Blog for Mental Health 2013

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Bipolar, anxiety, PTSD, depression, blogging, mental-health, mental illness, Blog For Mental Health 2013, mental health awareness, advocacy

Mental health awareness, an issue near and dear to my heart, is being put in the spotlight with the “Blog for Mental Health 2013″ theme, being passed from blog to blog at this time.  Winning With Bipolar recommended my blog to pledge this year.

I pledge my commitment to the Blog For Mental Health 2013 Project.  I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others.  By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health.  I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I at the age of 16.  I have gone through times medicated, some unmedicated.  The ups and downs of the disorder have been very challenging, and I have lost jobs, friends, and many opportunities because of it.  On the other hand, I feel that having the disorder has made me a stronger person overall.  I blog about mental illness because I feel it is important to note that life still goes on.  I am now living a life I am happy with.  I am on SSDI and work a very low-key, very part-time job at my parents’ place of business.  I have found the love of my life and overall am quite content.  I do still have problems with anxiety and the up and down roller-coaster of bipolar, but my hills are not so steep and my dips not so low.  I attribute my success in life to therapy, DBT, family, love, and medication.  Living with mental illness isn’t a walk in the park, but it is very do-able.

This is not an award, but merely a mention of bloggers who I believe are true to intimately blogging about the struggles they have with mental health.  I would like to invite five others to pledge to Blog for Mental Health 2013:

Bipolar on Fire

Depression Time

My Obvious Little Secret

Bi{Polar} Curious

Bipolar, Unemployed, and Lost

A special shout-out also to Canvas of the Minds for the coordination of this event!

Now, let’s get blogging!

I Asked For More

Tags

anxiety, Bipolar, depression, Family, love, mental illness, mental-health, relationships, sadness

The past several weeks have been very hard on me and I have been doing my very best to just push all thoughts and feelings to the side.  That is starting to have a negative effect on me and I felt the need tonight to let some things out there.

DSB had surgery on Monday and while the actual surgery went well (kidney removed, cancer removed, all textbook), the aftermath has been hell.  I have never been so close to a person who is in such pain.  My grandpa was in a lot of pain throughout his life, but it seemed like he always put a positive glint on everything.  DSB is struggling to do this, and so I am struggling.

I haven’t slept worth a damn in three days, and it doesn’t look like tonight is going to be much better.  DSB is scheduled to come home in the morning and I am terrified.  Terrified of how I am going to care for him and still care for myself.  Terrified that the house is too dirty and there are too many germs.  Terrified that the dogs will jump all over him and rip his stitches.  Simply terrified.

There are a few things that have kept me going recently and they include therapy and working at my parents’ shop.  I am finding very little joy and too much stress in my everyday activities and yet I know I must try harder.  

I must try  harder to keep up my house and my surroundings.  I must try harder to take better care of myself.  I must pet Kizzie more often and sit outside more.  I must try to come to some sort of common understanding with DSB about so many things.  

I find myself crying frequently over the past few days.  I know it is the stress of DSB’s surgery, but as i said before, I am terrified of what comes next.  And then he talks about getting gastric bypass in the Fall.  It’s not that I don’t support him doing that, in general, it’s just that it’s more.  Sometimes I feel like I can’t take anymore, and then I realize that when I fell in love with DSB, that I was basically asking for more.

I find myself searching for some sort of cosmic wisdom or God or anything out there that I can turn to for some guidance and come up lacking.  I need to find peace in something but it is just so damn hard.  It feels like my life is in flux and I am unhappy.  I should revise.  The three things that keep me happy are love, therapy, and working in a damn bait store.  If i could just go there and count and sort hooks and put them into packages, and do some easy filing, life would be ok, for just a little bit.

I’m just overwhelmed and not sleeping isn’t helping things.  I feel like I have to make decisions between people I love and I hate that.  I should shut it while I’m ahead.  If you pray, say one for me.  If you don’t, throw some cosmic energy my way.  I could really use it.

