Depression

The Aftermath of Latuda & Despair

/ Robin / 5 Comments

solar flareThe Latuda that was destroying me is gone now, though it has left a lasting mark that lives on within me. It no longer provides mood stabilization for my overloaded brain. The good that it may have done is far outweighed by the damage that it has left behind. Often, I cannot speak for long before I lose the ability to be understood. My speech becomes silenced and my face jerks and spasms as though in pain. Large muscle groups jerk and move without my involvement. It all devastates me. I feel locked inside my body, my brain unable to freely communicate even with those who are closest to me.

I’ve recently come out of a period of not feeling anything but anxiety. My actions indicated that I was depressed, but I didn’t exactly feel depressed. Recently, that has changed.

Last week I crashed. I felt the old familiar feelings and thought things that hadn’t consumed me for some time. I looked at all my pills (I have many) and considered how easy it would be to stop. Just to stop.

But, I didn’t touch them. I called my children and I reached out for help. My girls both came to me and loved me… they helped put away those feelings of purposelessness and thoughts that I have no reason to live.

Why have I not taken all my pills? I have no purpose, no reason to burden those around me. You see, I want to have a purpose. I want my life to matter. While I currently feel I have nothing to offer the world… I think, if I don’t give in to the depression that loves me without reservation, that it might be possible to find that singular purpose that is meant for me.

I suffer from Bipolar Disorder Type 1 with rapid cycling and mixed states. Perhaps I am able to find this ever so small spark of desire to find my purpose because in my manic delusional state sometimes I have delusions of grandeur. Who knows, maybe my periodic delusions will give me my missing purpose. I hope so.

I need a reason to carry on. For now, the love of those who care for me is what I am holding on to. I have to wonder… how long it will be before even that is not enough.

At this moment, I don’t want to die, but I am encompassed by a cloak of useless despair.

I desire purpose. I want inspiration. I resisted the urge to give in and bring this fight to an end. Intellectually, I want my end to be celebrated with the acknowledgment of a fulfillment of purpose and leave an honorable legacy that says my life meant something, that I lived with purpose and left a remarkable mark on my world.

I don’t want to be an unnumbered footmark in the annals of the world, but I can’t seem to master what my brain chemistry is doing to me.

Now, it’s time to start my two-hour ritual of preparing to sleep. Maybe I’ll get lucky and I’ll have a temporary respite and I’ll sleep an emotion free night.

Bipolar depression: Sad or mad?

/ Robin

When you’re watching for emerging symptoms of bipolar depression, make sure “irritability” is on the list. You’re just as likely to be unusually crabby, intolerant, and easily annoyed during a depressive episode as to be apathetic or despondent.

More research has been done on irritability in major depressive disorder than in bipolar disorder, but results from both groups indicate that from 40 percent to 60 percent report depressive episodes marked by irritability.

“Irritable depression” (that’s a description, not a diagnostic term) is associated with more severe depressive episodes, more frequently recurring episodes, and co-existing anxiety.

A study published in the International Journal of Bipolar Disorders in December 2016 found that participants with irritable depression also tend to take longer to recover from an episode and had more “unfavorable illness characteristics,” such as higher rates of substance use and more suicidality.

All of which means it’s even more important to take preventive measures when your irritability meter ticks upward.

bp Magazine’s columnist and blogger, Julie Fast uses the terms “weepy depression” and “angry depression” to describe the different ways she can experience bipolar downshifts. Weepy depression comes with what you might call stereotypical symptoms: feeling sad and hopeless, crying a lot, shutting down socially, becoming physically lethargic and

having trouble concentrating.

With angry depression, she writes, you feel “pissed off at everyone and everything. Kittens and puppies make you mad.” You focus on the negative, finding “garbage in the gutter when there is a rainbow in the sky.”

[THIS WAS THE CONTENT OF bp’s NEWSLETTER DATED 2/16/17. You can find bp magazine’s presence at: http://www.bphope.com/ ]

I’ve passed this along to you because I suffer from angry depression and have since I was very young. It defined me for most of my life. Today, it is one of the leading indicators that alerts me to how I’m doing. For example, if I’ve been doing reasonably well and suddenly I’m bitchy with my mom for no reason, I’d better take a look at myself and see if I’m sliding down the sheer walls of the well of depression. For me, it might also indicate that I’m manic. I don’t think it only happens to me when I’m depressed. If I’m unreasonably angry and I’m aware of it, I can examine myself and see where things are going wrong. When I’m in the midst of an episode it can be hard to recognize that things are going badly. Sometimes the anger is a wake-up call alerting me that something is amiss. Sometimes I become aware of that anger by seeing what it does to those I love.

