareness is SO important. I think it is THE most important thing in dealing with mental illness, period.

So my advice to anyone new to the mental health system or newly diagnosed is this – FIRST, take stock of your own life. No one knows you like YOU. You are the best advocate for yourself. We may like the idea of a fairy godmother or white knight swooping in and fixing us or fixing our lives but that isn’t reality. We must be our own advocates in life. Understanding yourself better can help you understand your moods and ways of coping or self-medicating (drugs/alcohol/self-injury/bingeing/social withdrawal, etc.) that are unique to you. You can in turn begin to address these things. SECOND – Don’t believe the hype. Even if you’ve been diagnosed with bipolar (or even if you just think you may have it) not everything about you is “because you have bipolar”! Bipolar in itself doesn’t make a person inherently – quiet, loud, obnoxious, generous, loving, selfish or any other thing. We all have to accept that we have our own traits regardless of bipolar. Don’t fall into the trap of believing “I’m a thrill seeker…it’s because I have bipolar!” or “I don’t like people. It’s because I have bipolar.” Not only is that boxing yourself in, but some of it isn’t even true (bipolar is simply a tendency for extreme mood experiences and shifts.) While you may be able to say you’re a thrill seeker while in an elevated mood state, if you’re like that all the time, it’s just your personality. (I’m going to go ahead and say that most people realize a lot of their own personality traits, good or bad. We don’t all admit them openly to others though!) Lumping all these things under the heading of “bipolar” may make you feel better for a while and you may feel validated that it’s not all in your head, (I know I did) but eventually it will consume you. Bipolar will become the only thing you see about yourself and in a weird way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe you’re nuts and so you act nuts, so people treat you nuts and so you believe you’re nuts…It will make you feel worse and not better. And that isn’t what any of us want, bipolar or not.

LASTLY, Many times, bipolar or not, addressing the true issues in life can bring more happiness than simply relying on a pill. There is no miracle pill to cure bipolar or depression. But healing starts with AWARENESS. A person can never change something they are unaware of. If you walked around with spinach in your teeth all day and never looked in a mirror, would you think to floss your teeth right away? Probably not. You wouldn’t even be aware of it. But if you thought to yourself while you were eating your salad that you better head to the bathroom after you eat and make sure your pearly whites were white instead of green, you’d head off any unforeseen embarrassment. Point is, be aware. Aware of YOURSELF, aware of what is AROUND you. Notice how things affect you, what your particular “weaknesses” are, what triggers your moods (both down and up). Is it having too much to do in a short time? Is it dealing with money troubles? Relationship troubles? Is it being involved in a cool class? Experiencing something new? Really take a step back and assess your own life. You can be your own best friend or your own worst enemy. Only by truly looking at yourself as a whole can you begin to understand how to take steps that will bring the improvements you seek.

I don't need fixing

I’m a roll with my blogging again. You know, I don’t think I’ve been this active on my blog since I first started it! I got really busy with my vlogging on YouTube and didn’t write much. I stopped journaling then also. Now I’m back into both and it is really fulfilling. I know YouTube reaches a wider audience, and I will still make videos but there is just something special about the written word…I don’t know why.

BEWARE!!! This post may be pretty triggering and upsetting to some. So, you have been warned.

So I’m going through a transition period. I’ve changed my YouTube channel name from Bipolar State of Being to Nicole For Real. Why? Because there is more to me than bipolar. Because honestly, I’m not sure I even view myself as “mentally ill” anyway. I don’t think I do. Being mentally ill implies that I have a disease, a “sickness”. Does having more intense moods than an average person qualify me as “sick”? Actually, in this country, yes. Sadly, I bought into it for a long time. I think I’ve gotten a lot of crap messages from people and society that told me I was defective and needed fixing. And I believed them. I thought I needed to fix myself, and I tried REEEEAAAAAAALLLLY hard to do that, to do all the things those people asked.

Grow a thicker skin and stop being so sensitive.

Quit being melodramatic.

Deal with it.

Quit complaining.

Take your meds.

Try harder!!!

Wow, so there is a lot to address there. Let me make a little list.

