Bipolar – Loosing Inspiration

/ Robin

Some days I don’t have a problem getting up… those days are rare. I’m so tired in the morning I feel like I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night and told I can’t go back to bed. I can’t sleep past 10 because my dog would explode. She likes to go out at 9. Sometimes I can’t even get her off the sofa to get her to go outside. I wonder if I affect her sometimes. She’s supposed to be my therapy dog. I’m not supposed to be her downer human.

I’ve done allot of things that have distracted me from my goals this last week or so (I’ve been watching a lot of TV). I feel like I need a nudge, a shot in the butt to get going. I wonder if my goals are really worth fighting for and if I can even reach them. I feel the hand of doubt around my heart.

It’s time to reset myself. I need to get my passion back.

What was it I was striving for? What was the mission of my life? What was the passion that urged me on every moment? I need to pause for a moment and consider things. Is my passion big enough to keep me in motion and motivated to work for it every day?

Today I’m working without enthusiasm. I’m going about my work with words supported by unshakable faith in their message, but without my heart slamming in my chest demanding that I drive forward with great energy.

I’m searching back in my mind. I’m realizing I should have made the Enthusiasm notebook I had thought about making. I think I’ll do that next time I’m really enthusiastic. I’ll make a notebook with my definite purpose (my passion and goal) and the things that really make me enthusiastic. That way the next time I’m feeling like this, I can reference it and not be stuck mired in the place I’m in today… in neutral with no forward inertia.

Remember.

Remember what I’ve been fighting for.

Having goals and ambitions and having an illness like Bipolar Disorder makes my days hard. The illness whispers to me to blink a few times and let my guard down, to let the illness have its way with me. But I don’t want to do that.

I won’t do that.

(Previously published in The Etiquette of Madness)

Bipolar – Does It Make Me Stupid?

/ Robin
Cleveland-Volcano-1from space

Stupid chicken

Am I stupid? Or am I just depressed?

Over the years I’ve said that I feel like I’m dumber than I was when I was younger. The older I was getting, the stupider I felt. I was honestly concerned that this was a part of the natural aging process and was happening to me early or a part of Bipolar Disorder. Maybe over time Bipolar Disorder destroyed the brain and I was naturally losing my ability to think because that was something that came with the illness.

Felt.

Years later I learned that the way I felt had nothing to do with my intelligence. I have a mood disorder, not an IQ killer.

I wasn’t becoming mentally challenged. It was all about moods. Not intelligence.

Intelligence.

Mood disorder.

Not the same.

The way I thought about it was with violence. I was so angry and frustrated that I couldn’t think things through. I made bad decision after bad decision. I “felt” stupider. That’s key with our Bipolar Disorder. We can feel stupid. (If you don’t ever feel dumber, you can skip this post.) If you have, keep reading because it is important that you understand what’s going on in your brain.

We have what is known as a mood disorder. That is, we have moods that are extreme and can fluctuate wildly compared to a regular person. Instead of being sad, we become extremely depressed. Instead of being angry, we become enraged. Instead of being excited, we become manic.

These mood fluctuations and extremes impact the way we think. They don’t make us stupid, but we can feel that way. The moods interfere with the way we think.

People tell us to think positively, things will be okay. Unfortunately, the weight of depression can prevent us from feeling like we can think at all, much less think positively.

When I first heard of Tony Robbins, success coach and public speaker, I tried out one of his 30-day programs designed to teach me to be successful. All I had to do was follow the directions spelled out on the card that went with each day and listen to the 30-minute tape that went with it.

The program challenged me to change my thinking. That was the basis of the program, change your thinking to be successful. I was depressed. I didn’t feel like I could do it. So, I quit. I felt like I was too stupid to understand the lessons. That had to be what was wrong. It never occurred to me that my illness could be impacting my ability to think clearly and keeping me from focusing on the lessons and understanding what Mr. Robbins was teaching. I’ve gone back to Mr. Robbins teachings recently and discovered that I understand him just fine. I wasn’t depressed this time. I was able to understand what he taught and use some of the principles he presented.