And the Liebster Goes To…

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Liebster award

Much to my surprise and delight, I have been nominated for The Liebster Award by Rants From the Crib.  Wanting to know a little bit more about it, I Googled it, and found a post about it’s origins here.  Basically, the Liebster Award is a blog-to-blog award given to newer blogs with less than 200 followers.

Well, you may know that I’m not a “newer” blogger, but I do have less than 200 followers, so I’m going to go ahead and accept the award.  The first step is to list 11 bits of information about me, so here goes:

1) It snowed where I live yesterday.  First time it has happened on May 2nd in over 100 years.  What the hell!

2) I eat more mac and cheese than the average person.  Probably 2-3 times per week!

3) DSB and I met on the Internet and he moved here from over 1,200 miles away to be with me, sight unseen.

4) I have two doggies that are my whole world.  There’s Kizzie, my Cairn Terrier that I have had for almost seven years, and DSB’s dog, Rascal, a Cocker-Spaniel/Lab/possibly Pit mix.  They get along like they’ve been best friends their whole life.

5) My most favorite food is Chinese Hot and Sour Soup.

6) I have been reuiniting with my sister and she is perhaps one of the smartest, most clever, funny, and kind individuals I know.

7) When I did a service trip in Guatemala in college, I brought home a parasite in my tummy and named him Bob.

8) The most knowledgable plant person I know, QoB, is letting me try and raise an orchid.  It’s probably a good thing it’s a cheapie!

9) I am a terrible housekeeper.  You would not want to eat off my floors!

10) I waited my whole life for true love, kissed a lot of frogs, but was found by my prince.  I have never loved someone like I love DSB.  He is my best friend and my everything.

11) I am super-close to my mom, QoB.  She has saved me from myself time and time again, and it’s nice that now I can be stable and we can just hang out.

Whew!  Those were hard to come up with!  Now, I answer the 11 questions asked of me by Rants From the Crib:

1) What are you worst at?

Keeping my house clean and picked up.  I cook, but am otherwise fairly non-domestic.

2) What is your favorite type of music?

I am a browse-the-radio kind of music-listener, but it’s usually on a country station.

3) Do you consider yourself creative?

To a degree.  I like to write, but don’t do much outside blogging or journaling.

4) Where were you born?

In a hospital in Kansas.

5) If you could be reincarnated as an animal, what would you be?

Definitely a dog!

6) What do you think about Facebook?

I used to be addicted, but now I feel that it’s mostly people wanting to get attention in a negative way.  Too much drama!

7)What was the worst date you ever went on?

Do I have to pick just one?

8) If your blog could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?

That I am always honest and tell it like it is.  No room for sugarcoating.  The bipolar, the anxiety, the depression…that shit is real.

9)  Share one childhood fear.

I was and continue to be afraid of the dark.

10) What is your favorite season?

Probably summer.  I love to swim!

11) Is it better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all?

Definitely better to have loved and lost.

Now, I am supposed to nominate 11 other blogs for the award.  I’m not sure I can come up with more than a few that fit the criteria, but here goes…

1) Winning with Bipolar

2)  Bipolar on Fire

3) 30 Something Guy’s Journal

So, that’ll have to be it for that, because everyone else I follow has well over 200 followers!  Here are the questions for the three nominated:

1) If you could wake up tomorrow and instantaneously change one thing, what would it be?

2) Coffee or tea?

3) Worst bad habit?

4) Your best quality?

5) How many hours do you get and how many hours of sleep do you need each night?

6) Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

7) Book you’re reading right now?

8) What do you think about the Kindle or Nook?

9) Resolutions at New Year’s?

10) What is in your garden?

11) Do you think your current treatment regimine is working?

Answer away!