1)     Sensitivity. Sensitivity is not a character flaw, like many people try to make it seem. It is actually in many cases as asset. People who are sensitive, well, SENSE more. We feel more deeply, love more passionately, empathize wholeheartedly. I think most of this country at least, could benefit from a large helping of sensitivity. In ways it can be painful to feel such heightened emotions but it ways it is like enlightenment. So, do I believe I am flawed and need to “quit it”? Errrrrr, no. At times it causes me pain but at times it causes me intense joy.

2)     The med issue. Ok, this is huge and too big to get into it all now. But in short, I used to believe what everyone said, that I NEEEEED meds, that meds will make me better, that to be “responsible” I HAD to take them, etc. etc. etc. Never mind that they all had horrible side effects and a lot of the time, no real positive effects. But, you NEED them, “that’s what the doctors say!!!!” And we all know, the only people who are capable of making choices, being intelligent, or using their God given reasoning ablilites are doctors *insert sarcasm*. Certainly, “mentally ill” people have no right to challenge THE DOCTORS!!! Ok, so I didn’t. I deferred to them, the “professionals” I sucked it up, I ate the little white pills like a good girl should. Hmmm, those didn’t work. Try these. Now these. Now these. Now these. Oh, come on, one of these is bound to work!!! But…but…wait. Four years later, I wasn’t any better off than when I started! HUH????????

3)     Societal expectations. Alright so this is sort of a combination of the above two. Here’s how it works. We (the patient, the person, the one experiencing the moods, however you would like to describe it) have some difficulties functioning. We become depressed, or anxious, or Maybe suicidal. We, or others we know, insist that we seek help. What do we need help with? The terrible feelings we feel, learning how to deal with these feelings, trying to figure out what exactly we can do to STOP feeling these terrible feelings. We fit the criteria, and so we have a “disorder”. Now that we know we aren’t normal, and everyone else becomes aware that we aren’t normal, we have to do something. We have to fix it. We treat disorders by medicating them, right? 

So forgive me, I didn’t mean this to sound as scathing as it does (upon rereading) but it comes from a real anger.

So let me simmer down a bit and address in a more calming manner. What is my point here? My point is that people with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, BPD, (indeed, most mental illnesses) just WANT TO FEEL BETTER WHEN WE ARE DOWN. At times, we are grasping at straws, just trying to keep our heads afloat (yeah, I’m mixing metaphors there.) Many of us are actually relieved to GET the diagnosis of the disorder because now we are validated, our pain has been validated. All those people who told us to suck it up have been thwarted, they don’t have a leg to stand on because the medical community tells them it is “real”. You know what the saddest thing is? That people, as a whole, are so insensitive, that they need the medical community to TELL THEM that depression/anxiety/intense moods are real!!! I guess that is the really staggering thing to me.

Our society seems to be shining the spotlight on mental illness more, and in previous times, it was helpful. After all, anyone dealing with any sort of mental issue knows that what we really want is validation, acceptance, love, caring, empathy, NOT to be turned into somebody else. And often (depending on the issue), this can help more than medication. Some medications have been shown to be almost totally ineffective, yet they are still prescribed and touted as the way to treat certain mental illness. DOUBLE HUH??? Why??? Because that is the current idea in society. Take the little white (or blue, or red) pills and your life will get better. That’s the message we all hear, and we have to believe because we are offered no alternative. And don’t even think about mentioning God or spirituality. You will be labeled as even more severely ill than before. Because no mentally sane person could believe in God! *insert more sarcasm* Here, take more white pills, quick!!!

Now, back to my harping on society, and how we want validation, acceptance, love and empathy. It is because WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS not because WE ARE “DEFECTIVE” “SICK” OR “ILL”. Every single person on earth wants those things, especially when they are going through hardships! I personally am really tired of the patronizing labels. Many people with mental illness are intelligent, talented, charismatic, witty, outgoing, sensitive, or a host of other positive attributes. It’s anecdotally known (and I’m sure that I could dig up research as well) that people tend to seek help when they are in low periods. During these periods we describe our lives in the blackest of terms because that is how we truly feel. But when the period passes, our energy comes back to us, we may be positive and cheerful and going about our daily lives as usual. Some things may be long lasting, but virtually no mind is paid to any sort of social factors in our lives that could be affecting us (Are we having marital problems? Job issues? Money troubles? Kids suspended from school?) No, it’s just because we are sick. If we took enough white pills, we could cope with our cheating spouses and being laid off and having insane debts and kids acting out. Darn it, we are weak, we have diseased brains, that’s why we have problems and we need those pills!!! (Oh, and by the way, here is half my salary to pay for the pills that run $600 for a month supply. I just paid $20 a pill to feel crappier!!! TRIPLE HUH???)

