Tag: bipolar

Some books on Mental Illness

In keeping with Mental Illness Awareness Week, here are some books and a blog that have information for the lay person about various illnesses.

Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind is considered a definitive work on Bipolar (which she still calls manic-depressive illness). The author is a psychologist who also has the disorder. I read this shortly after I was diagnosed, and I feel like maybe I should read it again now, since my perspective may have changed. 

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks is on my list of books to read (no, I haven’t read it yet). Saks is a law professor who has schizophrenia.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (a.k.a The Bloggess) is a very funny (and fast) read. While it isn’t about mental illness directly, Ms. Lawson suffers from depression and severe social anxiety, which made doing a book tour and other related things very difficult. And if you aren’t familiar with The Bloggess, check out her blog. Some things to make sure you don’t miss:

Beyonce the 6 foot metal chicken
Wil Wheaton collating paper
The video ad for the book (featuring several big name stars)
The traveling red dress revisited (and read all the links)
A confession about depression and self-harm (insert trigger warning here)

I’ll post more tomorrow.



Mental Health Awareness Week

October 7-13 is national Mental Health Awareness Week, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health.

I sometimes casually mention being depressed or having volatile moods or taking medication, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about it more in-depth.

I have bipolar 2 disorder.

One of the best places to find out about the differences between “classic” manic/depressive bipolar (or bipolar 1) and bipolar 2 is PsychEducation.org. The author of that page is a researcher in the field and an advocate for helping people with bipolar 2.


The best visualization I’ve seen for defining mood disorders comes from the PsychEducation website. Dr. Phelps sees bipolar and mood disorders as a spectrum disorder (much like autism). While his opinion is not expressed in the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association), his descriptions fit so well with my experience, I tend to go with it.



“Unipolar” refers to unipolar depression – clinical depression, major depression. Point A refers to people with depression who respond well to traditional medication. Point B is a point where:

 there is some sort of threshold where these approaches are no longer completely or continuously effective: either they don’t work at all, offer only partial relief, or help for a while then “stop working” (which may account for some or much of “Prozac poop-out”, now regarded as a “soft sign” of bipolar disorder, described below).  

 BP NOS is “bipolar not otherwise specified”. 


The main difference between bipolar 1 and bipolar 2 is the level of mania.

A person with bipolar 1 has had at least one fully manic episode. Mania is defined as:

a manic episode is defined by a distinct period of persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood lasting at least one week (or less if hospitalization is required). The mood is also accompanied by additional symptoms, such as inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, a decreased need for sleep, pressured speech, flight of ideas, distractibility, increased involvement in goal-directed activities or psychomotor agitation, and excessive involvement in pleasurable and high-risk activities. from http://www.manicdepressive.org/dsm.html    

People with bipolar 2 have “hypomania” (aka “little” mania) with the elevated mood, grandiosity, pressured speech, flight of ideas, and many of the manic symptoms, but only lasting a few days (4-7) and  is “not severe enough to cause marked impairment in social or occupational functioning or to require hospitalization.”

Except that for me, it can cause problems. I’m too impulsive at work, or I can’t stop saying what I really think, which can get me into trouble with friends and bosses.

As I’m beginning to write this, on October 5 at about 1:30 a.m., I’m hypomanic. I’m doing all kinds of making plans and organizing. I downloaded multiple “blogging plan” pages and set up a binder. I bought new binders and other office supplies (that I WANT but don’t need and should be spending my money elsewhere). I’ve been reading blogs that have tips on making better blogs. Like, I swear, I read over 40 entries at Problogger tonight alone. I wrote posts for two of my other blogs, after almost a month of not writing at all.

It’s now the 5th at 6:30 a.m. I slept for about 4 hours and now I’m wide awake. I’ve opened about 15 tabs on Chrome looking for inspiration to start jotting down notes for my blogs, while watching a show on Hulu.

It’s really hard to hold onto a job when this happens. On the one hand, I’m more productive than ever, but on the other, I can’t concentrate on one thing for more than a couple of minutes. While I’m writing this, I’m thinking about the knitting I want to do, writing patterns, how to make my math blog better, how to get more money coming in, helping my daughter with a Greek costume for homecoming spirit week, and how the heck we’re going to finish making this dress she wants to make by tomorrow night (homecoming dance) and a few other things that keep escaping before I can get them written down.