Go Home

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anxiety, Bipolar, bipolar disorder, catastrophizing, change, DBT, death, depression, dialectical behavior therapy, distraction techniques, distress tolerance, Family, love, PTSD, radical acceptance, relationships, trauma, willfulness

Sometimes, when I’m out and about, I get this feeling that I just don’t want to go home yet.  It’s almost a sense that there is something bad waiting for me there.  Don’t get me wrong, there really isn’t.  DSB is kind and sweet and the pups are the best.  But still, sometimes, I don’t want to go home.

On occasion, I don’t want to go home because I don’t want to interact.  I would rather think and be still and not have to utter a word, even if it was only one word. There are times that I don’t want to go home because I don’t want to face my poor housekeeping.  Other times, I just don’t wanna.

Today in particular, I didn’t want to go home.  I wanted to go see my mom and talk to her.  DSB and I had stopped by my godparents’ home, now vacant, with the Bird Lady dead and my godfather in a nursing home.  I have some happy memories of that place, and it reminded me and I remembered and now I feel sad.

I also was reminded of the year I spent there with Dr. Love, a year of near-constant bickering and arguing and passive-agressiveness and almost no love.  I feel sick when I think about that relationship.  It should have never happened.  But, it did.  I have to deal with that and those memories, and that made me sad and anxious and mad.

So, we did end up coming almost directly home from there.  I feel almost sick over today, when there is so much to be grateful for, which makes me feel even the more sick that I feel this way.

DSB saw his doctor and the cancer has not spread.  They are going to remove his left kidney, but he’ll be fine.  No chemo, no radiation, just a short hospital visit and about a month’s recovery time.

I saw my orthopedic specialist who informed me that my foot has healed completely and perfectly, and that I am in pain because I need to wean myself off the boot instead of trying to do everything all at once without it.

So, two happy, good, awesome things happened today.  I am not appreciating it and I hate that.

I feel as if I may cry, I feel as if I may throw a chair out the window.  I also feel as if I may just get naked and go huddle into the fetal position in bed and not come out until today has passed.

This isn’t fair.  I can’t let my emotions get hijacked like that.  I should have been on higher alert, or something.  I should feel positive and happy and relieved.  Instead, I feel anxious, sad, and angry.  I can’t see the good for the bad and that just isn’t fair to DSB.  I need to snap the fuck out of this ASAP before something truly dire does happen, like breaking all the glass windows out in my sunroom.  Because that sounds pretty good about now.

This and That

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anxiety, Bipolar, bipolar disorder, building structure, DBT, DBT diary card, depression, dialectical behavior therapy, employment, love, mental illness, mental-health, mindfulness, PTSD, trauma

Overall, the last week has gone rather well, especially the latter part.  I worked Thurs-Sat, we were quite busy, and I handled it.  I went to a busy grocery store on Friday at 5:00 p.m., which was actually quite brave of me.  Friday-payday-just-off-work crowd had the place slammed and I am usually so not good with that.

But, I was on a mission and I survived.  With barely any anxiety.  As I texted my mom…”I killed that bitch!”  And I rewarded myself with a dollar vanilla cone from Sonic.  Victory never tasted so good.  I have barely been able to step foot in that grocery store, crowded or not, for over a year due to social anxiety.  I honestly don’t know what came over me, other than I was just plain determined.

I saw the doctor on Monday and he said my foot was still “cracked,” but then he poked and prodded it, determined I wasn’t in any pain, and told me I could take the boot off and resume my normal business.  So, I did.

By Thursday, an hour into my shift at the store, I was calling my mom and asking her to bring me my boot.  Foot is totally killing me.  Worse than right before I took  it off.  I am beyond bummed about it and pretty pissed at my doctor, and even more so with myself for listening to my quack doctor.  I have an appointment with an orthopedic specialist on Monday for a second opinion, so we will see how that goes.

DSB sees the urologist and gets the results of his tests on Monday, as well.  Monday could be a good or crap day, depending.  Right now, I’m just trying not to anticipate and to live in the moment.  Adaptive denial, I believe they call it.

