Important Person

/ Robin

Bailey in chair summer 20150611_165245

Yesterday I went to visit my youngest daughter and her dog for a play date. She has a 4 month old pit bull and I have a 2 year old heeler/kelpie. My dog is not aggressive at all. In fact when another dog tries to play with her she runs away very fast. It does not make me happy. My daughter I think let’s her do it because she’s so young. In my opinion, she should be curbing that aggressiveness already.

Today my mom brought over her older Jack Russell Terrier. After two years of her dog rolling on her back and letting my dog smell her belly, they finally played. I mean like leg slapping, hopping around, and acting silly playing! Finally, Bailey actually played with someone!

It’s hard not agreeing with some of the choices my kids make like letting the puppy play roughly. But, I have to let them do their own things now that they’re all grown up. Well, she’s 18, so barely grown up. I guess my choice is to talk to her about it again or not get together for play dates anymore and I don’t want that.

I did learn something about myself yesterday. I can hold my peace when I disagree with my youngest. I said I thought she should start teaching her now and then I left it. I did good.

Today I didn’t do as well. My mom sat down and immediately started picking on me about something that was important to her, but I felt she shouldn’t have made a big deal about. I also didn’t appreciate her getting on me right off like that.

Before she left I got a chance to snap back at her and then apologize for my behavior.

My moods have been all over the place the last 48 hours. Right now I’m feeling a bit bitchy and irritated. I have no reason to feel that way. There is no one here for me to fight with. I called my eldest daughter and just chatted for a while before she had to go to bed (she’s on the east coast and I’m on the west coast). It made me happy to talk to her. It almost always makes me happy to talk to her. She’s like my reset button. She doesn’t tolerate any crap from me. She calls it like she sees it. If I ask her opinion, she’ll tell me what she really thinks.

What’s cool about our relationship is we talk to each other as adults. I do with all my kids, but Jessica is different. She’s the eldest and she’s the one who took care of me after I had my first knee replacement. It didn’t go well. I had a couple blood clots and was in a lot of pain. She had to give me her full attention. She was amazing and I will forever be thankful to her for that.

Huh. I feel a little better now. I guess I need to manage what I think about a little bit more. I need to not expose myself to negative people so much. I’m affected by negative people really easily.

Let me share something I found today with you. I’m going through my stuff and getting ready to move and in my papers I found this:

You Are the Most Important Person Alive.

You are full of miracles and magic.
Now is the time for you to open your eyes and mind and see.

Sight. Sound. Thought. Touch. Emotion. Smell.

Think a thought… become that thought.

With your imagination, your mind, you conceive a thing. Whatever you conceive, that you will achieve. Like magic.

Habitually Bitchy

/ Robin

Retro-Kitchen-Decor-and-beach-house-decorating-ideas-kitchen-for-your-grand-Kitchen-through-impressive-renovation-concept-23-600x450

We went house hunting today. We found some interesting places. I thought about the really nice house we passed on because it was just too small and wondered if I could make it work.

I was getting frustrated. Rhett had brought his young son and he was on my nerves… because my nerves were out and ready to be got on. I’d taken a chill pill an hour before, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I was stressed as well as anxious.

We found a great place that would work that even had a great four car garage. It was outside of my target area, but it would have worked. You know what my mother had to say about it and why it wouldn’t work? It was too big.

The last place I liked was too small. This one is too big. Talk about annoying. Too big?!

She’s not making it easy for me to stop being habitually bitchy to her when she does stuff like that. I’m trying to change my behavior. It’s not easy, trying to change a lifelong habit. But I’m going to do it.

Rhett (our broker and family friend) now knows exactly what to look for regarding housing and me. He’s considering finding a house with good bones, gutting it, designing what I need, building it and flipping it to us. That would be so cool and the most likely way to get what I want. The housing market here is so tight. If a house that’s nice lasts 5 days on the market that’s a long time.

Let’s hope whatever happens, happens fast because my nerves are nervy.

I took this quarter off school partly to look for a house. If I don’t find one and I end up having wasted this quarter I shall feel annoyed about the whole thing.  I know I can’t control the market, but I can hope and dream. And, I can try to be a better me while I’m conquering the habitually bitchy me.

I’m Learning to ACT Rather Than REACT

/ Robin

20150426_185732

{Please be patient. This is a little long. I hope you’ll stick with the whole thing.}

One of my favorite things to do is to respond to things from habit, rather than thoughtfulness, especially when talking with my mother. I REACT rather than ACT with thoughtfulness. The difference between the two is that:

REACTING is when she says something that I think is stupid (I start by judging her) I respond to her habitually with my emotions and treat her like she actually is stupid and I’m disrespectful as well. There is no consideration of her feelings or how what I say might impact her.