While this state is much preferable to a state where I’m so depressed I can’t do ANYTHING for weeks or months at a time, it feels like I try to live my life in the brief few days of these hypomanic episodes, because I spend so much of my life depressed and unable to function.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 2.6 percent of Americans have bipolar disorder – that’s about 5.7 million adults.

There’s a lot of us out there, and many are functioning well in society. You may know someone with this problem, but not even know it.

Because there is still a strong stigma about mental disorders, the person you know may never tell you. Like people with unipolar depression, they suffer in silence. But as we do more research on the brain with PET scans and the like and we begin to figure out how brain chemicals work, it becomes clear that there is a physical component to this and other “mental illnesses”.

For me, one of the things that is important about Mental Illness Awareness is about accepting that there should be no difference in how we treat “mental” illnesses and how we treat “physical” ones.

Do you know someone with a mental illness? Do YOU have a mental illness? How does it affect your/their ability to hold a job? To maintain relationships? To “have a life”?

Working through stuff

While I’m working on my fitness and weight loss journey, emotional things keep coming up.

One I’m tired of talking about except how it affects my future.

I put the OKCupid profile back up, but I’m not very encouraged. I have pics up now, and I don’t think they’re bad pics (or I wouldn’t have picked them), but now I’m not getting the level of interest from people looking at my profile as I was when I only had a pic of my legs and feet. 🙂

 A couple of weeks ago, some internet friends came out to the Bay Area for a vacation, and I drove to where they were staying. We hung out, went to Chinatown one day and introduced them to our favorite tea house.

Another day we went to Golden Gate Park and saw the rose garden and Stow Lake. Later we went to Straights Singaporean Restaurant and met several other internet friends. It was a great time! These pics were taken on that second day.

 So, yes, I’m fat/chubby/chunky. I’m honest about that. I’m still technically obese, although I’m getting close be being merely overweight. (One more inch off the waist!)

But I still think these are decent pictures. If nothing else, I’m genuinely happy in them.

Chemistry, wit, charm, passion don’t always come across with internet communication, though. I’m finding it hard to connect with anyone. Anyone that is interested in me, I’m not interested in.

And that is really the core of this problem, and goes back to the thing I don’t want to talk about any more.

I haven’t had a relationship since I was diagnosed bipolar. That’s almost thirteen years now.

My relationships prior to that were always either short and intense, or completely casual. No in-between, and only a couple had “long-term potential” in my eyes. And, obviously, even those didn’t work out.

I always met men when I was manic and almost always drunk, too. I feel like I don’t know how to do things any other way.

Which makes me wonder if I’m actually capable of having a real, intimate, long-term relationship.

When I bring this up to other people (not that I have to many), they scoff and tell me, “Of course you are!”

I’m not so sure.

If I’m completely honest about my previous relationships, only one came close to being authentically intimate. And I think that was largely due to him working hard to break down my walls. Those walls are now higher and thicker. Will anyone else have the patience to break through?

The one thing I miss about my manic times is the confidence I felt. It’s really difficult now to socialize. I get panic attacks. I feel timid.

I’m trying to break out of that. I went to an SCA event last month. Last week I went to a Pagan meetup. I’m attending Parent Group meetings at the tae kwon do school. And the above socializing with internet friends.

Right now, I’m capable of doing those things because I’m not working.

What about when I am working?

Will I withdraw again?

I think it’s likely.

My energy reserves seem to be very small/low. I don’t seem to be as capable of doing as many things as other people are. Everything exhausts me, especially if it has to do with interacting with others.

I think that’s the core reason I prefer to live alone.

And does preferring to live alone bode well for a future relationship?

I have no idea where I was intending to go with this when I started writing it. I know I had something different in mind than where it ended up, but can’t quite recall what it was. [I know, if I did the “pre-writing” note-taking and outlining, I’d be more consistant. But I don’t.]

Edited to add: Someone told me privately that they thought this post was about my weight. It’s not. I mention the weight because as I’m losing weight, emotional stuff is coming up and amplifying my insecurities. Emotional stuff that I’ve suppressed for years while I was dealing with just surviving. I have to deal with the emotional stuff now to get where I want to be. Clear as mud? 

Roller coaster, anyone?

As I mentioned on Las Flacas blog, the past two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster.

I’m not sure what’s going on; I have been pretty consistent with my meds, but my emotions are all over the place.