QoB has been out of town since Thursday and is not due back until Tuesday.  Life is a little different around the edges without her around in many ways, but it seems like she is having fun and a much-needed vacation.  It’s a good thing, because once the season starts at the stores, she won’t have a lot of extra time.

I am still feeling like I have to explain every move and emotion to DSB (through no fault of his own), and it’s not a good feeling.  I still feel like I have to be on the defensive, and it doesn’t feel good.  I think I have some past trauma stuff popping up when it comes to all of that, and I am hopefully going to be working on all of that soon in therapy. I think it is much needed, especially for the sake of DSB and mine’s relationship.

Wow, I just re-read that last paragraph and it is just now making sense that the way I act in this relationship could be influenced by past abusive relationship.  My brain has been in complete denial!  Off to do some research!

Willfulness is …

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anxiety, Bipolar, conflict, DBT, depression, dialectical behavior therapy, diary card, mental-health, relationships, Therapy, willfulness, willingness

Willfulness is SITTING ON YOUR HANDS when action is needed, refusing to make changes that are needed.

Willfulness is GIVING UP.

Willfulness is the OPPOSITE OF “DOING WHAT WORKS,” being effective.

Willfulness is trying to FIX every situation.

Willfulness is REFUSING TO TOLERATE the moment.

Replace WILLFULNESS with WILLINGNESS

Taken from the DBT Self-Help Website.  I believe it was Karl Menninger that wrote that particular bit, but am not certain.  

I love DBT and it has loved me back, for the most part.  DBT has been better to me than I have been to it, though, that’s for sure.  Dearest DBT, I haven’t always been true.  I haven’t always been mindful or effective and Lord knows I haven’t always tried my hardest.

DBT has a saying that I have posted about before…”You are doing the best you can, and you can do better.”  When I first started DBT, I thought that was crap and it drove me crazy when the leaders would say it.  But, it is genuinely believed!  And now, I’m on that wagon, too.  I can see that I am truly doing the best I can, and yet I do try to do a little bit better every day.

It took me forever to start a post today, because everything that flew out of my fingers came across as super-negative, whiny, and selfish.  Now, deep down I know I am not any of those things so I wanted to come up with something a liittle better.  I thought about the past week and what I really wanted to say, and it came to me:  I have been the the epitome of willfulness over the last five days!

(Hence the quote.  You may have thought I would never get around to my point.  Glad you stuck around!)  :D

I had recently posted about DSB’s medical problems and about how I wasn’t letting that stress get to me.  Well, I’ve been letting it get to me lately.  I  have been snappy and mean and, on top of that, defensive about my snappy meanness.  I have been taking out my worry and anger and frustration on the people I love most, the people that least deserve it, and the person that needs my support the most.  I haven’t been fair.  At all.

I am not sitting with my feelings and letting them go.  I am holding on, letting them bother me and fill me with negativity.  I am not tolerating the moment.  I am fighting, fighting, fighting.

I once had a therapist who told me the following…

Depression is like being lost at sea.  If you learn to float, you live. If you struggle, you drown.

There are variations on the saying, but you get the idea.  When we struggle with our emotions, bad things happen.  When we learn to float with, to tolerate them, we get better and good things happen.  

As DBT teaches us, sitting on our hands and doing nothing when change is needed is willfulness.  I have been doing a lot of sitting on my hands.  I need to change my outlook on the struggles that DSB and I share.  Instead of arguing and fighting, I need to love and give comfort.  I need to change my ways and get back to bettering myself instead of being in a “slow suicide” mode, as DSB calls it.  I am living a completely unhealthy lifestyle.  Smoking, bingeing constantly, no exercise, and so on.  I want to live to see at least 90, and at the rate I’m going, that’s not going to happen.  I need to get off my hands and make that change.

I could really go on and on about willfulness.  Let there be a Part II to come!

