All Mixed Up

I haven’t written a column here in some time. I haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say. I still feel that way. Like nothing I say is important or matters. Sounds like I’m depressed. Everybody around me says I’m stable. My psychiatrist, my counselor, my partner and my friends all think I’m fine. And I guess I am. Only in so many other ways I’m not. I was originally diagnosed with bipolar II, with mixed states and rapid cycling. I’m not sure if I fit the technical criteria for mixed states and rapid cycling or not. But it sure is my lived experience. And it happens all the time, every day. Or so it seems. In actual fact I’m sure it doesn’t, but I’m often in a mixed state, and the mood changes often happen more rapidly than I can easily handle. It feels like I’m bouncing around all the time.

I’ve been keeping a mood chart lately. I’ve also been charting my pain level next to it. The two so often go together for me. It’s been interesting, even though it’s only been a month. I’ve broken up the days into two or three or four hour sections. I put down a word to describe my mood and a number for my pain level. My pain has been pretty consistent at six or seven. With a few jumps up to eight or more. But my mood descriptors have been all over the place. Lots of Good’s and OK’s. But most of the entries seem to say Mixed or Depressed. When I fill in the space at the end of the day for overall mood and pain levels I have a lot of Seven’s and Mixed’s. What I want to focus on here are the Mixed days.

In bipolar disorder a mixed mood basically means you experience both the highs and the lows at the same time. That’s been a significant part of my experience for months and months now, maybe years. I’m not there all the time, by any means. But I’m there way too often for my comfort. I can be having a wonderful, cheerful conversation with my partner about how beautiful the garden is, while my internal dialogue tells me I don’t deserve to live in such a beautiful place or have such a lovely garden to tend. This constant back-and-forth makes me feel unsettled much of the time. Add to that the crippling social anxiety I experience as part of the PTSD, and the bipolar fueled rage that makes me feel like exploding half the time, and you can see why it doesn’t feel like I’m doing as well as I appear. And underlying it all is the constant low grade depression of the dysthymia. I may look fine but inside I too often feel like a basket case.

Fortunately my high times don’t ever approach major hypomania these days. But in my low times I go as deep as I’ve ever gone into the depths of depressive despair. In seconds my heart can plummet to the floor and my outlook becomes unbearably bleak. By then I can be in full suicidal ideation mode. Often there’s a trigger that sets me off, but just as often there isn’t one. To me it feels like it just happens in an instant, without any conscious thoughts on my part whatsoever. It’s very hard to pull myself out of that state. But I do it every time I have to, every day. Right now I wouldn’t even try to pretend I’m not depressed. I’ve been this way for a couple of days. But even now, if it was required, I could pull myself out of it and act normal, at least for a little bit. That’s why everyone thinks I’m fine. I maintain too well for my own good.

In reality it’s a lie I perpetuate out of shame, fear and embarrassment. At the moment I’m experiencing all of those emotions as I prepare to continue writing this piece. Because, as much as I’m embarrassed and ashamed to say it, I still don’t think I’ve come to terms with this fucking bipolar disorder. It will be 24 years next month since I was diagnosed. I thought I’d dealt with this and had come to terms with having this illness and accepted it years ago. Now it feels like I didn’t really get rid of the fear at all. In some ways the longer I’ve known I’ve had this disorder the more afraid of my perceived mental deterioration I’ve become. I say perceived because I know my brain itself is just fine. It’s my thinking that is disordered. I feel stupid. I know I’m not. But right now I feel ashamed of having bipolar disorder, especially the depression. And that’s just stupid.

As a gay man I know that coming out is a life-long process. The same is true if you have a mental illness. You may think you’ve come out but then you find yourself in another situation where you have to come out again. This has happened repeatedly for me as far as being gay. It’s not really an issue for me here in liberal Seattle, but when I go to conservative Eastern Washington it’s a very different story. It’s even more so for mental illness. Again, especially for depression. When I’m hypomanic everybody loves me because I’m charming, cheerful, charismatic, positive and full of life. When I’m depressed I’m afraid to even tell anyone because I feel so negative and boring. I’m sure no one really wants to even be around me. That often includes my partner Louie. I know he’ll love me forever regardless of my emotional state. But I’m still terrified that I’ll burn him out on me if I’m too depressed too much of the time. I know that’s crazy thinking, but it’s got me bad. So I hide my feelings, even from him.

If I feel afraid of burning out Louie, imagine how I feel about my neighbors and people in general. I’m bloody terrified. Most people still think depression is a failure of character or will power. Of course I know that’s nonsense. But it doesn’t stop me from buying into their opinions in some situations. When you’re already feeling vulnerable it seems crazy to make yourself even more vulnerable by acting depressed. People think you’re weak if you’re depressed and when you’re already vulnerable you can’t afford to look weak. This attitude seems to be shifting a bit in our culture now. But our cult of pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps rugged individualism is still too strong to allow for those of us with depression. It takes a lot of guts to be who you are in this world. I say this as a privileged white boy. Imagine how much worse it is for a person of color, a woman, a trans person or anyone else who doesn’t fit society’s definitions of what it means to be a man, a woman or any other sexual identity. Or what it means to be mentally healthy and functional.

Everyone I know would tell you that I’m a high functioning individual who just happens to have bipolar disorder. That’s what they see and I have no desire to try to change those opinions. Except I sort of do. I want to feel free to exhibit my depression whenever I feel it so strongly. I want to be real and true and honest about who I am. But I’m scared. I’m afraid people will think less of me if they see me being depressed. I have what is often called a shame-based personality. That doesn’t mean I feel ashamed all the time, but when I do it can be overwhelming. I once told a counselor that I thought shame had stopped me from becoming manic at times. He laughed at me and told me mania was too strong to let shame stop it. I’m sure that’s true for full-blown mania. But shame has definitely kept me from acting out some of my worst hypomanic impulses. In some ways it has actually protected me from losing it. What a weird fucking paradox.

I rarely feel much strong hypomania these days. But even so when I’m feeling really really good I tend to ascribe it to hypomania rather than just a good mood. I don’t really act out the grandiosity but I certainly think of myself in that way at those times. A part of me still thinks I’m hot shit. It feels good to feel that way, which is why people like mania. Especially since I’m depressed so often. I can still go way overboard with the hypomania if it strikes me that way. My “episodes” rarely affect me for just the four day criteria needed for a diagnosis. They tend to be more diffuse and spread out over days, weeks, months and even years. A couple of years ago I spent about three months in a hypomanic state that I didn’t even know I was in until it was over. Balancing my checkbook was the clue that I’d really overdone it. I was chagrined and embarrassed that I had let myself get so carried away. Because underlying the hypomania was the usual depression, and I really didn’t feel that good about myself. I was in a mixed state.

I hope I’ve given you some idea of what it’s like to live with mixed states. As I’ve said, it can be a real challenge. In my high times I tend to do things and make promises that when I’m depressed just fall apart. I’ve always tried to be a very responsible person and to walk my talk. I think I’ve mostly been pretty good at that. But as I look back over my life I see so many times that I blew it. In fairness to myself I also see plenty of times that I did OK. Most of my life I’ve lived in a hypomanic haze, with periods of depression now and then. I’ve been able to function really well and I’ve created some good things in my time. But the last 24 years have been really hard. I haven’t been able to hold a real job in that time, even though I’ve done some good work now and then. This really affects my self image. I feel like a failure even though I know I’m not. Feeling good, feeling bad, feeling good, feeling bad – it’s a constant merry-go-round of emotion, especially when both things are happening at the same time.

