Bipolar Disorder

Waking Up Depressed

/ Robin

The sun was up and shining on the wrong side of the house as usual. The sun only ever warmed the living room and kitchen side from sun up to sun down. I swung my legs off the bed began the inevitable. I got dressed and put on my shoes and socks. Bailey studied me lazily. I knew she wouldn’t get out of bed unless she knew I was going to take her outside to do her business.

I sighed, irritated that I’d woken up late. My inner perfectionist was already at work, and I was worse for it. I should have already taken Bailey out and fed her and everyone else. I mentally smacked myself for my indiscretions.

After doing the morning chores, I sat down, and I thought I was attempting to complete an online class that I hoped would move me towards earning an income.

An income. I haven’t had one of those since before I was married, not since 1988. 1988. That’s so long ago.

I feel like a failure again. Always a failure. I took a breath, trying to calm myself, and felt depression flow into my chest. It’s a crappy way to start the day.

Struggling, I remembered I’d fed all the animals, now it was time to take care of myself. I got my pill container and flipped open the lid for today. Dumping them in my hands my heart sunk lower. It looks like I’m an addict. My hands shook as I took my meds. At least today, I remembered them.

I eventually went outside to do some trimming in the garden. It wasn’t raining yet, and the sun was out. My beautiful Bailey was out with me. Oh my god we’re both so fat! I’ve been trying to help us both lose weight, but…well, we’re still working on it. Great. I feel like crap again.

My daughter came home a few hours later. My glum mood had moved on, and I encouraged (read: told) her to come out and work with me. I felt good and my head, my emotions, felt clear, maybe even happy.

The question I have to ask myself is this: What the hell did I do to change from feeling crazy-eyes depressed to happy and joyful? That’s exactly the right question. And can I do it again?

I believe that my poopoo mood changed and lifted me higher because I “acted” like I was happy. I played with the animals. I did some of the work for my online class. I took Bailey for a walk. (When I take her out I use an app that maps our trip and counts the miles and such. If I think we’ve done well, I take a screenshot and send it to my kids and my Mom.

Then I sat my hiney down and did my class. That really felt good.

Now that I’m recalling how bad I felt this morning, I’m beginning to feel like I’m grieving. I think I’m grieving for myself, for all the time I’ve lost standing in the clouds, not functioning like a normal person at all. Maybe I wasted my life. I’m supposed to have all these mental illnesses, but why can’t they cure them or at the very least enable me to act normal.

Normal. That’s a fat laugh.

Uhg! I’m tired. Figuring all this out and, exercising and learning to understand myself… yikes. Maybe I’ll go barf now. What’s tomorrow going to be like? Huh, maybe it will be the way I choose to make it. Chose to make it a good day and it will be a good day? On the other hand… maybe I’ll need to stay in bed. Need. What will I need?

Tomorrow, I think I’ll take more of an active role in my day and use the S.M.A.R.T.

Religion and Bipolar

/ Robin

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My background is rooted in the Protestant church.

When I was old enough to take myself to church I went. I knew something was wrong with me and the church was the only place I knew of that could help me. I learned I was a sinner and that God healed. I chased after God for 25 years, all the while believing that my anger and rage and other sinful thoughts, emotions, and urges were manifestations of the sin in my spirit.

I was told to pray.

I felt fire in my soul, and it was encouraged.

I believed the pain I felt was caused by my sins, but that was wrong. It wasn’t my fault that I felt like a spiritual battle was raging in me. Blame it on chemistry, not on the condition of my heart.

My ideas continue to develop on the subject of religion and mental illness. What do you think? Have you ever felt a struggle between faith and brain chemistry? What do you think Bipolar Disorder is caused by? Is it punishment for our sins? Or an unfortunate roll of the genetic dice?

Frankenstein – Bipolar & ADHD

/ Robin

Frankenstein-tumblr_ovgh5egVdd1wzx3t8o1_1280 I’m aware, that when given the chance, I will, without question, talk until the air has been sucked out of the general area and everyone has passed out. So normal.

Anxiety – After I graduated, and a few weeks had passed I could tell I was under stress from that. My anxiety has gone down. It did get better, for a while. I got to the point where I didn’t quite feel like my brain has been stuffed full of raging bees. Awesome!

ADHD – I was under the assumption that I was taking Ritalin to help me focus my attention so I could do well in my classes. I was always confused when my med provider asked me if I felt the Ritalin she was prescribing was helping me to focus better. I always said, and continue to say, “Um… I guess so.” I’m manic! What does she want me to say? I work very hard when I meet with her to sit, shut up, and answer her questions honestly. She terrifies me. What if I answer wrong and she changes my meds again? I’ll say something than think, “Crap! Why did I say that?” I always say that I guess it was working well. I suppose. Now I think that I was wrong.