Bipolar – TV

/ Robin / 2 Comments

tvI want to believe that although I have Bipolar Disorder, depression, GAD, PTSD, ADHD and so on I can still be successful.

I want to live an active and full life. Much of the time I convince myself that I can’t do that. I look at my situation and I conclude that if I haven’t started living by this time in my life, that maybe I won’t ever have the life that I want. It’s tempting to fail myself and believe that.

One of the reasons that I sit static in my living room and don’t try to actively change my life is that I watch TV all the time. It is on all the time. I used to listen to music. Now it’s just the TV. As long as I have that continuous stream entering my brain I don’t use it for anything else. It’s so easy to be a spectator.

During school I finally admitted to myself that I was having a hard time doing my homework because it was on all the time. As much as I’d like to think that I can focus effectively on other things while the it is on, it isn’t true.

It’s hard to turn off the TV. It’s my companion. Right now, remarkably, it’s off. I’m listening to classical music on my phone. I’m trying very hard not to watch one of the many shows I have DVR’d. I’m practicing having it off so when school starts next week I’ll be more likely to switch it off while I’m doing homework. I’m sure that I’ll have an easier time doing the work if the TV isn’t invading my brain.

It also keeps me from dealing with myself. I can ignore the fact that I’m not dealing with my ongoing anxiety because I’m occupied with the TV.

I need to have quiet time so I can think. I don’t think well while the TV is on. Heck, I don’t think much at all when it’s on.

I’m finding that I’m having a hard time with this post. It feels disjointed and awkward. Maybe that’s because my companion is silent and I can really hear what I’m thinking. Maybe. I’ve been thinking about having the TV off for some time now. I’m impressed with myself that it is off. There is so much more interesting and important stuff for me to feed my brain with than TV. I’m not saying TV is bad. I’m just saying that when it is the only thing going on in my head it’s a problem.

A man (I can’t recall who) wrote that he used to go into a room every day with a pen and paper and shut himself inside and just think. He didn’t see people; he didn’t read anything. He just thought. I remember when I first read that I thought it was an amazing idea. I practiced it for a while, then, I went back to filling my brain with static.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I know I wouldn’t be able to keep them so I don’t make them. However, right now seems like a good time to change my behavior. I’ve pinpointed a problem: I don’t think. I listen to the TV.

Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) wrote: “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” I’ve always liked that quote. Thinking… that’s a problem. My medications help a lot. Counseling has helped too. My counselor has helped me identify problem thinking and correct it. (Napoleon Hill quotes)

What’s next? Well, my brain is full of what I put into it or what I allow to be put into it. I allow someone else to put their content in it the whole time the TV is on, which is most of the time I’m awake.

The solution seems easy doesn’t it? Turn the TV off. Easy.

Right now… the TV isn’t off.

I’ve learned a lot. Time to change. I should turn it off. I should–

Bipolar – Never Far Away

/ Robin

I reached a stasis point, a time of going to neither depressed nor manic poles. I thought I was emotionally cramped or stunted. So, as I’ve said, my med provider and I decided to lower my Latuda to 80mg. It’s been about three weeks now and I can say without a doubt that I’m swinging again and in a bad way. I just called one of my daughters (I asked my family to watch me) and she said she’d noticed something had changed too and was wondering if that’s what was up.

Of course, I denied it. I realize now (30 minutes later) that I was protecting myself. I’ve worked for so hard for so long to be stable I didn’t want to admit that I’d have to up my medication again. I wanted to believe I could do this, be normal on my own.

I guess I feel like if I can’t be “normal” I won’t have really lived, I won’t really have given to my world or amounted to anything. I think those thoughts and feelings are always beneath the “calm” exterior of my well medicated self. It’s frustrating.

I’ve gone back to school so I can get a job. I’m 54 and I’m just going to school for a career now. It makes me so sad. See, the depression is coming like a vengeful lover, rough and dark.