My hope is that I will continue to learn that when I’m in a mixed state I need to moderate my behavior as much as I do as when I’m depressed or manic. Sometimes I think I’m doing really good at that. I’m depressed right now so everything looks pretty bleak. But if I know anything about depression, I know that it doesn’t last forever. One of these days I’ll start feeling better again, maybe even today. Mixed states give me a different perspective on reality than most people get to have. Just having bipolar does that. So I could view all this as a good thing. I’m trying hard to do that. Sometimes I’m even successful. I hate to be trite, but yes, there often is a silver lining. It’s pretty dim right now but with any luck it will get brighter in the near future. I won’t say I have much hope, but I do know that the wheel of life keeps turning, and sooner or later it’s bound to come up roses.

With mixed emotions,

Steve

Is This What Recovery Looks Like?

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in November 1995, about a week before my 45th birthday. Since then I’ve been under the care of five or six different psychiatrists. I’ve had four stays in psychiatric units where I saw other psychiatrists. And I’ve had several counselors. They’ve all told me that I have bipolar disorder. Even the federal government agrees, giving me disability for it. So why am I feeling like I don’t really have bipolar anymore? It’s complicated.

I haven’t had a major episode in two or three years. But I have continued to cycle up-and-down from hypomanic moods to depressive moods. And it’s been mild compared to what it used to be like. I no longer believe that I have god like powers to affect reality, usually. And I don’t have those deathly suicidal depressions anymore either, at least not very often. Overall I would have to say that I’m doing pretty good. But I don’t know what to think about myself. If I’m not having severe mood episodes am I still really bipolar? I know it doesn’t make sense to question it, but I’m really struggling with this issue right now.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. And you’re probably right. I take six or eight medications specifically designed to control my mood episodes. I am definitely medicated. It’s very common for people with bipolar disorder who are better because they’re medicated to the gills like I am to believe that they no longer have the disorder. Of course the reason we think that is because we are medicated to the gills, but we don’t see it that way. The usual next step is to believe we don’t need to take our medications anymore. That’s the trap we fall into. We get better and we think we’ve done it on our own and that we don’t need the help of the drugs anymore.

I have done a lot of work on my own it’s true. In fact I’ve worked like hell to try and get better, and I still do. So I will take credit for at least some of my success. But if I were not on this medication cocktail I’m on now I would not be writing these words to you. There is no doubt that these medications are powerful. They have definitely had the power to make me much worse than I would’ve been without them. I still suffer painful and debilitating side effects from them. But they have also had the ability to lessen my moods and my cycling. They’ve helped me to get better. So I’m not about to quit them.

Talk therapy has also been very helpful to keep me alive while I’ve had a tentative hold on consensual reality. A common understanding is that therapy doesn’t really work until you’re stable on your medications. I don’t think that’s totally true. I’ve had a lot of help to get to this place that I’m at now, from a lot of caring and compassionate people. And I’ve had it at times when the medications just hurt me. When they didn’t help me at all. In fact that’s pretty much been true until the last two or three years. So I’ll give talk therapy a lot of credit for where I’m at now.

It’s also true that the talk therapy has worked better in the last two or three years since I’ve been on this new medication regimen. It’s given me some breathing room to get a better handle on how to manage my moods on my own. I’ve learned a lot of tools and tricks over the years that I can use to help stave off impending episodes. I try to use these tools all the time. And I can use them more often and to better advantage now than I could before the medication took hold. But there are still times when I’ll take an extra Klonopin or some Abilify because I’m starting to ramp up too high. And the lamotrigine mood stabilizer I take helps to moderate my depression better than anything I’ve taken before. The medications are still very useful.

So I’ll ask the question again: Is this what recovery looks like? And if it is, how do I function in it? It’s been so many years since I was truly functional in society I don’t know how to do it anymore. And I am definitely not the same person I was 25 years ago. Of course none of us are, but that’s not what I mean. When I experienced the mixed state episode in ’95 that got me the diagnosis I changed. To me it felt as though I might’ve had a stroke. I didn’t, but that’s how dramatic it was. I can definitely break my life into two distinct pieces: Before and after that episode.

Before the episode I cycled a lot and I had some very serious depressions. But I spent a lot more time in a hypomanic reality. In between depressions I was normally hyper most of the time but then I would have times when I would have way more energy, creativity and confidence and would do great things. These were distinct episodes of hypomania, and they were generally followed by severe depressions. I also spent a lot of time in a mixed state where I had one foot in each reality. Looking back I can clearly see that I was living in a state of bipolar cycling. But mostly I was functional and I had a pretty good life. I got a lot done and I did some really good things for the world.

After the episode I was much worse. I spent more and and more time in depression and less time in hypomania. My outlook on life became very bleak. In truth I felt completely hopeless. I had no belief that I would ever get better or would ever have any other reality than what I had then. And what I had then really sucked. My various psychiatrists tried me on drug after drug after drug. I’ve probably taken at least a couple of dozen different psychiatric medications. Few of them worked. All they did was make me sick and make me feel more helpless. My life was totally out of my control.

I should mention that concurrent with my mental health issues I also had some very severe pain issues. Horrible migraines and a damaged back plagued me. I had never had any luck with doctors helping me with pain. They never believed me. Pain is subjective and if you don’t feel it yourself you may not believe other people do. At least that’s the attitude I ran into time and time again with the medical profession. But about 15 years ago I finally met a compassionate doctor who was willing to take me seriously and prescribed large doses of opioids to help my pain. I’m not a big fan of opioids, but for the first time in decades I was able to live a physically functional life without constant debilitating pain.

Pain and depression are known to be linked. When you’re depressed you feel pain more. When you’re in pain you get depressed. It’s pretty clear. So a big source of my depression was suddenly improved. It wasn’t gone by any means but I was much better. An easing of my pain then allowed the easing of my depression, at least to some extent. Talk therapy and counseling helped me a lot during this time. I was probably getting better even then, but it was so slow I couldn’t tell I was. The positive attitude of my therapist really helped pull me through those hard times.

Then a couple of years ago after I was put on a new mood stabilizer I went through a period of several months when I wasn’t hardly depressed at all. I remember telling my therapist I didn’t know how to act. My default had been depression for so many years I didn’t know how to not be depressed. It was very weird and I felt totally uncertain about how to behave. Of course the depressions came back again. And I got better again. I was still cycling, but it was different. At this point I see this dynamic of cycling as a spiral. Each time I spiral through the cycle it’s a little different and I’m a little better. And so I’m back to my original question again.