 

Don’t Put a Box on Me

Tags

anxiety, Bipolar, bipolar disorder, catastrophizing, conflict, DBT, DBT diary card, depression, dialectical behavior therapy, legal drugs, relationships, sleep

Today has been both lovely and a struggle.  I woke up in the morning a bit hungover, after deciding to chase my regular sleeping pill with some Seroquel last night.  I was desperate for some sleep, and, as that usually does, it backfired.  I get that super-sleepy feeling but don’t get more sleep, and I pay hell for it in the morning.

After managing coffee and Tylenol, I managed to get the new DBT diary card that I created printed out with the help of DSB.  I had therapy today and we talked about me coming to group and she gave me the revised manual.  I haven’t looked at it yet, but I will.  We also talked about trying not to be stressed out in the face of extreme stress.  Of course the answer is to just live in the moment, but anyone who understands the concept and has also undergone major stress knows that it isn’t an easy task.

I really didn’t want to leave my therapy appointment today.  I wanted to either be there, making sense of things, or to be by myself.  My dad had driven me to therapy and we went out for Chinese afterward.  He is very pleasant to be around, anymore.  We have had tough years but it seems like we are working through it.  He caught me up on local politics and news and I soaked all that information in.  Feeling slightly bad that I’m not registered to vote and therefore won’t be voting on mayor, school board, or city council.  Ah well.

A few minutes after I arrived home, QoB came by for a visit.  It would have been nice to chat with herr, but DSB and I got into quite an argument when, when my mom had left the room, I told him I was tired of him putting a negative label anytime I expressed an emotion.

A worry is just a worry, not anxiety.  Irritability is not an indicator of great distress…I’m tired and stressed out.  So on and so forth.  It didn’t go well, I didn’t handle it well, and now he’s up in the garage.  I don’t know how these things get so out of hand when I am just trying to make one little point.

I was even accused of giving up.  How fucking far am I away from that anyhow?

Ignoring Fear

Tags

anxiety, Bipolar, DBT, depression, fear, Health, mental illness

There is something I am not doing right now that is remarkable.  I am not doing this thing now, when in the even not-so-distant past and my entire life, I would be doing this thing.  I am not sure how I am not doing this thing, but not doing it feels good and I want to acknowledge it.

I am not worrying.  I am not obsessing and catastrophizing and making myself sick with the bad news I have so recently received.  I am maintaining a calm that I feel, believe in, inside and out.  I am curious as to why I have been so calm in light of the distressing news, but I think the reason for it is pure love.  For the sake of love, I am putting on a brave face and making it my own.

As mentioned a few posts ago, DSB was to have some imaging studies done to determine if his gallbladder was shot.  They did an ultrasound and found growths on the adrenal glands of both kidneys.  The doctors believe the growths to be benign, but ordered a CAT-scan in order to look into the matter further.  They still believe the growths on the adrenal glands are benign, but they found what they believe is a malignant mass inside one of his kidneys.  We were told they would need to take out his kidney.

DSB is being brave about it, and so am I, but to be honest, I think we’re both just not willing to acknowledge the fear that surrounds the situation.  We keep going about normal life like nothing is wrong, and really, what else are we supposed to do?  My mind is so much different than it was a month, a year, a decade ago that I can see the logic in not worrying, not making a big deal.  We just go about our day like it’s any other day.  

The next step is to see a urologist on Monday.  We should know more after that.  For right now, I know that I’m going to keep ignoring the fear when it creeps in and keep life as normal as possible.  I owe that much to DSB, for all the times when he ignored his fears when I was a mess.  He was strong for me, and I will be strong for  him.  There’s no other way.

Episode, Schmepisode

Tags

anxiety, Bipolar, bipolar disorder, building structure, DBT, depression, dialectical behavior therapy, effectiveness, happiness, hope, mindfulness

I haven’t blogged for the last several days because I haven’t felt I had anything of import to say.  I’ve also been less than motivated, full of self-criticism, and in general avoiding any kind of reaching out.