More ADHD – I accepted the diagnosis of having ADHD because it was about not being able to focus on one thing at a time and I knew I couldn’t do that. But, being Bipolar was always the main objective of both my counseling sessions and appointment with the med woman.

Bipolar 1 – I assumed that my Bipolar was worse (or more dangerous to me) than ADHD could be. Wasn’t it?

You know how a doctor will sometimes leave a small tube that goes through an incision so that the area can drain and heal properly?

Yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that—

Switch – I have some ideas that I think are pretty good. I’ve done one or two or three big projects that have come out great. The other 45 ideas that are going around in my mind appeared to be stuck in orbit. I remember the video I watched on YouTube yesterday about ADHD and I was shocked. Frankenstein!

FRANKENSTEIN – I’ve come to think of Bipolar/ADHD as a Frankenstein type of symbiotic relationship. I can’t imagine why my diagnoses has always focused upon Bipolar Disorder. In counseling I talk faster and faster and cover an impressive variety of topics.

Pressured Speech (Bipolar) – Thought very little about ADHD or how to deal successfully with it. I’ve been taking medication for it for three years. In that time no one has talked to me taught me to handle it. Why not?

FRANKENSTEIN – Why hasn’t anyone explained how the two disorders interact, and how the medications for each may also affect each other. (“Do you think that the Ritalin is making your mania worse?”)

I have been primarily a mixed state, high functioning, Bipolar type 1 for years now. I always thought that my constant mental zooming about was just my amazingly stunning mania. (While I mostly talk about my being manic lately, let me just say that depression has played a big part in my mental health too.)

My daughter went with me to my last counseling appointment. We talked about my inability to stick with one thing and see it through to completion and how it was impacting her. Basically, I’m driving her bonkers. These are some of the things that I do: TALK CONSTANTLY NO MATTER WHAT WE ARE DOING, change topics as fast as I talk, pick up a pile of laundry in the living room to put it away, stopping to talk to our beta fish (Victor and Batman) and feed them a few dried wormy things and set down the laundry, forget that I had a mission with the laundry, see that the dog/cats water bowls are empty and fill them, read 1.75 pages in a book. What was I doing? Let the dog out to do her business. Hours later I discover the laundry next to the fish… you get the idea.

My new counselor, my daughter and I decided that I need to focus on being able to focus. Yes, my Bipolar mania hops it up like jet fuel in a race car, but with knowledge and tools to help me with my ADHD and settle on one thing, even for an hour, I might just begin to get a handle on my anxiety/stress and even mania.

Maybe. This is stressing me out. Bothering my daughter this bad is building an anxiety that is part of everyday life. Sigh…

Who knew that pressured speech and mania aren’t the same thing as ADHD? I really don’t understand what the hell is going on. I feel like my brain has been sewn together with blue and green colored twine and slip knots.

One final thing: It has taken me three days and four hours to type this. Just kidding. Two days. Honestly, I have no idea. I need a time-out.

Bipolar – Days Racing Up, Down, Up, Sideways Right, then Left… It Never seems to End.

/ Robin

There will always be days that start well.
After they go along for a while…
Then the ground begins to frighten me.

train_crash_for_blog_imagedddddd(It says, “Somedays, This is how we feel…..””

I find that this is very true. At least it is true for me.

Is it ever true for you?

Today started out slow and exhausted. I was up almost all night with restless legs. It eventually became so horrible… that I cried in frustration and pain. I think I slept an hour. I was so tired. my goodnesss. Sleeping right nwooo dddkkk,,,,,,,,,,,,,

<I keep falling asleep. Sorry if this all comes out weird and confused… well.. that’s what you get. LOL. Pardon my language but this is crap””””””’>

There were other good things that happened throughout the day, but this was the best I think. I had a business meeting at a resturant! Isn’t that awesome!? I’m publishing a second edition of a book that I published 27 years ago. I’m so proud of how I wrote it, and the amazing artwork. But, it is time to update it and publish it in different editions and to update it as well.

I’m very excited because my meeting was an amazing. The woman I met with completely understood what I wanted to do and she caught the project and my passion for it really fast.

Then I got home, and stepped on the kitten, again. Sigh….

I’ve had enough of my day. So, I’m going to sleep. I usually do a lot of my work at night. I’m too tired.

I wanted to give you a look at this train photograph and share with you that I feel like I’m on fire and out of control.