Is this what recovery looks like? Because I still don’t know how to handle it. My cycling may have calmed down but my anxiety has gone through the roof. I have PTSD so I know that’s part of it. And I know anxiety is just a part of being bipolar. I’ve also been looking into social anxiety disorder lately and it’s pretty clear to me that I have all the signs. Add these altogether and I’m paralyzed. I feel crippled by anxiety. I’m so terrified that I’m going to be humiliated that I won’t even lean into trying something. I stop myself before I even get started. This could be a whole other post so I won’t belabor the anxiety angle right now. I’ll just say that the anxiety doesn’t help me feel stable.

So I started another new drug to help with that. It’s been less than a month so I can’t tell how well it’s working, but I have some hope, despite the fact that it sort of wipes me out. I assume that in time I’ll acclimate to it and that it’ll help me be less fearful of social interactions. Maybe this will be my final hurdle. Until I can move beyond it I’ll continue to try to accept myself and my diagnoses and function in the world as best I can. Yes, I’m still bipolar and always will be, but maybe this is recovery and I just don’t recognize it. I think that as I get more used to it I’ll feel like I really am better. Like I really am in recovery. And that’s the goal isn’t it? Maybe I’m already there. I hope so.

Seeing some light at the end of the tunnel,

Steve

Anhedonia and Alienation

I have a hard time feeling pleasure. That’s anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure. I have a wonderful life and I’m really satisfied in many ways. But I find that I really don’t ever get truly excited about much of anything anymore. I can remember times in my earlier life – before I had The Episode that wrecked my life at 44 and I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder – when I was joyful and full of energy and had a great time living my exciting life. I may not have been the life of the party like so many BP folks are, but I sure did love to party and I had fun doing it. Now I rarely get pleasure from even the simple things of life – a smile sent my way, a cool piece of art, or a song I once loved. These can still humble me but they don’t give me the same level of enjoyment they once did. It’s hard to muster up the energy to be pleased anymore. I fake it a lot.

I know this is a common issue for people with bipolar, yet it’s still very discouraging. Even tho I know my diagnoses and how they play out, sometimes it just sucks bad. I don’t mean to whine. But this is so overwhelming to me that I just have to write about it. I really try to walk with beauty over the Rainbow Bridge, as the Navajo (Dine) people sing so movingly about. I try to follow the advice of Gandhi and live the change I want to see in the world. But now I don’t really care much if I succeed or not. Before The Episode I was very socially engaged – managing a food co-op, founding a non-profit educational center where I met hundreds of people, producing concerts where I affected even more, and working at a lively collective cafe where we made our own ice cream, which I got to make. Yum!! Lots of good people came thru that place and I met my first real boyfriend there from behind the ice cream counter. Good times.

Which is why this is so fucking hard on me now. I was used to a different way of life than I lead these days. Now I live far away from the bustling world of gay society I was such a part of for so many years. It’s more peaceful here, and I have a wonderful home and a loving partner to share it with. But it lacks a certain energy and queer sensibility I was used to and I’m starting to miss it a lot. Last night we went out to the Gay section of town for the first time in years. We saw a hot Drag Show. Wow, those girls (and boys!) can really dance and sing (Lip synching really, but who cares…). It was so Very Queer – it was amazing. I lived right there for over 20 years, at different times, and it was my life. But I haven’t been in that area of town for a long time now. It made me feel so nostalgic I wanted to cry. In fact when I got home I stayed up till 1:30 writing in my journal. I had to stop often to cry. I haven’t cried that hard in years. It all hit me – how far I’d come from those days of merriment and engagement. How I didn’t feel the joy of it all anymore.

I’m a very social person, but I’m an introvert too, so it’s always been hard on me to socialize with other people. But I was so damn hypomanic so much of the time back then that I overcame my insecurities and went out and did cool things. Now I’m too scared to interact with anyone, and I just garden at home. Don’t get me wrong – I Love it and it nurtures me greatly. But there aren’t any People there. It’s all just plants, and tho I used to relish that alone time I got with them, now it feels more like a trap. I’ve tried to join gardening circles, but I have little luck because I get too insecure and scared and stop myself before I even get going. Another common thing we folks with bipolar do. I want to but I just don’t Feel like it. Even tho I’m a very sexual person (even at 67 – never give up!) there are so many times I just don’t give a damn about it, tho not always. 🙂  Not my usual self at all. I just don’t feel sexual and I hate it so much. I hate not being able to always laugh at my partner’s silly jokes. I hate not being able to engage with the neighbors when we go out for a walk. And I hate feeling like nothing will ever make me feel again, ever.

Yeah I’m blowing it all out of proportion, but that’s what it feels like to me, and if there’s anything we Bipolar folks do a lot it’s to live thru our feelings, much to our dismay at times. Emotions are tricky to live with and when you have bipolar they trick you even more. They may always be real, for you, but they aren’t always reflective of consensus reality, if you get the difference. When you live thru your feelings instead of your intellect you often mistake your feelings for the reality others experience. It’s not! It can really fuck you up bad. You mistake simple social cues and you interpret things thru your own lens too much and it’s not always what may be really happening. You may feel awful when there’s no need to. You aren’t being talked about behind your back and you aren’t being thought of as “lesser than”, the way you feel about yourself. People may actually like you, despite your horrible sense of self and lack of ability to take in any compliments that may come your way. It’s kinda stupid and kinda sad when you think about it, but it’s all too real to me.

You can see how anhedonia and alienation can intersect here and how they’ve so harshly impacted my life and the lives of so many others. If you can’t feel anything you feel disconnected and alienated. Duh. It makes sense but it’s an awfully hard thing to live with. For me they seem to go hand in hand, but it may not be that way for everyone. I don’t really know. But I do know that many people with bipolar feel both of these things, whether in tandem or not. We just don’t feel good about ourselves so how can we feel good about life? It’s not easy. We feel that we’re not good enough to even deserve a life full of joy. And that hurts us terribly in many ways. It makes us unwilling to engage in things that may hurt us more. We shut down. You can only handle so much pain at any one time. Why ask for more? That seems crazy, but it may be the only way to get over it. There are potentials for joy on the other side of it if you can just hold on.

Maybe it’s just my age – I’m almost 70. But I see so many older people still loving their lives that I don’t think that’s all of it. I feel young at heart really and I look and act like it. I’m not a couch potato or a slob. I take good care of myself and try to do the right thing always, even tho I doubt myself and don’t really know if it’s right all the time. I second guess myself with people so much it drives me crazy. I’m sure none of them like me or want to hear anything I might have to say. I feel alienated from them. But if I could still feel their energy it would be so different.

I do still remember, tho it’s been so long, what it feels like to really enjoy life. And I do enjoy it sometimes, I’ll admit. I’m not totally shut down – not yet. I still feel love and give it in return. And I know it’s real and not in my imagination. So I have some hope that things can change. I always try to end these posts with something positive and this is the best I can do. I’m attempting to believe that if I keep trying to feel, that eventually I’ll get there, at least sometimes. I just can’t give up. I have to stay present in my life to integrate this and to find peace and serenity, which may be far better than happiness anyway. So I’m still hanging on, but it’s by the skin of my teeth, and my teeth are getting so sore…. 🙂

I hope you’re feeling something good today…

Steve

Overwhelmed by Good Ideas

 

I subscribe to an online newsletter and print magazine called “BP Hope”, for people with Bipolar illness. It has some wonderful articles about how to maintain your equilibrium in times of chaos, of which there are many in my life. I usually find solace there and some helpful tips on how to better live my life and to stay stable with my ups and downs. So I was a bit surprised to have such a strongly negative reaction to the posts I read when I sat down to catch up some past issues yesterday. I read a few dozen blogs and articles. (Yes, I was being obsessive…) They all had good ideas. But they burned me out! By the time I was done I was feeling like shit for my inability to carry out all these good ideas. It was just too much for me.

I try so hard to be sane and stable and work assiduously to keep a good attitude about life and love and all the rest. But I’m very sensitive to criticism, and tho these articles certainly weren’t meant to be taken as such, I took them that way. While I was reading all these good ideas I gradually fell into a deep hole of depression that stuck with me for the rest of the day. Not terrible, but still awful, because it called into question all my good intentions. Just because I still haven’t “gotten there” yet I think I’ve failed. I think this even after being diagnosed with BP-I for over 22 years and being “stable” for the last 2 years or so. Shouldn’t I know better by now? I guess not, judging by my reactions to these articles. “Stable” is a relative term…

Yeah, I know I’m being too hard on myself. It goes with the territory sometimes. I agreed with most of the ideas I read about, and I do a lot of them a lot of the time, but there were still so many others that I haven’t mastered yet it made me feel like none of it was valid. It goes that way on occasion. It’s a classic CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) sort of situation. I’m falling into the trap of all or nothing thinking that has plagued me for my whole life. I know better, but I still fall for it. I can’t always change my thoughts the way I need to, and I think I should be able to. I am superman after all, aren’t I?

We sometimes say of people with Bipolar that we’re the piece of shit the world revolves around. Boy, does that fit me to a “T”. There’s way too much of the piece of shit part in me, but here I’m manifesting the other pole, where I think I’m a god and should be able to do everything I want to. I can’t. None of us can. It’s classic BP grandiosity, and it sucks. I doubt that I’m the only one who does this sort of thing. In fact it’s pretty common for people living with a mental illness that causes our brains to misfire and go to places they don’t need to go, just because we encounter something that challenges our perceived sense of self. I get that challenge a lot. Mostly I’m fine with it and I try to take it as constructive criticism, or maybe just good intentions meant to help me survive. But then I go and try to do Everything I read about so as to be perfect. It’s ridiculous I know, but there it is.

What I’m learning from this, again, is that I have to take it easy, and not try to engorge a whole bunch of information in one sitting. It’s way too much and I can’t handle it all. I need to take it in smaller doses and absorb it thoroughly before I jump onto the next good thing. I do that a lot and I do try to control it, but sometimes I’m not very good at it. I’m so impulsive – another classic BP trait. I need to slow myself down. I’m clearly a bit hypomanic in the way I approach life all too often. I rush into things and don’t think of the consequences. It’s so typical I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I’m not alone. It’s all part of the BP syndrome after all and we all fall for it at times.

Overdoing things is a big issue for me. I’m currently struggling with the pain of a bad back spasm I got from too much gardening. I’ve been hurting for a week now and it’s all because I didn’t stop when I should have. It’s a bad pattern of mine and I need to adjust it. It’s the same thing I did with my reading. I just think I can handle way too much more than I realistically can. And it hurts me in so many ways – physically, mentally and emotionally. But it shouldn’t drive me into depression just because I overdo it. It doesn’t help me at all to beat myself up. So just stop it Steve! Uh huh… Right…..

We all need to be more careful of ourselves. We’re fragile beings and need to be gentle with how we treat our bodies, minds and emotions. I’m just one example of a person with Bipolar going to extremes. It’s the nature of the illness, but we don’t have to let it control us. I know I can do better, without thinking I’m all special for doing it, tho that’s hard. We have to keep trying. Eventually we might get a clue and even improve our lives. That’s my plan. I just hope I can stick to it. This time…

Be at peace,

Steve

A Chronically Discontent Manic Depressive

I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in late 1994 and I’ve had 22 some years to study and learn about this illness. I’ve learned a lot. I read books and magazines all the time and I search the internet. I’ve learned how to dance with this disorder pretty well, especially since last year when I was put on a new mix of medications. I’m doing much better. In fact I feel pretty stable for the first time since my diagnosis. It’s still hard, but at least I have a clue as to what’s possibly coming down the line towards me. My brain is different than it used to be and it’s taken some getting used to, but I’m getting there.

Last year I was also given the diagnoses of PTSD and Dysthymia. I’ve been studying about how these disorders affect me since then, and again I’ve learned a lot. But it’s still new, and I don’t know as much as I need to. I recently read a book called “The Half Empty Heart”, by Alan Downs, PhD. It’s all about Dysthymia, or what he calls Chronic Discontent, and man I can relate all too well to this description. It’s also called low grade depression because it’s always there and never really goes away. You’re in a low state of depression basically all the time. It cycles some but mostly it’s just there, underlying all your actions and thoughts. I read this book a few years ago and it intrigued me, but I didn’t have the diagnosis yet so I just thought about the subject and how it affected me. But since I’ve been diagnosed with it and know more I can see that it’s affected me my whole life. I’ve learned a lot more reading it this time.

One of the main things that people with Chronic discontent deal with is a tendency to emotionally and physically withdraw from stressful or difficult situations. It’s a hallmark of the syndrome in fact. And it’s one of the hardest symptoms to handle. There are exercises in the book that are intended to help you overcome this, but I haven’t gotten too far in that. But I have read enough to know that withdrawal has been a constant theme in my life, since I was a young child in fact, right up to today. When things get too hard for me, instead of trying to work it out I often tend to just disappear and run away from the hard stuff. I can’t tell you how many people and situations I’ve abandoned in my life. Dozens at the least. I’m not happy about this, in fact I’m totally ashamed of myself. That’s a big part of the symptomology too. Experiencing shame is the way we live our lives, based on perspectives we developed when we were very young. We just don’t feel like we’re OK as human beings deep inside of ourselves.

A shame based life is filled with regret and unfulfilled promise. We respond to life as tho we feel we aren’t as good as the people we interact with, and so we self-sabotage many of our relationships. We often are left with no one to call friends any more. That’s my situation. I’ve left so many people that there are just a few left. As I get older this is a big problem. And I don’t have a clue how to overcome it. It’s buried so deep in my pysche and I’m so terrified of changing it that it informs most of my decisions. It might as well be who I am. But it’s not. I still refuse to be defined by my diagnoses, but it’s hard not to be. I’ve always been ashamed of who I am, despite all the good things I’ve done in my life. It’s like they don’t matter and all I can see are my failures and abandonments. This has been true for as long as I can remember, even as a small child. In fact that’s where it started I’m sure.

I don’t mean to blame anyone for this, but it seems clear to me that this began in my childhood, and of course that means that my parents were at the root of the situation. I had wonderful parents and they loved me so much. They were happy to have me, but I was so sickly that they severely overprotected me and I grew up believing that I was too much an invalid to do too many things. This despite the fact that they also told me I could succeed at anything I tried, and I so often did. But the shame I developed over that time lives on today. Back then it was an undefined feeling that I was inferior to other people. I still feel that way. I know that both my parents suffered from low self esteem and I’m sure that it translated into my psyche at a young age. How could it not? Again I don’t blame them. They were just living their lives the best they could after all. But I never talked to them about this before they both died. Now I can’t ever deal with it with them and it’s up to me to overcome it alone. It hurts my heart because I love them so much and yet they left me with such a painful legacy.

The title of this book – the Half Empty Heart – is very powerful to me. It’s a hard thing to face but it’s the way it seems to be. We tend to look at life as a glass half empty instead of half full. And in that we fail to take care of our hearts. It’s very painful when the reckoning comes around and you see all that you’ve lost thru your lack of action, or actions you’ve taken to escape. It seems like every time I begin to have a good life and accomplish something, I sabotage it somehow and end up with nothing left. This is a common experience for people with chronic discontent. We stop ourselves before we’ve even given ourselves a chance to succeed. I’ve so often declined to even begin something because I was sure it was doomed to failure. It’s not that I lack courage. I just don’t have the faith in myself.

But here’s where the mix of diagnoses comes into play. Having Bipolar disorder means that you may cycle constantly and can be up or down depending on your current mood. When you’re “Up” you feel on top of the world and I think that because I’ve lived so much of my life in hypo/mania – the good stuff feelings – that it overcame a lot of my chronic discontent and allowed me to do more than I might have otherwise done. I couldn’t help but feel good about myself, even if it was based in mania and not reality, it still felt good and I believed it was real, so it was. In a strange way I feel lucky to have both of these illnesses together. I think that life would have been much worse for me if I’d just been chronically discontent, or just manic. I probably wouldn’t be here by now I suspect. I think that having those up times of bipolar mania allowed me to distance myself from the bad feelings and I had the courage to do all kinds of outrageous things that nurtured me and kept me happy despite the low grade depression I still felt deep inside. It was a strange mix, and it still is.

The other side of it is that the dysthymia often kept me from displaying florid manias to other people because I was too ashamed to “act out” and embarrass myself. I so often hid my horrible feelings of distress deep inside so that no one could tell that I was experiencing such difficult emotions. In some way I feel that this saved me a lot of heart ache because I never got “caught out” with my Bipolar until I was old enough to make better sense of it than I would have in my younger days. If I’d been diagnosed with it in my teens, as most people with BP are, I would never have accomplished half of what I did do. So the two diagnoses have worked in tandem to help form my life as it is now. Not great perhaps, but I’m not in a hospital (tho I have been) and I’m not dead (tho I’ve tried to be). But I haven’t been that successful in my life either. Depends on how you gauge it. I’ve done good things but I never made much money, and that’s how we judge success in our culture. So I feel like a failure even while I revel in my good works. It’s a weird way to live I guess but it’s what I know and have done. And I suspect there are others who have similar experiences.

I hope I don’t seem to be complaining about any of this. I assure you I’m not. I get it that I’m the one responsible for my actions and ways of being in the world. I’m not making excuses. I’m the one who bailed on my friends and communities in my chronic discontent, and I’m the one who was manic and did great things while I was too. I find it fascinating to try to embrace these two different illnesses. And I haven’t even touched on the PTSD. I could write a whole post just on that. All these diagnoses work together for me, sometimes in helpful ways, as I’ve described, sometimes in terrible ways too. I’m still working on the challenges of having these disorders and sometimes I think I’m even making progress. I hope I am anyway. Life is too hard for me too often, but it’s also so beautiful. I’m a lucky guy actually. I have a wonderful man who loves me to death and I have a home and good food to eat, and so much more. I even have good health, despite these disorders. So take all this as a discussion of how one can manage to live with these challenges and how I personally have dealt with them. At least it makes some sense to me…

If any of this resonates for you too – there is help. Go find it!

Steve

Cycling While Stable

I wrote a blog post last November on my 67th birthday about how I thought I was doing much better since I’ve been on a mood stabilzer that actually works. It’s been about a year now that I’ve felt this relative stability, but lately I’ve been looking back at my behavior over the last few months and I realize that I’ve actually been cycling thru hypomania and depression quite a bit more than I realized at the time. Impulsivity is the biggest and most problematic issue for me. But obsessive thinking is a close second. The two go together for me too often and I make a fool of myself in situations where I should know better.

Over spending is another one that’s gotten me lately. Impulsive again, and obsessive. These are all symptoms of Bipolar illness and apparently I’ve been experiencing them frequently. I didn’t really see what I was doing at the time but at some point I realized it and I stopped it, or tried to. But I still act too impulsively and without proper forethought. It drives me crazy and embarrasses the hell out of me. I say things or write things in emails that are out of line with my sense of self, and I portray myself in ways I’d rather not. I can’t seem to stop blurting things out that make me look and feel stupid, both in print and in interactions in real life. I attribute this mostly to the hypomania but I see there’s a clear element of depression in there too.

I guess I’m in a mild mixed state, where I experience both the highs and the lows that are the hallmarks of manic depression. I go there when I see the effects of my hypomania and it upsets me, so I get depressed. Then I feel better and act out stupidly again. Then I get depressed. Then…. You get it… It’s a vicious cycle. I have a diagnosis of Dysthymia as well as Bipolar type 1 and PTSD. Dysthymia is a constant state of low grade depression, and I can see that it’s an appropriate diagnosis for me because I feel a bit “down” almost all of the time. I’m not really sick but I’m sad and feeling the loss of the vitality that the hypomania brings.

I’m a bit disconcerted by all this. It makes me realize once again that I’ll always cycle thru these emotions, maybe more easily at times than others, but they’ll always be there, up and down, again and again, even when I’m “stable”. It sometimes feels like a bleak future for me, but I refuse to accept that it’s going to define my life as I get older. At times it feels like I don’t have enough time left to get it right, but then I see that I really have all the time I need and I can do it if I just keep trying. I’m still pretty young after all, and people do amazing things in their 60’s and 70’s and well beyond that.

I have a lifetime of experience that tells me that, tho I’ll still cycle much of the time, I’ll also have relatively calm periods when I just feel OK. During these times I can assess my actions and behaviors and make decisions to act less impulsively and obsessively. I can learn to think things thru more thoroughly before I act or speak. Seeing these aspects of my personality lately has given me an impetus to renew my commitment to taking better care of myself, more consciously. I already think of myself as a conscious person, but obviously I don’t always live up to these expectations of myself.

I’m continually learning to cut myself some slack for my failures. It’s a big part of healing for me. I still hate myself for the slightest misstep, and beat myself up mercilessly. Suicidal ideation is not that far away at times, tho thankfully it’s not the problem it used to be. It’s a hard thing to experience as frequently as I have in the past. It’s too often been the default setting for my negative emotions when I screw up and it’s very hard to uproot it from my consciousness. Now I’ll still feel bad about myself, but usually not so much that I want to die.

In fact I want to live, and live well. So I’ll keep trying to moderate my moods and be more aware of them as they cycle back and forth thru my consciousness. It can be a blurry line between accepting responsibility for my actions and recognizing that the manic depression has “pushed’ me in certain directions that are not in my best interests. I think I’m getting better at seeing these differences all the time. After all I just caught myself for the ways I’ve been blowing it recently. This gives me hope that I can actually keep doing it. All I have to do is stay aware of my thinking, and treat myself with gentle loving care, the way I try to treat other people. It’ll be a big challenge, but I think I can do it.

Cycling consciously,

Steve

Hypersexuality

This started out as a comment I made on the BP Hope website for an article about Hypersexuality. I liked what I’d written so much I thought I’d expand it and turn it into a post for Naked Nerves. It’s the kind of exploration I want to present in these pages. It’s an honest discussion of certain aspects of sexuality, so be prepared for some frank language about sex, tho nothing too outrageous given our current cultural standards.

First I think we need a bit of an introduction to the subject here. Not many people realize what hypersexuality is, so we’ll start there. Simply put, it’s a strongly heightened desire for sex, all kinds of sex, without concern for the consequences. It’s an overwhelming drive, thirst and urge for sexual experience, and it’s almost impossible to resist it. It’s a significant part of having Bipolar Disorder, which is why the discussion in BP Hope was written. People in general don’t talk about it much, and even folks with BP don’t often do it with our Psychiatrists and therapists, but we do amongst oursleves. People who have BP are usually willing, tho maybe uncomfortable, to be open and honest about it, but it seems to embarass the professionals, as most talk of sex does in our puritanical culture. It can be great fun to feel so incredibly sexual, but more often it can ruin lives and cause scandals and infidelities, failed marriages and relationships, and broken hearts all around, to say the least.

Hypersexuality can be at the heart of it all. People may screw around too much and with people they shouldn’t be with. Office/work romances, casual hook-ups with strangers, sex with people they previously thought of only as friends – which may destroy the friendship – every sort of sexual expression people can have with each other can be affected. It’s an almost impossible urge to ignore, it’s very persistent and it can totally overwhelm your good judgement with its intensity. You just Have to go have sex! Lots of it! All the time! Consequences don’t count. It doesn’t matter at the moment if it’s risky or may hurt someone else – that’s the farthest thing from your mind. All that counts is the urge to fuck, and to fuck a lot.

I’m not trying to write a treatise here, but more of a story about my own expriences with it. I suspect many of you with Bipolar will recognize yourselves in my stories. I hope you do, and that there are some useful insights to gain from what I have to say, whether you’re Bipolar or not. It affects other people too of course, not just folks with BP. Sometimes people call it sex addiction, but that’s not quite the same. It’s more of a sexual compulsion. It’s most common in people with BP while in a manic state, but it doesn’t have to be full blown mania. It can just be a very strong “push” you feel to be sexual at any time, and I do mean any time. Here’s what that’s been like for me:

I’m a 67 year old gay man and I’ve been hypersexual for as long as I can remember, even back in my childhood. I first started playing with myself sexually around age 4 or 5, maybe younger. I recall being on the couch with my mom around then and stroking myself and her getting upset, saying it was wrong and dirty. Great first lesson in sex, eh? But I kept it up, sometimes doing it so much I caused my dick to bleed. I was obsessed. I had my first orgasm in the shower at age 8. I had no idea what had happened but it felt so incredibly good. I told my friends at school about it and said it felt like going to the bathroom all over! They thought I was weird. Little did they know!!

I had my first real sex with a cousin my age at 11, with our parents in the living room and us in the bedroom. Even then I recognized the thrill and the danger of getting caught, but I didn’t care because it felt so good. We sucked each other and I came in his mouth – he didn’t and was very confused. But I reveled in the sensations. Wow!!! I guess I was mean, only into my own satisfaction, not that that excuses it. But I was just a horny kid and I wanted it so much I just didn’t care. As time went on I became involved in a compulsive sexual “relationship” with a boy my age for about 8 or 9 years thru my teens. I got all the sex I wanted, and I wanted a lot. We did it all the time. Then I read in the encyclopedia that sodomy and fellatio were “bad” and that scared me, but it didn’t stop me, so it was always a closely guarded, guilty secret. I finally lost my heterosexual virginity to a woman at age 19 and thru my 20’s was serially monogamous with several women. I had lots of sex, sometimes with men too, and I masturbated a lot as well. I was always horny. I’d have sex with anyone who’d want me, male or female.

That got more extreme when I came out at 29 and into the gay scene in the late 70’s/early 80’s. I had lots of sex, both with boyfriends and cruising in the parks and bathrooms – highly risky, but who cared? Not me. Sex parties, groups, orgies, running naked thru the parks – I loved it all, and eventually figured out I’d had anonymous sex with hundreds of other guys over the years. I just thought it was a part of gay life and since everyone else was doing it too it didn’t seem abnormal. It was just a part of our lives – it was no big deal. Of course at first this was in the early days of AIDS, so I didn’t let anyone fuck me without a condom after 1984, until I met my life-partner. Tho very hypersexual, I was aware enough to be safe. Not everyone is so smart, or lucky. Even now at this “advanced” age I’m still horny all the time, sometimes even more so when depressed, and watching porn and masturbating and fucking as much as I can. I’m also a Scorpio, the sign that governs the genitals, and some would say that has a lot to do with how I am, but who knows for sure? I just know who and what I am now, and I believe being Bipolar has always been the most of it, even when I was a kid, given other behaviors I exhibited back then.

I’d always been depressed a lot in my life but I really “lived” in hypomania, with a few real manic experiences as well, but I didn’t know what it all meant. I was terrified of Psychiatry and I certainly didn’t know I was Bipolar. Even when I tried suicide at age 29 they said it was “just” depression. A familiar story for many of us, I know. Then at age 44 I crashed and burned really bad and was finally diagnosed with BPII, rapid cycling, mixed states. Later that was changed to BipolarI and PTSD, where it stands now. I had a few hospitalizations along the way, and after the last one I was so hyped up and so sexual I felt like it radiated it out my eyes. Walking down the street I was cruising everyone I met, and they cruised me back. I was so high on sex it almost hurt. That night I called a friend and asked him to come fuck me silly. He did. I couldn’t help myself. Not what the doctors had in mind when they released me I’m sure!

When I first explored Bipolar and read about hypersexuality I thought “this is me!” It fit me so well. I was so turned on so much of the time and masturbated so frequently, often many times a day if I could. I went for 20 years without a partner but I still “cruised” for sex a lot, even tho it was way risky, but I never got caught. I felt so invincible you see – grandiosity to the max! I felt “pushed” to spend hours seeking sexual encounters – always have felt that push, still do. Hypo/Mania anyone?? But I began to wonder if it was really OK to do it so much. I worried about myself and wondered if I’d ever find a real partner who was like I was. I wasn’t very stable at all with the BP during those 20 some years and tried tons of meds to try to get OK. It was a long, hard slog and most of the meds made me sick or crazy, and they didn’t work. Then things changed.

When I was 57 I met a man who was also my age who I fell deeply in love with. We met online on Gay.com and gradully got to know one another thru emails. Then when we finally met we were naked and in bed together in 5 minutes, I kid you not! I’d finally found my mate!! Nowadays we have sex a lot, and occasionally invite a third guy in to share our magic with us. We’re both highly sexed, but he’s not BP at all. Very stable in fact, and I wouldn’t call him hypersexual. He’s just into sex a lot, but appropriately, unlike some of my experiences. And for the last year I’ve finally found a good mix of meds and I’m pretty stable with my Bipolar Disorder too, mostly, with an episode here and there, now and then. And I’m still hypersexual.

I still jerk off a lot, as does he, and it doesn’t interfere with our sex lives at all. I like to watch porn sometimes too – it’s fun and it gets me off. I still have manic rushes of hypersexuality, much of the time in fact. I’m so used to it I mostly just revel in it, but sometimes my cock takes over my mind and I get way too sexual, obsessing about it all the time. I get caught up far too much in the search for more sex, even tho my partner and I have a great sex life. But the yearning is just a difficult thing for me sometimes, not a danger to myself or anyone else, like it has been in the past. I’m still HIV negative, and I intend to stay that way. We play safe.

I’m know I’m one of the lucky ones – I never really ruined my life with my sexual escapades, though I know I’ve hurt people, which I deeply regret. Mostly it’s been a fun journey which I’d never want to change. I’m more careful now, and have been for many years, since I was diagnosed and began the search to understand my condition. I still cycle thru depression and mania, and I often struggle with hypersexuality, but I’m pretty much OK with it all. That’s good enough for me…

I realize I’ve never really told this whole story to anyone. It feels good to talk about it so openly. Hope I didn’t freak anyone out too much. And remember – this is about my experiences – your mileage may vary… Thanks for reading.

Too Sexy Steve

I Think I’m Doing OK Now…

But I’m not totally convinced.  I seem to be on a much more level plane then I’ve been on for the last 20 some years, if not my whole life, I’m not sure.  My past before being diagnosed with Bipolar 23 years ago last week was so different.  (see “I Was A Different Person Then”).  I won’t go into all that because I did so already.  But things are different now, again, in a new way.  Earlier this year I was put on Lamictal  (Lamotrigine), a mood stabilizer, in addition to Abilify (Aripiprazole), Wellbutrin (Bupropion), Buspar  (Buspirone) and Klonopin (Clonazapam).  For the first time ever, a medication has actually changed my life.  I still spend some time in depression, but it’s mostly not that bad and I can usually overcome it with CBT  and smart thinking and action.  And I’m not too high either, tho I did try to get off 13 years of Abilify a few months ago (it makes me shake terribly and I hate it) and I had a really bad reaction, so bad I thought I was going to lose it completely.  It was the closest to real mania I’ve come in years.  So I went back on the drug and I’ve been OK since then.  (I had my Psychiatrist’s permission and support to quit, BTW).

I remember telling my counselor at the time that I was struggling with this new reality, because I didn’t know who I was anymore if I wasn’t depressed all the time.  I still feel that way, and it’s actually pushed me back into depression several times since then.  Weird.  You’d think I’d be totally at peace with this and be happy for myself.  But it’s not that easy to change a lifetime of such inbred patterns of thinking and behaving.  I Was depression in the past and it was my total life.  It was hard on me, and on the people I loved around me.  I could stop it occasionally, but not totally, and I suffered with it a lot.  It was my daily reality and it informed all my decisions and actions way too much.  I was scared all the time and afraid of being caught out as a loser.  Too much fear is paralyzing and I was often paralyzed.  I still am to some extent but not nearly so much.  I am better now.

I’m gradually learning to accept and revel in the “new” me.  I just had a counseling session with my new counselor and he asked me to do a narrative of my life – positive and negative.  I found myself listing tons of positive things about my life, but not that many negative ones.   A total surprise to me.  In the past it would have been much more tilted the other way towards extreme negativity.  When I’m depressed it’s all I can see, and it’s the same way with being OK I guess.  I Am my emotions way too much and if I’m doing well I think l’ve always done well, despite the memories of the failures and awfulness of depression. When I’m depressed it’s the opposite and it’s all I can see and feel.

Staying balanced is a real struggle for me even now.  But I can do it most of the time.  I’m amazed, but still frightened by the new me.  I still don’t know how to interact or be with people very well.  I still fall back into the old patterns of depression if I don’t keep up my guard all the time.  But I have real support in my partner Louie, and with my friends, my counselor and psychiatrist and other health care folks.  So I think maybe I can do this.  I sure do hope so, tho hope can be a trap too if you’re not careful.  Just ask a student of Buddhism.  Today is my 67th birthday and perhaps it’s the start of a new reality for me.  A truly new year of life.  I think it could be and I’m trying to believe so much that I can pull it off.  I have a lot of faith in myself these days, and it’s not based in my usual hypomania, but in reality for a change.  Plus I’m older and wiser now.  I understand myself, and life in general, much better.  Staying real and giving it time are my current mantras.  Maybe I really am doing OK now…  Time will tell.

peace,  Steve

I Was A Different Person Then…

I used to think of myself as a competent person. I started my first business in my early 20’s and created several more over the years, ending with a non-profit Healing Arts Center I founded in 1991. I thought I’d found my place in the world and would be working at it for the rest of my life. But it didn’t work out that way. I finally got “caught out” and had the worst breakdown in my life at 44. I was diagnosed with Bipolar and was forced to take a hard look at my life. What I found was that I hadn’t really  been as competent all my life as I’d thought. I was just Hypo/manic.

I don’t mean to say I never accomplished anything good. I did some good community service work and created some beautiful landscapes and gardens. But it was my headspace that messed me up. I’d thought I was good at what I did, and I guess I sorta was. I got by anyway, mostly by being a good bullshitter. I was good at projecting competence, even when it wasn’t real, as so often happened. People accepted me for who I said I was and who I pretended to be. I was good at it.

Now I look back at the work I did and see how much of it was fueled by mania or sometimes just hypomania. I doubt I ever had any real competence at all, tho I knew enough to get by, as I said. I was a con man, tho I never would have said I was or thought it at all. I always thought I was doing good work and helping to make the world a better place. And I did. But the cost was enormous. And not just to me. I cringe when I think of some of the gardens I planted that weren’t as good as they should have been. People live with my mistakes even now. It drives me nuts.

I know that hiding ourselves is a big part of being Bipolar. (Having bipolar?? – whatever…) A lot of us hide who we really are because we somehow know we’re not quite “right”, even tho we don’t know what’s wrong at the time. I always thought I was just a high energy, hyper person who was very creative and able to do amazing things that other people couldn’t do. I was a bright sparkly light in the darkness at times and I relished it so much. But there was a darker energy lurking just under the surface.

It didn’t stop me tho. I did a lot of good stuff and created some amazing entities. I did so much that was wonderful and I thought I was a pretty neat guy for doing it. I transformed the places I worked at. And the ones I started myself were unique and treasured. I got lots of compliments and good strokes on what a good role model I was for striking out on my own and creating good things for my community. It made me high I’ll admit. Too high sometimes… And we know where that can go don’t we?? Whoa!

I’ve always been a rapid cycler, tho I didn’t know that’s what it was of course. I’d do a big job and then I’d crash and burn for awhile and then I’d get it back together and try again. And the damn same thing again, and again, and again. What a mess! Those down times were awful, often going clear down to suicidal ideation and one time going even farther when I tried to off myself. A bit extreme but it fit my life at the time. Luckily I got caught – but not diagnosed correctly of course – not for years…

I have a diagnosis now – several of them fact. BP I, PTSD, Dysthymia, Chronic Intractable Pain, and more I won’t go into. It’s been 20 plus years since I got that initial Dx of BP and in that time I’ve been mostly a mess so that I really couldn’t function too well. I lived in public housing for over a decade until I met Louie and moved into his home. I’m lucky now but I wasn’t always so lucky. I’ve had to accept that who I am now is Not who I used to be. I just can’t pull it off anymore, and maybe that’s a good thing.

I think I’m more real now than I’ve ever been. More true to who I really am. But those hypo/manias are a thing of the past for the most part. I still get too high/angry sometimes and have to down myself with drugs, but mostly I’m more depressed than manic and stay at a low level of energy and interaction. I’m doing some volunteer work for the city right now and I try to keep something of a social life, tho I lost most of my friends when I had the breakdown and afterwards. But that’s mostly OK. I miss having more friends, but the ones I have are good ones.

I’m still a decent guy I think. I try to live a good life and not mess the world up too much. In fact I try to help it when I can. I garden a lot and teach people about trees and the like. But I’m so much more cautious now. I’m so scared that I’ll screw up again like I did so often in the past. I’m afraid most of the time in fact. That old Impending Doom thing so many of us have. It’s so debilitating at times I can’t even function. I walk carefully through the world these days.

It really does make life more difficult and I look forward to the day I heal from this attitude I have now that nothing I ever did was really real or that I was real myself. I know that can’t be true but it sure feels like it. Those damn feelings again. Not rational at all, but so overwhelming that you can’t ignore them and it feels like they’re all there is to life. I get caught in this so much. I’m afraid to even act much of the time for fear I’ll blow it. I’m not like I used to be at all really, when I had so much courage and self confidence to do such incredible things. I miss that.

That guy is gone and good riddance. He was a braggart and a poseur and a con artist and I’m none of those things in my heart. I’m not who I used to be tho I still have a core of Self that will always be inviolate and that will keep me OK forever, I hope. It’s real now, not some false mania or hyper action that I jump into without thinking of the consequences. I may still do that and I sure still make mistakes, but I feel like they’re really my own now and not some unreal thing I manufactured to get by and get ahead without knowing the results completely. I understand more now.

Yes, I was a different person then. A good one but not always solid and real and true to myself. I was so confident and I miss that confidence a lot. But was it real confidence or just mental illness? I guess it was a little of both, but I think it was tilted toward the illness. Now that I know what I’m dealing with I can do it better. I can’t always control my life, but I try hard and I try to be as real as possible. It seems to be working to some extent and I’m in better shape than I have been in a long time now. So I’m glad I’m different, but I miss the highs and the bravado and most of all the self confidence.

I’ll just have to get used to it, eh?

Steve

Is it Mania or Just Anger?

I’ve been struggling with some emotions that are too raw and close to the surface lately and I’m worried about my reactions to things. I seem to be on a hair thin trigger these days and my anger levels are right below the surface. I know that the current political landscape, in particular the race for president, is affecting me greatly. But it’s more that that, and I wonder whats going on? It seems worse since I got on this current regimen of Wellbutrin and I wonder if this is one of the subtle hints of fracturing that I’ve experienced before on it, but in more obvious degrees. It’s confusing.

I read an interesting article on mania and anger the other day. A leading psychiatrist here in Seattle said that it was wise to beware of labeling anger as mania in Bipolar disorder because it was more often caused by substance abuse. It’s an interesting theory. I’ve not been diagnosed with substance abuse, but I’ve smoked pot since I was in high school – some 50 years now- so obviously some would say that’s my issue. But I’ve always used it carefully and now it’s strictly medical and I smoke it sparingly. My psychiatrist doesn’t mind and my counselor and ND both suggested I use it. So I don’t put much stock into this notion myself. Denial? Maybe, but I think not…

I believe that it’s more than just that. It’s dreadfully close to wrecking me. It Feels like mania, not just anger. And it’s too sharp and too intense and takes me over so much that even little bits of angst can throw me into a fit of rage where I seriously want to hurt someone or myself or destroy the world. Typical, I guess, but it’s no fun at all. Not like the bright sparkly hypo-manias I’ve had so often in life that inspire me to do good work in the world. This is a destructive mania and I’m afraid of it.

I haven’t had a lot of florid manias in my life. Mostly they’ve been long term experiences where I entered into lands uncharted and tried new things that haven’t been done before. Like creating an innovative non-profit healing arts center with my credit cards, working myself to the bone and finally ending up in bankruptcy and disability. I had a Vision you see but I couldn’t see the whole picture and I ended up in disgrace and struggling with it’s futility. It hurt me badly. It was a 4 year manic episode. And no one even noticed, because I hadn’t been diagnosed yet.

Most of my manias haven’t been that obvious to other people. But they have still been filled with lots of anger and rage, thru my whole life. I can remember times when I was a kid that I would explode in rages that terrified my little brother and caused my parents to label me with ADD as an adult. They told me my anger was palpable and horrible when I was young and had those fits of rage. Sounds like the beginnings of Manic Depression to me, eh? I was a horrible little child I think, tho no one in my family is alive to tell me how bad it really was. I can’t remember much about it but I know I wasn’t a bad kid per se, just angry and unpredictable.

So back to my proposal here. Given my experiences in my life I can’t say what is causing me to be so angry these days. I know I can’t discount the situation in the world. It really does affect me. I’m super empathic and I feel the suffering of others deeply. It hurts me. It also makes me mad. This is a problem and I haven’t figured out what to do about it yet. I hope I can keep it under control but I dunno. I haven’t broken anything or slit my wrists, which I’ve wanted to do many times. I haven’t exploded at Louie or any of my friends. And I actually haven’t hurt myself, except with my thinking, which is bad enough.

I try to calm myself down when I feel this anger growing but it’s very hard to do. I often have to resort to drugs and take some Klonopin, or when it’s really bad, some Abilify, that will knock me on my ass and put me totally out of it. At least it’s better than the rage but it wastes me and I don’t  really like that. But it’s better than the anger for sure. If I don’t know where it comes from and what to do to stop it I can at least alleviate it some and that’s good for me. I also use CBT to tell myself to Stop It! But that doesn’t always work out too well. I’m often too far gone, unless I catch it early. Sometime I can, but not always.

I think this is a bit of a manic response to situations that I can’t control and that cause me distress to the point where I crack up and lose it. Or is it just anger? I’m still confused. It’s been there so long, but then maybe I’m just an angry person. I don’t think so tho. No one I know would ever call me that. But I would. I feel it so much. Sometimes I know that my anger is invigorating and it helps me come out of my depressions really well. But this stuff is out of bounds and isn’t connected to reality. It’s troubling. I’m at a loss as to what to do besides trying to just live with it and try my best to deal with it safely for myself and others. So far, so good. Maybe it doesn’t matter what it is, maybe what counts is dealing with it well. Sounds good to me…

How’s Your anger level?

Steve