ACTING is when I have taking a moment to consider the situation and respond from thoughtfulness rather than just emotion. It is a response in a reasonable manner.

Ideally I should respond to her with my intellect managing my emotions. If I disagree with her I can say that I disagree with her instead of talking to her like she’s a moron.

For example we’re house hunting right now. We’re working together to choose a house for her to buy as an investment and me to live in. This would be a bad time for us to start fighting. Meaning, it would be a bad time for me to start acting primarily from my emotions and be a bitch.

One of the first houses we saw was well below her top price and so it was attractive to her for that reason. I walked into the kitchen and immediately announced it had to be completely gutted. It was an older obviously had never been updated and had no counter space. In her mind she probably saw that it was a kitchen that I could cook in. I saw that it needed good counter tops, new flooring and cabinets. She thought a coat of paint would work to fix it up. I struggled. If I became argumentative now it was going to be difficult to continue looking at houses without stress overtaking me.

Fortunately, our broker spoke up then and agreed with me about completely gutting the kitchen. I heard my mom take a small breath. I think reality was starting to catch up to her.

By the third house she seemed to start to understand that the less we spent, the more renovation would be needed. There was no way we were going to get a house in this area for the price she wanted to pay. I knew that. So far I’d managed to keep my mouth shut about it. I hadn’t informed her from my vastly superior intellect that there was no way we could find a habitable house in the area for her target price.

So far we haven’t done so well finding houses that might be suitable for me, my two cats, and my dog even though she raised the amount she was willing to pay. The housing market in this area is very tight. I have basically till September to find a house. After that I’m going back to school or getting a job and I won’t have time to just run off to look at houses. It will be more difficult to have time to view houses and move.

It’s hard for me to be patient with the whole process. My tendency is to ask mom everyday if she’s heard from Rhett (the broker). I know that’s not going to be helpful and might make her stress about it. I’m shooting for asking her every other day. I talk to her every day since my father passed last year so I’ll have to remember which days I bug her about it.

We just told Rhett that we wanted to narrow the search area to areas where crime wasn’t so high which meant areas that weren’t crammed together and really low income. She and I actually agree on the areas where we want him to look. If I hadn’t controlled my mouth, which can really be hard, I probably wouldn’t have been able to agree on looking in the more expensive areas. I don’t want to live in the Eastside and most of the places he was showing us were in the Eastside.

Since I started this adventure out on a good foot by controlling my tongue and my tone of voice I’ve given us a chance to actually enjoy each other’s company. I’m even tolerating her dog coming along with us better as we go on. I don’t care for her dog. Her dog is mean to my dog. I don’t like that at all. Oh well. It’s good for me to learn to be more tolerant. Isn’t it?

Every time I’m going to spend time with mom looking for houses or even just talking about them I try to prepare myself and get my emotions under control beforehand. I’m having a lot of anxiety. It would be so easy to take my negative feelings out on her, but they have nothing to do with her. It’s all about controlling my negative emotions and shutting my mouth unless I have something helpful to say. (How many of us have said that exact line?)

My therapist (the one that’s leaving) taught me that I can be the one to “drive the bus” as she put it. I could control my behavior or I could sit in the back of the bus and go where my emotions take me. And believe me, they take me a lot of bad places by habit even when I’m not totally depressed. It just feels natural.

Between working with my therapist and spending my own time reading and thinking about myself and my behavior, my emotions, and my thoughts I’ve gotten to the point that while I’m having trouble with anxiety (My son moved out a little over a week ago so I live alone now.) and even anger over not finding a house right away I’ve been able to treat my mom with some measure of respect and patience. So far. I give myself credit for that. It’s important to remember to give myself credit when I do well. It’s so easy to only recall the times when I explode in violent anger or crushing depressing.

Even though I’ve been doing well so far there is no telling when I might swing and become really depressed or manic. I’ve got to be careful to control my anxiety with my chill pills and take my handful of regular pills every morning and night. And, I have to watch out for my triggers. I take time for myself and think about the person I want to be. I really try to focus on that for longer than just a second or too. I really try to almost meditate on the specific person I want to be. It helps. And I take time to play with my dog. We walk and play. She’s my emotional support.

I can’t control when we find a house, but I can try to control my responses to that the search. That’s my goal. I’m going to control my behavior towards my mom, whom I love a lot, no matter what my feelings are about house hunting. I’ve committed myself to that. My mom deserves that. I deserve that too.

Why Do We See Therapists?