I’m not stupid.

I have a mood disorder.

If you have a mood disorder, please understand that it does not mean you are dumb.

I don’t know how intelligent you are or are not. I do know that Bipolar Disorder does not make you less intelligent.

Bipolar Disorder does not make you dumb.

It is a mood disorder, not a brain eater.

Depression and Clear Thinking

/ Robin
Barney glasses and Tom_001

Sometimes I just gotta hang out.

Today depression is dancing around my peripheral vision trying to obscure my vision of my goals. It’s hard to keep going when I know the darkness is just behind one of the many doors in front of me. I know I have to choose which way to go, but I’m afraid I might send myself slipping down in the mud again. I’m feeling anxious.

I need to think clearly. Having my definite goal is helping… when I can remember that I have one. I live in the moment much of the time. That unfortunately means that planning goals out one year or five years can be pretty hard. I’m busy worrying about all the future things that can go wrong. There’s that. So I react in the moment while thinking about the now and the future. It’s too much.

I’m going to focus on myself and my day. I’ve written out my goals and I read them every morning I try to remember and to focus on them before I begin my day and every evening before bed, which is hard to do because I don’t remember to think about them by that time of the day.

I have ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety together with my big brain full of bipolar-ness. Somehow I’ve managed to set some goals like I’ve been talking about. I’m keeping my major life goal private but one of my shorter term goals is to blog consistently. If you’ve been reading me for very long you know I’m not good at being consistent. But there yah go.

Sometimes I feel like I need to wait till I have a disaster in order to have something to say but that’s so far from the truth. I have all my years of experience I can draw from to write about. If I want to write about a disaster all I have to do is pick one of my journals and pick a random page and read it. Ta da! Disaster.

That’s not who I want to be… someone who looks for her personal disasters to air to the world. There is so much else to talk about.

I’m having a hard day, as do we all. I’ve been thinking about thinking clearly a lot lately. I find anxiety and depression make it hard to think with any clarity. It’s like having clouds in my brain. I want to think about thinking clearly, I really do. Trying to pressure myself into doing something my brain doesn’t want to do this minute isn’t exactly productive. What it does is raise my anxiety level and I get more depressed. So what to do?

I’m going to reset my brain and try again later. I find that doing something totally different helps. I’d go for a walk with my dog Bailey, but it’s raining and I don’t feel like getting wet. I called my mother and told her that I was struggling. We chatted for a while. My dad passed away just over a year ago so she understands the unexplainable anxiety that can come out of nowhere and oppress me. I agreed to do something different for a while and I took a chill pill. That was hours ago. I’m feeling better now, but not great.

I talk about living with passion and searching for purpose in life to chase and dedicate one’s self to. I want you to know that I struggle just like you do. We all need to have purpose for our lives. It’s just that it’s hard to consider it when my thinking is so muddled.

Bipolar and Self-Image

/ Robin

One of the worst things you can do to destroy a person’s self-image and their ability to believe in their future is to tell them that the thing they love to do isn’t something they can successfully do. Let’s say I decide to go to college to learn how to do something and in a conversation about it your mother of all people, says, I don’t think you can make a living doing that.

Ouch. That hurt. Being bipolar and feeling feelings more strongly than your average person means that the hurt she caused cut much deeper than if she’d said it to my brother. I feel like I’m doing pretty good, but that hurt.

When confronted, this particular person said they didn’t say it and started in on how I always misunderstand and this and that. Fortunately my son was sitting there and heard her say it to me. She couldn’t get out of it. She was caught in her lack of belief in her own daughter. It cut me to the quick. It felt really badly. Now I get to choose what to do about it. I’m not going to just react. My feelings are hurt of course. What I’m going to do is dig in and prove her wrong. I can do this.

I have three kids. Let this be a lesson to me to not dash their hopes and dreams on the rocks of my disbelief. May I always encourage them and support them.