People really seem to fall into two camps when it comes to the mental illness issue. They think either A) it isn’t real and that people are exaggerating or making things up or B) it is extremely serious and that you must treat any “mentally ill” person with kid gloves, or like they are a child or invalid. Now, neither one of these is really correct. Granted, I’m sure there are some people who exaggerate (not just illness but anything) and I’m sure there are people who are incapacitated or unable to function independently most of the time. But I believe many “mentally ill” folks like myself fall somewhere in the middle.

So let’s take me as an example. I’m not even sure how “severe” I would be classified as. It’s like the saying “When I’m good, I’m REALLY good, and when I’m bad, I’m REALLY bad.” Is that an indicator of severity? Does having more “severe” moods warrant special treatment above and beyond a “normal” mentally ill person? Now we’re getting into weird semantic categories that just get murky and confused and have people battling within their own communities over who is “worse off”. Holy cow, that is not one I want to win (although, to my chagrin, I at once believed I needed to!)

I am in no way demeaning anyone who has a mental illness (as it is currently called). When I first started moving away from all these negative messages that society is meting out, I was met by hostility by many in the mental health community, which saddened me. I think they perceived me as blaming people with mental illness or as attacking them and saying “Man up!” But I’m not. I’m doing the opposite. I’m saying, by golly, we have been sold a lie and we deserve MORE than that. We deserve more than hollow promises by medical professionals, more than patronizing pats on the back. We want UNDERSTANDING. We truly want to FEEL GOOD and not BAD. I am tired of being DEFINED by an “illness”. We even are guilty of propagating it ourselves. Look at what I titled my blog for Pete’s sake! We call ourselves “bipolar people” “depressed people” “borderline people” “anxious people”. We are human beings. Bipolar is not me. I am not bipolar. I am Nicole. I have ups and I have downs. Maybe I'm a bit eccentric. I am creative and loving and yes, intense. But I am not broken. And I don’t need fixing.

(And if you don’t agree with me, and you think I am a wackjob, that is your preprogative. If you are happy with your meds and doctors, you have my full support. I’m not criticizing anyone who chooses to take this path or continue on it. It is a personal choice for each individual and up to them to decide whether it is worthwhile or helpful. If it is, I encourage you to continue and do not listen to me. I’m speaking my own personal thoughts and experiences, and what I have seen and heard within the online mental health community for several years.)

Bipolar mania, and wanting to claw my brain out

So guys, you want to know one reason why mania sucks? I will tell you. It’s having a million thoughts in your head that you know will take days/weeks to flush out sufficiently, yet wanting to complete them all RIGHT. THIS. SECOND. And not being able to! EPIC FRUSTRATION!!!!!

OH MY GOSH I feel like I want to claw my own brain out of my head. Weird description,eh? I recently returned from a family dinner and Spiderman 2 was playing and I couldn’t concentrate on the movie at all. Why? Because seeing all the flashing lights and hearing the thumping music made my mental state speed up and suddenly all these thoughts started coming to me. I began searching for information on various stuff online, and writing down all my mental notes in my phone (I do this often.) I wanted to come home and write all these blogs and make all these videos. But you know, it is 10:28 PM now and I there is no way I can write 14 blogs/make 14 videos and post them all in the next 2 hours. But I feel like I will explode mentally and physically if I don’t! Even weirder? I’m not even as elevated or altered as I have been this past week. It’s actually been much more intense than this. Here’s a look at my past week.

That is my pathetic 1 minute chart drawn with my daughters crayon because it was the closest thing to me. Hopefully it at least partially gets my current mental/mood state across to you all.

Why the steep drop? I took a low dose of some anti-psychotic meds and that brought me closer to “normal” after a couple days. I didn’t take it last night and I am halfway back up to where I began. Keep in mind, this is just an overview of the last week, nothing before that. My mental state has been erratic for awhile.