Control. That’s hard to achieve when I’m being full on manic, have my ADHD surfing around everything I can possibly think of and somehow finding more, ever more, to add to the intense way I zoom. And finally, there is my always and every seemingly anxiety.

Anxiety – ADHD – Bipolar MANIA. Oh exploding stars that’s enough! Insomenia from restless legs. Oh I keep falling asleep and my fingers press the keys on my laptop and the strangest things get typed up.

I’m going to sleep now. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh rere… ug. Whee are my fingers supposed too bee on the deyboard? I think I’m sleeep. Yes. dd

Nite my friends,

Robin

Bipolar Parent

/ Robin

Greetings friends, how are you doing in these wee hours of Friday morning?

Me? I’ve been both better and worse. Thursday had hours I enjoyed… then it crashed and burned as only the day of a parent can do.

When my three kids were young I had impressed even my ex-mother-in-law (let’s call her Kathy) with how well behaved and just good all around people my children were. Now, we are being stalked by rough and naked emotions that have always existed (that would be me, Bipolar parent) but are now beyond my own mind and have grabbed hold of my youngest.

I thought I was a good person growing up. I felt as though I were a likable person, yet I didn’t have many friends. I was lonely much of the time and kept my own company out on our small ranch with my horse, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows and the occasional ducks.

I was a shit.

Seriously. I was a short, freckled shit. Today my mother and I can look years back and point to much of my careening and completely out of control behavior and emotions and say, “That, that right there!” And recognize it as full on Bipolar Disorder presenting before I even had my drivers license.

In short – I was angry all the time and blamed everyone one else for everything. My depression and anger were crushing me and the only name I could give it was – sin. I was a practicing Christian and all those “evil” emotions were clearly not of God… but that’s a topic for another time.

My youngest and his regular doctor decided that he does not have the highly genetic Bipolar brain that I’m still learning to embrace. Anxiety. Depression. Mania. Mood swings. Irrational behavior. That’s Scott, my “I’m a psych major. I already know how to deal with anger and anxiety.”

Scott is transitioning from my second daughter, Sydney, to my second son, Scott. (Incidentally my father’s name was Scott.) Scott is undergoing hormone treatment. He wasn’t always easy to talk to about things that he felt “attacked” him. Now he’s so much more difficult.

I despair.

He turns 21 this Saturday. He’s angry and bitter and is working so hard to make people not like him that I just want to sit down and breathe like I’m having a baby all the time. He and his wife are both psychology majors who it seems aren’t studying behavior.

Odd.

Scott sounds just like I did. If transitioning changes him into the sex his mind believes him to be, then I will continue to try to learn and gain deeper understanding. However, he’s a grown man (he says) and I expect him to at least respect me.

§ On Father’s Day Scott thanked me for being both his mom and his dad growing up. §

What I will not do is accept from him the same behavior at 21 that I had at 14. He has tools around him to teach him about what’s running loose in his little grey cells. Me – religion, animals, and hypnosis.

The weight of his relentless ill-will and violent anger crushed me at dinner. It was like fighting with my dad, but I was the reasoning one (yeah, no. My dad wasn’t good at being rational when angry either.)

Top the whole bloody mess off with a leaking red cherry on it and you have a self-entitled disrespecting second son.

I’m not having it anymore.

Being a parent with Bipolar is terrifying literally every second of that child’s life for me. With Scott acting like the individual (did I mention pressured speech?) that he clearly isn’t I have no clue how to even begin to help him to stop yelling into my face that I should shut up because I’m not listening.

Huh?

Parenting the twenty-something kid today is a massive challenge for this Bipolar mom. I have been charged with the crime of trying to build good family memories. I have felt despair and anger towards Scott. These are not the memories I want to build. We’re going to work this out, but I realize that I will very possibly react like I have Bipolar Disorder while we do it.

I can do this. I can figure out my part in healing our relationship. Be loving and kind… and forgiving.

However, Scott is a grown man and if he does not have Bipolar Disorder or some other explanation for his behavior, then he’d better watch out. I corralled the three of them through their teens by myself and while not properly medicated for my illness.

Respect me as your mom.

Respect my illness.

Respect yourself and get help if we just can’t talk it out.

I really wanted to go old school, like back to when I was a kid, and wash his mouth out with some nasty bar of soap like Dial or Lava and spank him with a wooden spoon. Two if the first one breaks.

Sigh….. parenting never ends, not really. My mom is still my mom. Who else would she be?

Scott, baby? YOU! It’s time for YOU to shut up and listen.