Bipolar Survivor

I’m usually the first person to say to leave the past in the past, that the present is all that matters – but I would amend that today to say that visiting the past can sometimes be of help when you’re dealing with present bipolar issues.

For example, if you’re trying to figure out how you ended up in a bipolar episode, it can help if you examine past bipolar episodes as well, as what triggered them may be the same thing that triggered this episode.

In that case, you may be able to determine a pattern, and it can help you with future episodes (avoiding them).

Sometimes, by examining your past emotional issues that you have not dealt with completely, you can see where some of your current emotional bipolar issues may be emanating from.  You may be able to gain some insight from this.

These, of course, are things that should be worked out in therapy, as they can become quite emotional, and you don’t want them to tip the scales toward a bipolar episode if you try to deal with them by yourself.

On the other hand, a quick peek into the past innocently may not hurt at all, if you think you can handle it, and if you think it might help you with what you’re dealing with today. 

Your supporter may even be able to help you with this, or at least be able to be a good sounding board, if it helps.

It’s ok to visit the past as long as you don’t dwell on it, as dwelling on the past can be dangerous for someone with bipolar disorder – if you spend too much time thinking about the past, it can possibly lead to a depression, and depression to a bipolar depressive episode.

You may need to go back into your past from time to time to gather informtion that assists you in making decisions in your present, and that’s ok.  Just don’t stay too long.

I still say that the important thing is to live one day at a time; however, your past is still what has helped to shape your present and, if you can use it to help you, use it.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

I heard a saying that I really like.  It says, “Feelings are neither right nor wrong, they simply are.”

I really like it, because if you are just sharing your feelings with your supporter (or anyone else), you don’t have to be defensive or angry or fight about them.  You simply need to state the way you’re feeling.

Of course, people fight about them all the time anyway, I’m just saying that it isn’t necessary – it really doesn’t get you anywhere except mad at each other and fighting over something you can’t do anything about.  A big waste of time, if you ask me.

It helps if you use a little bit of communication panache when sharing your feelings.  For example, if you just cut out the phrases, “You always…” and “You never…” out of your sharing, you could probably save yourself a lot of fights.

These two phrases probably cause more fights between couples than anything else.  They’re rarely true (if ever), and all they seek to do is escalate an already bad situation anyway – they don’t help you at all.

It’s better if you’re able to simply share your feelings in an open and honest way, without attacking the other person.  Like if you’re able to say something like, “When you yell at me, I feel hurt.” 

Then the other person has to acknowledge that you feel a certain way due to some action on their part, and they have to take responsibility for their action.

Then they can choose to do something about it if they’re concerned about your feelings, especially if they want to help you change the way you feel.

This way you have much better communication between you.

Some people have a hard time communicating.  I know of a woman who had such a hard time sharing her feelings with her husband that she had to write them in a letter, but at least she was able to share that letter with her husband and they were able to talk about her feelings.

However you have to do it, share your feelings with your supporter.  If you just “stuff” them, they’re going to come out in negative ways, like making your bipolar disorder worse or even making you physically ill.

If nothing else, write them in your journal or chart them on your mood chart, but get them out somehow.  Don’t keep your feelings in.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

Having bipolar disorder, there are times that my mood does shift, sometimes without my say-so.  That doesn’t mean that I’m going in and out of episodes, just that even with medication, I still do have mood swings once in awhile.

Sometimes I have a bad bipolar day, and I just want to be left alone.  Usually, and only because we’ve been together so long, my husband knows to just leave me alone when I’m like that.

But sometimes on days like that, I want to be held and reassured that everything is ok, and I expect him to just know that, to hold me and tell me that everything’s ok, etc.  The problem is that I don’t tell him.  Then I get mad at him for not doing it.  Now, how fair is that?

I can’t just expect him to know something if I don’t communicate that expectation or need.  I have to tell him what  I want or need – after all, he isn’t a  mindreader, and neither is your bipolar supporter.

We can get so caught up with our disorder that we come to expect that our supporters can just read our minds and just know what we need without our telling them, and that is wrong on our parts, but it does happen.  We have to keep the lines of communication open. 

We have to try harder to express our thoughts and feelings to them.  Like I was saying, if it’s a bad bipolar day, they have a right to know that, and we should tell them, not just expect them to automatically assume that by the way that we’re acting. 

They care about us, and naturally want to do what they can to make us feel better, even if that does mean leaving us alone to work it out ourselves (but we need to express that to them, if that is the case).

If we want them to hold us, or talk to us, or listen to us, or tell us everything is going to be ok, or whatever the need is, we need to communicate that need to our bipolar supporters. 

Like I said before, they are not mindreaders (as much as we assume they are sometimes) – they only know what we tell them.  And it is up to us to tell them.