/ Robin / 2 Comments

Lucy Therapist

In my experience therapists and counselors are working there to work with me to help me get through the day, the month, and even the year especially in the midst of a depressive episode. They are there to try to teach me how to handle my episodes. They meet with me to teach me how to work with medicines for treatment, to use self-management methods to deal with mood cycles that always plague me, and to teach me how to function better in both work, family, and other real world settings.

Therapists help me learn what to do when I’m depressed, which is difficult to do when I’m depressed. It’s so hard to be objective about whether my medications are working when I feel like I need more of everything or something new when what I really need is a little tweak in dosage or patience to let a new medication have a chance to work.

They try to help me see myself for who I am beyond my illness and to work with me when I’m manic and have delusions of grandeur. I admit it’s hard for me to listen to them when I know I’m right about everything. I have a friend that also suffers from severe mental illness, she has found the same problem that I have found, that when we’re manic it is difficult to find a therapist that you respect enough to listen to.

For the last year I’ve been lucky enough to have a therapist that I respected me and I think knew me fairly well. She was always supportive and encouraged me to believe in myself. She never let me bamboozle my way through when I was trying to get away with acting badly.

She just retired so I start with a new one in a few weeks. I’m hoping that I’m humble enough to believe that she has something to offer me. Otherwise I’ll go and sit there for an hour and think about how dumb she is while were talking. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Because I’m on disability I have very few choices on where I can go for treatment. I think, I hope, I’m going to the better of my two choices. Unfortunately I’ve gone through four therapists and am soon to see my fifth at this place. Two retired, one went into private practice and I fired the other. Sometimes you have to take drastic measures like firing the therapist to make sure I get the help I need. The reason I did was that she was really new to the job and she kept reading to me from her computer and printing out things for me to take home to read. We didn’t have any dialogue. I made the hard call and asked for a new therapist. I’ve never had the courage to do that before.

My new therapist’s name is Rebecca. I’m already working on my attitude and trying to prepare myself to be open to her being able to help me. I’ve committed myself to not judge her before I even meet her. I need to give her and I a chance to get to know each other and see if she can help me survive and even thrive.

I welcome you to leave your opinion. Do you find that you experience the same things? Or have your experiences been vastly different? I hope to hear from you.

If you’re interested in the books that I refer to the most visit my books page.

Finding Purpose in Life: Is Bipolar Blocking Your Way

/ Robin

When you’re bipolar and you’re feeling down about yourself it’s not easy to think of your future beyond getting through the day much less try to figure out what you want out of life… What your passion in life is.

I have to admit that I’ve never held a job for more than a year. Then I freak out and quit.

I once started a business in a blazing manic state and it was awesome and I loved it and it looked like it was going to be going to go a long way and then I crashed and burned and took my company down into depression with me. It was the best job I ever had. I loved it. I loved doing the work and I was excited every day to work. (It was a homebased business.)

Some people have started working what we think are our dream jobs or careers and then have crashed and burned in the flames of bipolar emotion. We may have an episode of either depression or mania and can’t control ourselves and may do and say things that are inappropriate. Or, maybe we can’t get ourselves to go to work at all. There are so many reasons that things can go wrong. One of my jobs was a sales job where I just drove around all day. I couldn’t get myself to go into the businesses and even try to make sales to existing customers. The only person that ever fired me was my own brother and I agreed with his decision.

Let me ask you this: Do you know what you want to do with your life? Do you have a passion you’re following? Do you love what you’re doing? Or does bipolar depression keep you from even thinking about it?

Our emotions make it difficult to discover what our purpose, our passion in life is. Let’s face it when you feel like your brain has ostrich poop in it you’re not thinking about what you want to do with your life. In fact, there may be times when you’re thinking of not living at all.

I think many times we get excited about doing something and then the enthusiasm wains and maybe we have an episode and we stop. It seems like there are STOP signs all over the place.

For me, I just want to follow my passion with all my heart. I want it to be my life’s purpose. Unfortunately, sometimes for weeks on end I can’t even get myself to open my laptop much less do something as exciting as chasing after my passion.

My daughters both think they know what they want to do in life, they believe they’ve found their careers and I hope that they can stick with these goals throughout their schooling (although we all know how college students usually change their majors at least once). My son has no idea what he wants to do. Talking with him about it causes him to be uncomfortable and annoyed. He has no clue. It does not cause him any distress that he doesn’t know. It does me, but that’s because I’m his mom and I want more for him than to work at a car wash. I do love that he loves his job. You know what I admire about him? He gives his job his best effort every day. I’m very proud of him. I wish I could be so comfortable about myself. Maybe one day.