I have a main purpose that I have chosen for my life. A main goal. A magnificent obsession. I’m not going to let anyone influence me and fall into the pit that was my past. I’ve fought too hard to get to the point to where I can think clearly enough to plan for the future. A few more months and I’ll be reaching my next goal… if I can just stay focused.

It’s sad when I need to take a chill pill before I spend time with my mother.

Bipolar – Magnificent Obsession

/ Robin

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I believe that I, a person with Bipolar Disorder, can have a definite purpose in life. I believe although I have Bipolar Disorder I can have a main goal for my life and I believe I can reach it. I believe I have the ability to find a magnificent obsession, an overwhelming passion to dedicate my life to.

The illness ate year after year of my life, but now I understand that it doesn’t have to get a free pass to destroying me. I say this although I suffered for years of feeling like I was being ravaged from within. I can remember doing things, thinking things, and feeling emotions that were bipolar even when I was a young teen.

My poor mom. I was a devil to live with growing up. My depression often expressed itself as vicious anger. She tried to help me. She knew something was wrong. Some of the things she tried included counseling, religion, hypnotism, and sending me to live with relatives for the summer hoping that they could get through to me. Nothing helped. I once tried to kill my brother by bouncing on his chest till he turned purple. I only stopped because I knew that I would get in trouble if I actually killed him.

I knew something was terribly wrong with me. In high school I started actively searching to help myself I started going to church and there began chasing hard after God for the next 25 years. During my most devoted years I attended a Bible college and earned a bachelor’s degree.

Still, I suffered.

Many of my symptoms of bipolar disorder presented looking very much like sin. I couldn’t stop being bipolar and I couldn’t stop the “sinning”. No one knew I was sick and even if they had, I don’t believe they had the tools to help me. At one point some of the missionary staff tried to cast demons out of me.

Years later when I was a single mom and had left religion far behind me I no longer felt like a condemned sinner. Having that weight lifted off my shoulders did a lot to enable me to get out from under some of the self-created depression and condemnation. I had been obsessed with trying to stop sinning and all I succeeded in doing was make my condition worse.

I suffered and slowly died inside as I impacted my three young children with the violence of my inner turmoil. I said things, I threw things… I did a lot of things I wish they had never experienced.

I learned about success teacher Tony Robbins on an infomercial and began on my quest to be successful. I hoped that “success” would give me the strength to not give in to the urges of my illness. I thought that if I could be successful, I could be in control of myself. If people could use these principles to get rich, maybe I could use them to be successful in controlling my bipolar. I ordered the material he was selling and set to work enthusiastically doing the 30-day program.

Something amazing happened to me while I was going through the program: I learned how to think before I reacted and I learned I could preserver when I failed and I could try again. I learned to never accept defeat. I learned I could choose how I wanted to behave and I could actually behave that way. I was able to change the way I thought about myself, who I was and what my future might hold. I learned to have hope.

I’ve worked for years to follow certain success principles. I’d go for long periods of time when I forgot about them especially when I was depressed. The illness is still with me, my companion for life.

Today, I believe I’m successful. I’m doing what I love every day. I’ve taken the additional success materials of Napoleon Hill and Clement Stone and found that I could have a purpose for my life, regardless of who I am, and I found principles to help me achieve it.

These principles help me get up in the morning and do things that I know will fight my depression, my mania and all that lay between so that I can function and keep chasing my goals and be successful. I refuse to lose to my illness. I may have setbacks when the illness does overtake me and I will tell you that for many years I lost the fight against it and realistically I will probably have times when I feel I’ve lost to it in the future. Right now, I’m taking my life back. That’s why I blog. It is one way I’m taking back my life back.

I still have to take chill pills daily along with all my other meds. I’m not anywhere near perfect or even functioning at my best. But, when the hill has been climbed and I’m back among the living I still have my purpose to drive me. I’d like to say it’s a reason I get up in the mornings, but I’m not there yet. Yet.

I have a magnificent obsession I’m focused upon. I have goals and dreams that I am working on so that they will come true. I believe I can be even more successful than I can possibly understand today.

I have Bipolar Disorder and I’m amazing.