Crying one minute, setting up a profile on a dating site and flirting with strangers online the next.

I got up enough courage (or mania or something) to re-enter an old hobby with other people in it (most of my hobbies are solo pursuits).

The public areas of my apartment are cleaner than usual, but still not where I would like them, but I’ve let them go a bit in the last few days.

I’m behind on things I want and need to do, but I’ve knit more than half a dozen star-shaped cotton cloths (I’m really obsessed with this pattern in a self-striping yarn because it comes out looking so cool!)

Seriously, don’t they look cool? And every one is slightly different, even when I use the same yarn because each skein starts in a different place on the color pattern.

  Self-striping yarn from Sugar n’ Cream.

(And if anyone wants one, let me know. I can’t sell them because it’s totally someone else’s pattern, but I’ll send you one if you want. They can be used as a dishcloth, wash cloth, altar cloth or any number of other things. I would NOT use them as a hot pad or pot holder though; they are not thick enough for that.)

Anyway. . . . that’s my mind lately: either mindlessly performing a simple task or bouncing around and not able to concentrate at all.

If it continues, I may have to contact my pdoc and have meds adjusted. But I also did not lift for 10 days, and it’s possible my body was getting used to the exercise and the sudden stop screwed up some hormones or other brain chemicals. Now that I’m lifting again, maybe it will all calm down?

Mood swings and food

My mood state has been all over the place in the last few days.

Monday, I was completely manic, doing deep cleaning in the apartment, writing a couple posts plus in my journal.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I was anxious  and alternated between being irritated, optimistic, and crying for no reason.

I barely ate anything at all those three days, which is not at all like me.

I need to get to the gym today, but this is even more volatile than usual for me.

I’ve had Mirena for 11 weeks now, but I haven’t stopped spotting/bleeding the whole time. When it hits 12 weeks, I’m going to contact my doctor, because it’s really annoying. I’m wondering if this is having an effect on my mood? It is hormonal, but one of the reasons I had it put in was that the hormones were supposed to stay local instead of going through my whole system. Also, it was supposed to make my periods LESS annoying.

I meant to go to the gym yesterday and I never made it out of the apartment. Now that my air conditioner is finally working, I don’t want to leave! I need to go today. Lifting may help my mood.

I need to redirect my energy to other things than where they have been. I don’t want to talk about where they have been, because it’s stupid and annoying.

Directing my energy into cleaning on Monday helped a bit, I think. Maybe I can do more of that today.

I also put a profile up on OKCupid. But every time I start talking to someone or look at profiles, I’m rejecting them or just getting scared.

I did it because I thought it might be nice to meet someone now, but I also don’t think I’m ready to meet anyone yet.

For years, I’ve been saying that I’m ok alone, and most of the time, I believe that.

The inner turmoil that I’ve felt since the ex called, though, is what prompted me to set up a profile. I thought if I could meet someone, that might help me push him back into the recesses of my mind. I do not want him cluttering up my mind and screwing with my emotions. I can’t believe I’m still obsessing over it 9 weeks later. He does not deserve this much of me.

But, I don’t think I’m ready to meet someone.

How can I not be ready after this long alone? Am I just that damaged? Or do I need to be actually teaching and feeling secure in my life before I meet someone?

Medication Discovery

While my daughter is visiting family back east, I’ve been working on getting some stuff organized in the apartment.

Today, I started going through my old medicine bottles. I’m a little freaked out.

I know that I’m not always “good” about taking my meds. Sometimes I skip a dose (or three). For several months, I only took half of the anti-depressant I was supposed to take. I’m *usually* good about the mood stabilizer, because I find it difficult to sleep without it. My prescription for that is “one or two as needed” and most of the time, I only take one. I only take two if I’ve have trouble sleeping for a few nights.

I’ve also got anti-anxiety meds that are supposed to be on an “as needed” basis. Since they are addictive, I very rarely take them.

Then there’s the vitamins, calcium with vitamin D and iron pills (all prescriptions). And the allergy nose spray, and the new prescription nose spray that’s supposed to stop my nose from running. . .

Is it any wonder I didn’t want to go back on birth control pills? Sheesh, I’ve got a lot of meds.

Anyway, I was going through, consolidating half-full bottles and the like*, and found unopened bottles from 2009, 2010 and last year. Holy crap! No wonder my mood states had been all over the place! I’ve been “better” about taking them since about the time I started working on fitness, but still skip the vitamins and such quite a bit.

