bipolar
Bipolar disorder; understanding the highs, the lows and the in between.
Coping with a Bipolar Diagnosis
I can’t cope with most things, let alone the diagnosis I received two years ago of Bipolar II. I was 20 years old as I re-entered the world of therapy, the first time since I was 15. I met with a woman, which was my only request. I didn’t yet know about shopping around for therapists or the different types of therapy. After an explosive friendship ending, where I had escalated the situation to nuclear levels, my therapist told me the news. I had Bipolar. I knew it was coming because I watched my dad struggle through it my entire life, but I had hoped it skipped me. She saw it in the way I cycled, quickly, through mania and depression. I had thought it was just depression because my mania usually looked like pulling an all-nighter and starting a new hobby, or finally cleaning my kitchen. She called it Bipolar II.
By Charlie Ryder4 years ago in Psyche
Bipolar Business: What I Wish I'd Known Before My Diagnosis
I wasn't prepared for this. I'm not prepared for most things really, but I really wasn't prepared to have to essentially learn how to live again. Bipolar is emotionally divergent; trying to treat it is like feeling everything in a strange deja vu state. I didn't know that at the time, but man I wish I did. I wish I'd known a few things before I started medication.
By Shiloh Watson4 years ago in Psyche
Uncontrollable
I remember the feeling of quiet once, it’s been a long while since then, but I do remember it. I think. My body for the first time in years feels calm, relaxed, floating even. No aches in my joints from years of typing, no stiff back from my bad posture, no pounding of my head from my day to day stress; I feel nothing.
By G. Sinfold4 years ago in Psyche
June 30th...
It feels like I’ve been isolated for a long time. That idea hangs in the air in front of me, a sick mix of anachronistic and truth, but always too bitter. For me, I think my fear of rejection is tied closely to my bipolar. If I can’t know from one moment to another who I’m going to be, how can you?
By Erin A. Sayers4 years ago in Psyche
The stigma of living in the south with a mental illness.
The South is a much different culture than the rest of the U.S. Some might even say it is another country in comparison to the rest of the U.S. It is not a bad place. We have the best tasting food in the world, we have Mardi’s Gras, a holiday devoted to partying, and we make our sweet tea taste like syrup due to the sugar content. Southerners are kind and generous people. We always hold the door for strangers and even hold conversations with them like we have been the best of friends for years.
By Christy Bang4 years ago in Psyche
5150
I knew I needed help, but I was NOT expecting this. Here I was, sitting in the Emergency Room waiting area of the hospital five minutes away from my house, waiting to be called back, my dad by my side. It was nearing midnight and I was wearing the same thing I had been wearing for several days in a row now, an oversized college t-shirt and black shorts, my usual pajamas. My mind was reeling with activity, I felt like I was literally going insane from the sleep debt I had accrued over the last five days. By this time, I had been battling with the depression part of my bipolar disorder for quite a while. I was diagnosed with the disorder at the usual time for a female: her early twenties, and now, I was several years into it at twenty-five years of age. I could usually manage the insomnia and get by with a few hours of sleep a night, but this time was different, it had gotten extraordinarily bad. I was running off of a total of twelve hours of sleep, spread out over five days. This didn’t mean that I slept for a few hours, lumped together, every day for five days. Oh no, that would have been blissful. No. This meant that I would sleep an hour here, be awake for six hours and sleep another hour there, and then be awake for another several hours, only to finally get to sleep, and sleep for barely thirty minutes. Days. It went on for days. My psychiatrist had given up on me at this point regarding the insomnia. We had tried everything: anxiety meds, sleep meds, muscle relaxers, tranquilizers, over-the-counter sleep meds, and even the more natural pathways like melatonin and meditation. Meditation never worked, my mind could never focus on my breathing long enough to settle down into a meditative state, so I considered that treatment crap-treatment. I even tried exhausting myself physically by exercising. Nothing worked. Nothing put me to sleep and kept me there long enough to get sufficient rest. My body would shut down, but not my mind, so after five days of suffering through hell, I went to the emergency room. I could not stop fidgeting and my knees just continued to bounce up and down, my feet tapping to music only I could hear. I had plenty of anxiety going on, though I didn’t know that is what it was. My thoughts were all over the place and finally, when the nurse called me in to be triaged, I said the stupidest thing I could have said in a hospital. I told her about my situation and that I was really desperate for sleep, so desperate that “I would take a whole bottle of sleeping pills to sleep if it would help, but it wouldn’t, so I wouldn’t take them.” BIG mistake.
By Kimberly Jordan4 years ago in Psyche
Why Mania May Not Be As Bad As You Thought
When I first got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I expected extremes. I didn't realize that I had already been experiencing episodes of depression and mania for years. Ever since I was a teenager, my moods were always so up and down. My parents always just said it was puberty. Comes with mood swings, right?
By Amanda Doyle4 years ago in Psyche