Sometimes, unfortunately, because of our bipolar disorder, we can come to take our supporters for granted. 

We get so caught up in our own thoughts and feelings, especially when they’re negative, that we don’t want to bother anyone else with them, and/or we think we can handle them on our own, forgetting that’s what got us into trouble in the first place!

So we need to keep good communication going with our bipolar supporters, even if it means extra effort on our part, which it very well does mean sometimes, especially when we don’t feel like it, especially when we’re having a bad bipolar day.  They deserve to know.

We have to remember that they’re on our side, which it is sometimes hard to remember when we’re fighting the dragon, that tricks us into believing we’re all alone in this.  We have to remember that we’re not! 

We do have people who love and care about us and want us to get better!  We just have to tell them what we want and need from them in order for them to help us.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

There’s a big difference between being a bad person and doing bad things.  Bipolar disorder does not make you a bad person.  However, its episodes can sometimes make you do bad things.

When my children were little, I went to great pains to make a distinction between who they are and what they did.  For instance, they may have done a stupid thing, but that doesn’t mean that THEY were stupid, and I wanted them to know that.  There was a real difference there.

One has to do with what you do, and the other has to do with your character.  If someone attacks your character, it can really hurt.  Like in my child’s case, maybe what they did was stupid, but if someone called them stupid, that would be different – that would be an attack on their character, and that would hurt their feelings.

That’s what we have to fight all the time with our bipolar disorder.  That’s why it’s so important to make the distinction between being bipolar and having bipolar disorder.  You don’t want to be identified with your disorder – you want your identity to be a separate thing.  Remember, you are NOT your disorder!

You are first and foremost a person, and only secondly are you a person with a mental illness.

Say you do something wrong while you’re in a bipolar episode.  It’s not YOU that is wrong, but something you DID that is wrong, and you only did that because you have bipolar disorder. 

Most likely, you never would have done it if you didn’t have bipolar, right?  That’s why there has to be a distinction there between the real you and the disorder.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have to take responsibility for the things you do, because you should, but I’m just saying that you shouldn’t let yourself be torn up by guilt over them.  Just ask yourself, “Would I have [done whatever] if I weren’t in a bipolar episode?”  Then forgive yourself.

Bipolar disorder does not make you a bad person, but you still have to deal with the bad things you do because of it sometimes.  There are consequences to everything that you do, sometimes negative ones. 

Just remember that there is a difference between what you do during a bipolar episode and what you would normally do.  Take responsibility for what you do during an episode and make up for it, but don’t let it ruin the rest of your life.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

I have this neighbor.  We don’t know each other at all.  To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’d want to know her.  I do, however, know her wind chimes.  Intimately.

They blow at the slightest provocation of any slight wind, and I can hear them all the way over at my house.  Why does this bother me?  Because they are loud and obnoxious.  And she is never even home to hear them!  She works all the time.  But who hears them?  I do!  All the time!  And they are NOT pleasant.  At least not for me.  They really, really bug me.

My husband and I have to smoke outside, so we hear these obnoxious wind chimes all the time.  And we have threatened to go over there when our neighbor is not home and just take them down and destroy them, hiding them where she cannot find them.

I wish I could do that.  No more obnoxious wind chimes!  No more stress for me!

But I can’t do that.  Because I live by the creed:  Be kind to one another, bipolar or not.  And I wouldn’t want her to do something like that to me.  I mean, what if I’ve got something that bugs her like that (I don’t have any wind chimes, believe me), tho I don’t think I do.

Still, I wouldn’t want something I did to bother her that much so that she would retaliate against me.

We have to get along with each other, bipolar or not.  There are things that all of us do that bug each other.  Sometimes we can do something about it, and sometimes we can’t.

Like, I have ADHD really bad.  So when somebody clicks a pen over and over again and they’re sitting close to me, it drives me batty!  I’ve been able, at times, to kindly lean over and ask them to please stop doing that (to my own embarrassment), and they did.

But basically, we all just have to put up with each other, and our differences.  It’s part of being human.  I hear people with bipolar disorder saying all the time that they just want to be like everyone else.  Well, here’s the chance to prove it!  Be tolerant!  Live and let live!  If you want people to put up with you, you’re going to have to put up with them as well.

You may not always like the way other people act, but it’s best to put up with them as much as you can.  Don’t start trouble where you don’t need any, or cause any embarrassment to yourself or draw any unneeded attention to yourself – you’ll find yourself in a situation where you didn’t want to be.

I know it sounds cliche, but let’s all just try to get along?  It goes alot further in managing your bipolar disorder as well, helping to keep your stress level down.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

There is a Scripture that says, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”  I love that Scripture. 

For one thing, it reminds me that I’m not alone, no matter how much I feel like I am sometimes.  But it also reminds me that God is interested and concerned about what happens to me, and is giving me the strength to get through what I have to go through, especially those times when it is hard with my bipolar disorder.