If I’m already behaving “mean” towards my daughter and feeling depressed and like I’m about to have a fight I guess I’m not ready to be on a lower dose of my Latuda. So, it’s either go back up or change to something else. I’ll need to call the nurses line tomorrow and see if I can talk to my med provider as soon as I can. This isn’t the kind of thing that I should just wait until my next visit to handle.

Tomorrow I also see my counselor. We definitely have something to talk about.

Today I saw my pain management specialist. She ordered an MRI of my lower back. For some reason no one has ever had one done. I would have thought that having me on pain medications as long as I’ve been on them that someone would have had one done, but I can’t find it if they did.

Well, my new reality and I are going to read for a few minutes and then go to bed.

Be safe my friends.

Bipolar – Trying to Write

/ Robin

nanowrimoI’m attempting to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year (NaNoWriMo). My eldest daughter went to one of the kick off meetings and she learned about a woman who she told me about The woman used her homework (she too was going to college) as her novel (her word count) so she could get the minimum word count every day. My goal is 2,000 words a day. I hope that between homework, this blog, and other random stuff I end up writing, I’ll be able to do it. So far so good. I only need to write a poem today. Well, not exactly a poem, more a sonnet form I write while wondering around campus. I go to the University of Washington at Tacoma. I’m a junior and I’m studying communications.

This (writing) is a huge stress for me. I first started trying to do NaNoWriMo five years ago. I’ve never made it out of the first week. I consider myself a writer so that’s always stuck in my craw. When it comes to making up a story, I just get stuck. I’ve written a few short stories, you know, like fan fiction, but I’ve never written anything longer. Oh I take that back. When I was about 18 or 19 I wrote an entire Star Trek fan fiction novel. That was way back in the days before fan fiction was really a thing.

Do you know what fan fiction is? Fan fiction or fanfiction is about characters or settings from works of original fiction by the creators of say, a TV show, created by fans of that work. An example might be the television show Buffy the Vampire. Fans of Buffy love the show and characters so much that they write original fiction set in the Buffy universe with the characters from the Buffy universe to add to the Buffy universe stories they’d like to see take place. Perhaps they want two characters to fall in love or maybe to fight. Maybe they want to kill a character off or want a different story line to happen. Or maybe they’d like to introduce a new original character of their own to the universe.

It’s easy to see that people who write fan fiction love what they’re doing. I found that writing it gave me an emotional release that I would not have otherwise have had.

Emotional release – Maybe that’s a good reason for me to start writing it again. I’m not sure I’m in love with a television show enough right now to do that. It requires an intimate knowledge of the show (it can also be novel or other form of story) so I’d have to familiarize myself with shows much more than I currently am.

I’m already super busy with school so while I’ve thought about writing one, I just don’t think I have time to write a full blown story. Although, they do have what is called a “one off” where the fan fiction author only writes a short story that can be just a few hundred words and is self-contained… it is just a few paragraphs and usually is something that occurred to the author that they wanted to share but that wasn’t going to be a long story. A “one off”.

If you’re looking for a place to channel your emotional overflow, perhaps you might consider writing some fan fiction. You remember the book/movie “50 Shades of Grey”? Fan fiction. Yeah.

Fan fiction can be for any age or in any genre. It can be happy or filled with angst. If you join a website like fanfiction.net you can classify your story by age group, genre, and type of story. So if you write a story that is G rated, you can rate it G. If you have lots of sex and violence you rate it M for just mature audiences.

Fanfiction.net has these categories: anime/manga, books, categories, cartoons, games, movies, plays/musicals, TV shows, and other misc. things you might think of. Check it out.

When I was married, depressed, at home with a baby and very lonely, I found fan fiction and subsequently spent many hours reading it while my husband, who was a tub boat captain and rarely home, was gone. It got to the point where I was so unhappy with I couldn’t wait to get back into the world of my current favorite fan fiction. It was an easy and free escape. Sometimes I read it on line, but back then (1993 or so) I printed a lot with my dot matrix printer so I could take care of Jessica and still read my stories. It may have saved my sanity for a while.

I highly recommend you check it out. Some is written very well, some not so much. You can even review the stories.

As a momentary escape from your daily stress, depression or whatever I recommend you try it out. You might it helpful. You might actually find yourself wanting to write some.