I saw my therapist on Tuesday.  About a month and a half ago, I had switched to seeing her every other week.  With a few cancelled appointments due to snow, DSB illness, and other random occurances, I managed to see her twice in six weeks.  Not good.

During our meeting on Tuesday, I decided that I wanted to go back to seeing her once a week.  I am on a somewhat steady path, and am ready to tackle some demons that have been haunting me for several years.  I’m ready to take on the trauma issues, the self-confidence issues, the self-assurance issues.  I’m ready to take on things that I have just dealt with that need to be changed.

For the past few weeks, I have been feeling a bit purposeless, but with these new therapy goals, I feel like I am taking life by the proverbial horns again.  I am not a person who does well with doing this, undirected.  I feel confident that I can resolve many problems with the help of my therapist, and the support of DSB and family.

One of the things that I want to do is be better-informed, as in, possibly start keeping up with news and current events.  I have such a good time talking about things like this with my Dad and he is always super well-informed, watching the news and reading the paper daily.  I want to have more conversations like this.  I want to contribute.  I want to have something to say, an opinion, an idea.

I am also considering returning to group DBT on a weekly basis.  I have talked with my therapist and she thinks it is a really good idea.  It helped me a few years ago when I went through it, but my experiences with it this last time were not good.  I told my therapist that I only wanted to attend her group and she said she would be  happy to welcome me.  I have a lot of trust and faith in this therapist, and really enjoyed her in IOP (intensive outpatient group).  I am hopeful that group DBT will be helpful for me again.

So, as the title states, I don’t think this is an episode.  I am thinking of it as a bump in the road, a nail in the tire, a nagging headache.  It will pass in due time, and with some work, things can be a lot better.

Wish it Away

Tags

anxiety, Bipolar, depression, irritability, mania, mindfulness, mixed episode, SAD

I have noticed in the last five days (yes, five days exactly) that my mood has been less than stellar.  I have been crying frequently and with little provocation, I have been unbearably anxious, and I have felt deeply sad.  I have been neglecting my daily chores and have fallen out of routine.  

I have spent several hours today telling myself that this doesn’t mean I am at the beginning of an episode.  Sometimes, I feel just fine, after all.  It’s that nagging sense of overall, all-consuming irritability that keeps me questioning myself.

Throughout the crying, the sadness, the anxiety, my mind is clear and razor sharp.  There is no fog, no fuzziness.  I have energy, physically and mentally.  I know that is the Ritalin, keeping those feelings going while the other feelings and sensations are flooding in.  Seems like, in the past (pre-Ritalin), when I have the negative feelings, there was always a fog.

Seems like I would appreciate a little fog right now, much as I hate to think that way.  Something to blunt things a little, to keep everything from being so in-my-face.  Instead of that fog, my mind is rational, trying to pick apart just why I am feeling this way.

My best guess is that I am at the end of my three-month birth control cycle.  I am not overdue, but there is much less of the hormone circulating through my blood than throughout the previous three months.  I know that can throw me off.  I am going on Friday to get my shot and hopefully that will  clear things up a bit.

Other guesses include not sleeping as well, reading less, not following a strict routine, having less daily interaction with others.  My hope is that things will just clear up without too much worry and wondering.  I know that I haven’t felt this level of irritability or sadness in a long time and it is really starting to get to me.  I am not ready for another episode.  I want to live my life without all of this bullshit, but it keeps coming to the foreground.

One of the worst things about having bipolar, in my opinion, is that you learn, over time, to not trust how you feel.  You think you feel good and then up, up, and away, you’re manic.  You think you’re a little sad and then it snowballs and you’re deeply depressed.  So right now, I know I am feeling off, and I am not trusting it to be some small, insignificant event.  Maybe that is the wrong approach.

I just know, for me, I have to be constantly mindful of how I feel or I lose track of myself, end up wishing away some of the best things that could have happened to me.