So, can we really do all things with bipolar?  Maybe not at first.  When you’re first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, sometimes just getting out of bed is your greatest accomplishment of the day (no kidding – I’ve been there).

Then you move up to harder things – like maybe working a part-time job, or doing other things like volunteering, taking care of the house, taking care of children, and especially taking care of yourself.

But after time has gone by, maybe even a long period of time, some people with bipolar disorder have been able to succeed up to the point that they are able to do pretty much everything that someone without the disorder is able to do.

Some have even been able to go back to full-time work!  (not me, but I’ve heard of others who have been able to). 

Some have started their own businesses from home.  Some have gone back to college.  Some have written books, like I have. 

There really is no limit to what you can do, as long as you stay stable with your bipolar disorder.

But, like I said, it takes time, sometimes a great deal of time.  The important thing is that you be stable with your bipolar disorder.  Then you can do many things that you couldn’t do before.

Like the Scripture says, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

Sometimes it’s the smallest things with bipolar disorder that can make the biggest difference, you know?

I had to go to see my step-daughter graduate from high school the other day and I was so very nervous about it, because there were going to be so many people there (I do not do well around a lot of people, believe me).

I started hyperventilating and going into an anxiety attack, just thinking about all the people who were going to be there, and really started getting all worked up.  So I knew I had to do something about it, because I just wasn’t going to miss this graduation.

And I really didn’t want this to keep affecting my bipolar disorder like it seemed to be doing.

So I decided to do two things:

1.  Start doing some deep breathing exercises, to slow my breathing down and relax me.

2.  Start thinking some positive thoughts.

The deep breathing did, in fact, slow my breathing down to normal, so the anxiety went away quicker than I think it would have if I didn’t do the exercises, so that started making me feel better right away.

But I think if I hadn’t combined it with changing my thoughts, it still wouldn’t have been as effective as it was.

The first thought I changed was probably the most important.  I started thinking, “This isn’t about me.  This is about Cassie.  I’m doing this for her.  She will be disappointed if I’m not there to see her graduate.  This is NOT about me.  This is about HER.” 

I just kept repeating that to myself over and over again, taking the emphasis off myself and onto my step-daughter, and I started feeling better.  We always feel better when we’re thinking about others than when we’re thinking about ourselves anyway (at least that’s my opinion).

So that”s what I mean about how sometimes it’s the simplest things that make the biggest difference with bipolar disorder.

Before long, I was my old self again!  No more anxiety, no more negative thoughts, no more hyperventilating!

I was able to go see Cassie graduate, and everything was fine!

So the next time you find yourself in a bad spot with your bipolar disorder, try looking at the small things first – try to discover if it’s just a small thing that’s causing you to have a bad time; then see if you can help yourself feel better by counteracting it with a small measure as well (like I did with the deep breathing and changing my thoughts).

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

Yes, I am happy in spite of bipolar problems.  This latest one was because my nighttime bipolar medication quit working.  Well, I wasn’t so happy about that, believe me.  I almost ended up in the hospital over it, because I hadn’t slept in so long, and what little sleep I got wasn’t redemptive sleep.  I was like a zombie!

I felt like I was walking around inside a cloud, and I was exhausted!  I had no energy.  I was awake, but I wasn’t, really, if you know what I mean.  Like, my body still functioned (at minimum capacity) – my legs still made my body walk, my arms could still pick things up, etc. – but my mind felt like there was a giant cloud around my thoughts, and I just couldn’t see past it.

It was like I was asleep with my eyes wide open.  Well, not wide open, but you get the picture.  Totally exhausted for lack of good sleep.  Which, as you’ve heard me preach many a time, is absolutely crucial for good management of bipolar disorder.

I didn’t let it go on long (I couldn’t).  I finally called my psychiatrist’s office and spoke with the nurse.  She was concerned that I was slurring my words.  Imagine that!  I told her that I was slurring my words because I was so exhausted because I hadn’t slept because my medication wasn’t working!

She finally got the picture and said she’d talk to the doctor and would call me back.

After talking to the doctor, she called me back and said that he was switching my medication and would call it right in to the pharmacy, which she (thankfully) did.

I picked it up, and used it that night (3 nights ago), and I’ve been sleeping fine ever since.  Problem solved!  (Wish all my problems were so easily solved!)

The thing is, although I had a problem, I was still happy.  The rest of my life was fine, no problems.  It was just that I couldn’t sleep.  So the point is, you can still be happy even though you have bipolar problems.

On the other hand, you can’t expect your life to be perfect with no problems if you have bipolar disorder.  There are going to be problems.  But like I was saying, hopefully they will be easy resolvable, like this one was.  Unfortunately, they usually aren’t.  But sometimes they are.  You just have to take the bad with the good, and try your best at all times.

