Everyone knows that Bipolar usually means that your moods swing between highs and lows but do you really know what that means for someone? What does a 'high' look like, feel like? What does a 'low' look like, feel like? Everyone has felt down in the dumps before. Everyone has been sad, extremely sad but usually it only lasts a little while. Everyone has also felt happy, even extremely happy, joy, but this too only lasts as long as the event that triggered it.
To understand the depth of depression I have lived with and still periodically deal with, think of the saddest day/event you have ever had/felt and then keep multiplying those feelings until you feel like you are just being crushed with the heaviness of those deep, sad, heavy feelings to the point you can't move any more. Then keep adding to those feelings the guilt for having them and not knowing why you are having them or how to get rid of them and everything just stays in a vicious circle until there seems to be nowhere for you to go but deeper in the hole. Soon all you want is for the pain in your heart and head to end and it doesn't really matter how. Then all of a sudden you are on a 'high'!
You can't stop being happy, giddy, whatever. And it isn't just being happy. You're active, you have to keep moving, doing something, anything. With me, I had to buy something! It didn't matter what, just something! I got into a lot of trouble with that because it didn't matter whether I had the money or not, I had to buy stuff. I could blow through money like no one's business! But it would get me into trouble because I didn't know how to budget my money so I didn't always have the money to pay my bills. My manics weren't always the happy kind either. It wasn't realized either until a couple of years after I was diagnosed bipolar that my psychiatrist and I realized that anger was a part of my mania as well as happy. Once we realized that and started treatment for it, my bipolar was finally under much better control.
Some people stay on the depression side of bipolar more like I do and some stay on the manic side more. The ones that stay on the manic side are usually the ones that hate staying on meds. Who wouldn't want to stay on a high all the time? Meds just bring them down to where they have to feel normal! I think that the ones that are on the depressed side more are the ones that end up suicidal more. I know that I have been there many times. The manic side is also part of the problem with being diagnosed correctly. I really don't know anyone who will walk into a psychiatrist's office and when asked what the problem is, say that they are too happy!! Would you? That's why it took 10 years to diagnose my condition correctly.
Once you are stable, you still have to deal with all the side effects of the medications, the problems created before you were diagnosed as well as all the feelings that come with finding out that you are a guinea pig for medications and will have to be for the rest of your life if you want to have a somewhat normal life. If you have ever been diagnosed with anything that puts you on any medication for life, you know that it takes some time to deal with the idea that you are dependent on a chemical to help you have a semblance of a normal life. This is no different, except you know that eventually you will have to switch medications because your body will get too used to whatever you are on and it will no longer work so the doctors will have to find a new combination for you.
Therapy helps you to learn your triggers, see when your moods start to swing and help you to start figuring out how to live your life again. Some of your old relationships have to be rebuilt while some never are. New ones are made while the rules of your life revolve around what you can manage. Having both bipolar and borderline personality disorder means that I try to be very careful about what I say around people and if I take offense about what someone says to me. There are times that I ask my therapist for her opinion about something I have written or said that it is saying what I mean for it to say or something that has been written to me that I am understanding correctly what was said and meant. It helps me to learn whether my thoughts when hearing or reading something from someone else is on track or not plus she helps me to process the event if I have become upset by it because I didn't hear it the way it was meant.
More later!!!
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