This is just yet another area where self-discipline comes into play.

If I’m not disciplined enough to take my medications regularly, which I know help me with other parts of my life, how can I be disciplined in other ways?

I was talking to my high school BFF the other day and one of the things we talked about was having a clean and organized house. Neither one of us has been good about that for some time. She grew up in a very organized home. My home wasn’t as organized, but my step-father really, really tried to make it so.

There have been times that I can vaguely remember that I was much more organized. Particularly when I had this small apartment in Chula Vista, after my ex left. Things had been chaotic for several months (including having several roommates), and I reveled in having my own space, with my own things, organized in a way I wanted. That was the most organized and clean place I’ve ever lived. I liked having people over. I didn’t have much to be embarrassed about. I even had a party there. It was a bit non-traditional (I didn’t have a couch and only one chair in the living room), but it was mine. Once a week, I did a deep clean, and it wasn’t hard because everything else was mostly ok.

I miss that place.

Even when my daughter was small, I was better about things than I am now, particularly after I got rid of the (then) deadbeat roommate (who has apparently turned out to be a really good guy).

I was writing in my journal** and talked about how I would sometimes “clear the decks”. By that I mean I would clean, organize, throw stuff out, make things fresh. I was always like that. Things would get out of control, and then I would spend a whole day clearing the decks. Even that was better than what I have in place now (i.e. chaos).

It made sense, when I was working full-time, running the tutoring business AND going to grad school. But since January, I haven’t had that excuse and I still haven’t done more than casual cleaning and the stuff that HAS TO get done.

I have gotten into a fairly good routine with working out. Now, I need to make sure I’m taking my meds the way I’m supposed to and get other routines into place. When I start working again, I’m going to need those routines.

*If I misplaced the current open bottle, I know I have more, and so just crack open another one. Yes, I’m really that disorganized.

**I swear I’ve done more writing in the last two or three days than I have in the last three years. Am I manic?

Catch up, where I’ve been, things on my mind

So, yeah, it’s been almost a year since I wrote.

From mid-August to mid-January, I was student teaching while taking a grad school class to finish requirements for my teaching credential. It was exhausting, physically and emotionally.
Smack-dab in the middle of it, I had gallbladder attacks, near constant for most of the month of October. In mid-November, on my 42nd birthday, I had surgery to take it out. 
I only missed four days of teaching, but I think I pushed myself too hard.
When I finished the semester, I still needed to finish writing one paper to close out my grad school class. 
But I collapsed, physically and emotionally. It took more than four months before I was even able to leave the house. I had intended to substitute teach during the remainder of the school year, and the mentor teachers I worked with would have had me fill in for them, but I could not bring myself to finish the paperwork necessary to do it.
How messed up is that?
I just finished that paper, finally. But it was after the Incomplete had already reverted to an Unsatisfactory. I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to get it accepted. I’m waiting to hear from the department director and my counselor about it. I think it will probably go through, or there is an appeal process I can use. 
I’m beating myself up over it. There was no reason for it to take this long.
Except, now I’m wondering if I can really handle teaching? Can I? If one semester wore me out that much? Should I have tried harder to get full disability back when my therapist thought I needed it instead of fighting to work and finish school? 
Anyway, during the workups leading to the surgery, I discovered that I’m insulin-resistant. The doctor also had mentioned metabolic syndrome. When my mother was diagnosed diabetic a few months ago, I finally got serious about losing weight. 
My friends and I started a blog 2 years ago to support each other losing weight:  http://2010flacas.blogspot.com/ . However, all of us gave up, and stopped writing. Since March, I’ve been blogging pretty consistently over there, working out and counting calories. My highest ever weight was last June at 199.6 lbs, in March I was between 193-196 lbs. Right now, I’m around 178 lbs and lifting heavy weights. The others tell me they’re inspired, but they rarely write.

What I really wanted to write about today, though, was something that happened in early May. I wrote about it on the Las Flacas blog as “an emotional punch to the gut” but I didn’t talk about it in detail over there.

I think I’m ready to talk about it now.

My ex-husband called me, totally out of the blue.

It’s been 18 years since he left me, and 11 years since the last time I spoke to him. He called a couple of days after what would have been our 19 year anniversary. 

He told me he’s been seeing a therapist and the therapist wants him to explore problems in his previous relationships. So he called me.

Now, he knows that I’ve been in therapy. And I know there’s no way in hell that his therapist told him to call me. Because, you know, of course I talked about him in therapy, but I was never encouraged to CALL him. Because he needs to explore HIS feelings about the relationship, not mine.

There were a couple of times when his voice trembled, like he was nervous. And toward the end of the very brief conversation, he said he’d call me back when he had more time to talk (because he called me on his ten minute break from work – to talk about relationship issues! Um, yeah). 

I said, “You know what? Just don’t.”

He sounded very sad when he said, “I shouldn’t? Don’t?”

No, really, just don’t.

Thing is, you see, he’s still with the woman he left me for, 18 years ago. And I’m fairly certain they are actually married.

And if he’s in therapy and exploring previous relationships, that means there’s issues in his current relationship.
I really don’t see where it’s up to me to help him fix his current relationship!
But also?
He called me on his break from work. 
So SHE wouldn’t know he’d called me.
And he’s obviously been online stalking me for awhile.
Last year, he sent me an email when his cat died.
He sent it to my tutoring email address, which had to be found on my business’ website. I assume that’s also how he got my phone number.
He said he’d been “keeping tabs” on me for some time.
That’s creepy, isn’t it?
I mean, he left me and cut me out of his life. So why is he “keeping tabs” on me?
It could be that he’s turning 40 next January, IIRC. I’m sure this is a mid-life thing. Perhaps he has some regrets.
I don’t know.
I don’t care.
Except that he still has this stupid effect on me. 
My dreams have been full of reunion scenarios.
That pisses me off no end. At least I’ve been able to use that anger to fuel my workouts.
But it also distracts me from the million and one things I have to do.
I still have steps to take to finish my credential.
I have to create invoices for the contract job I’ve been doing. I need that money.
I need to look for a job, write a teaching resume, contact people for letters of recommendation. . .
And I’m fighting my brain coming up with stupid fantasies.
It’s a waste of emotional energy.
Maybe if I were dating someone, that would go away? But it’s not like I’ve had any energy to spare for that.
I put up a profile on OkCupid a few days ago, but I’m thinking of taking it down, because I’m not really ready to date.
I need my energy for other things right now.
SO GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD, ASSHOLE.


The Other Me

I’m reading Carrie Fisher’s The Best Awful. Since I tend to read several books at a time, this has been my lunchtime reading, so I’m taking it slow.

Honestly, as a book, the writing is not what I would normally enjoy. The book is written in third person, but it’s centered on the main character, Suzanne. If you heard of or watched the movie (or read the book) Postcards from the Edge, the book is about the same character.

There are a lot of parallels between Carrie Fisher’s life and Suzanne’s. They both have a show business mother that’s a little larger than life, they both had an acting career when young, they both suffered a breakdown and changed careers, while still being sort-of in in the business.

Anyway, in this book, her marriage is over because her husband fell in love with a man. Her alcoholism and drug addiction is long in the past. She has a 6 year old daughter, and she’s taking her bipolar medication in order to provide a stable life for her daughter.

Until a well-known producer dies. As she’s on her way to the funeral, her best friend says, “You haven’t done anything interesting in ages!”

Somehow, that leads her to seduce an aging Hollywood bad boy at the funeral.

Shortly after that, she decides to seduce a young personal trainer guy she calls “Thor”. In order to do so, she cuts back on a couple of her medications.

The relationship doesn’t last long, but soon, she’s stopped taking her meds altogether.

After that, it gets fun.

As a book, it’s not the kind of thing I would normally read, and I don’t really like it. On the other hand, as insight into what happens in a bipolar person’s head when they stop taking their meds, it is brilliant. Watching as she justifies the steps she’s taking and lies to the people trying to help her and gets more wild with each passing day.

One of the things I can really relate to is that she has a name for her manic self. She calls her manic self Lucrezia (as in Lucrezia Borgia).

I think the reason I can relate to this naming is that I feel that my manic self was not really me. I know I did certain things, but it never felt like it was really *me* doing those things. The real me sits at home with a book or knitting while watching tv.  The real me is socially awkward, and completely geeky. The real me is sensitive to other people.

Manic me is self-centered, childish, impulsive, drunk, slut.

It just doesn’t feel like the same person at all.

I think that’s why even though I don’t like the writing, I can relate to this book.