So I’m happy, and sleeping again (yeah!).  Gosh, what a difference a little (a lot) of sleep can make.  No more walking around in a fog.  I’m awake and alert, and more conscious of everything.  I feel like myself again (double yeah!).  And I’m getting a lot more done, too.

The main thing to remember is if you come across something like this, don’t wait.  Call your doctor like I did.  They can help you.  Especially if it’s a medication problem.  Sometimes the answer is as simple as just switching medications, like it was in my case.  But you don’t know if you don’t call.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

Ok, so I didn’t sleep last night.  Am I in a manic episode?  No way.  But I still didn’t get any sleep, so of course I had to do my bipolar mania checklist just as a precaution. 

Checkbook?  Secure.  Credit cards?  Didn’t apply for any.  Online shopping?  Didn’t do any (don’t laugh – I used to, when I was in manic episodes).  Shopping sprees?  No on that count as well.  Any cash withdrawals?  None.  Ok, finances all in order.

Any impulsive decisions?  Nope.  Any erratic behavior?  Nope on that count as well.  Any fights with my husband (or anyone else)?  No.  Any self-destructive behavior?  No.  Any hallucinations?  No, and no delusions, either.  Any risk-taking behaviors?  No on that count as well.  Hmm… looking good so far.

Any suicidal ideologies?  Absolutely not.  No homicidal ones, either (not that there have ever been any).  No violent tendencies at all.

No anger.  Just a little agitation, irritation, and frustration (which you’d probably have if you couldn’t sleep, either).

Ok, so my manic checklist checks out ok.  And I was rational enough to do it!  That’s always a plus, too!

So I’m not in a manic episode.  I just couldn’t sleep.  That happens sometimes.  And guess what?  It happens to people who don’t have bipolar disorder, too, not just to us! 

So it doesn’t mean that we have to overreact to it and assume that we’re in a bipoalr manic episode just because we lost a night of sleep.  It’s normal.  It happens sometimes.

I’ll catch up on my sleep tomorrow.  No problem.

Now if I didn’t sleep again tomorrow night… or if I started exhibiting some of the behaviors on my checklist… then I might start getting a little concerned.  That is why my checklist is in place, after all.

But for now I’m not going to worry about it.  My husband knows about it, and tomorrow my psychiatrist will know about it (and believe me, he will get an earful about that new sleep med he put me on, you’d better believe that!  The one that DIDN’T put me to sleep!!!)

Things like insomnia do happen to people with bipolar from time to time, just like plain ole depresssion.  And we do have to be aware of them, even tell our supporters and/or psychiatrists about them. 

But we do NOT have to panic or overreact about them, assuming it means we’re in a bipolar episode.  That’s why checklists are good.  They help us stay balanced.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

I was thinking about some of the questions I’ve asked about my bipolar disorder, and how some of them were the worst waste of time that I’ve spent!

I’m talking about questions like, “Why?” and “Why me?”  Well, “Why not?” and “Why not me?”  I mean, I wouldn’t wish this disorder on my worst enemy, but I’m sure this wasn’t like a childish game of duck-duck-goose where God lined up a bunch of people and chose who would have bipolar disorder and who wouldn’t have it!

So asking, “Why me?” is kind of a moot point at this stage.  In my case, according to the research I did when I first began accepting my diagnosis, I found out that bipolar can have a hereditary component to it.  So, since my mom has the disorder, there is a chance that I have bipolar disorder because my mother has bipolar disorder.

This comforts me, because I know that it has nothing to do with me.  It isn’t my fault.  It’s not because I did a bunch of drugs and alcohol when I was a teenager that I got bipolar disorder.  It has nothing to do with getting dropped on my head as a child, or any childhood diseases I may have contracted.

“If not me, who else?”  If I were to give away my bipolar disorder, who would I give it to?  You know, I have had nasty thoughts toward people I have resented at times, but even those people who have treated me the worst I wouldn’t give this disorder to. 

Nobody should have to suffer the mood swings, the psychotic symptoms, the being out of control, the impulsivity, the bipolar episodes, the medication side effects, and all the other things that we have to put up with as bipolar survivors.

Here’s a good bipolar question for you:  “Will I ever get better?”

I like that one, because I believe the answer is, “Yes.”

Of course, it depends on you.  IF you want it bad enough… if you do what you need to do to maintain stability with your disorder… if you take your medication religiously… IF… (a whole bunch of variables)… and you give it time… YES, you CAN get better!

I don’t think I’m anybody special.  I think that if you do what I’ve done, then you can become stable and high-functioning with your bipolar disorder as well. 

Just don’t ever give up!  Keep going at it, and don’t let your disorder get control over you.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele