Don't know how often I will post blogs - that will, of course, depend on my state - waving or drowning! At present I am in a rising state having come out of a downer. Now I have to be careful that I don't get too high and prepare to change my medication accordingly. Depressions (drownings) are so bad sometimes that I can barely get out of bed, wash, eat or enjoy life at all. I cut myself off from social contact, don't want to speak on the phone and don't want to open my mail. In fact it feels as if I am wading through mud just prior to sinking and drowning. If it wasn't for my lovely man I would probably starve or dehydrate. When I become Waving Wendy I don't want to remember Drowning Doris and sometimes can hardly credit ever feeling that way. My memory is selective to help me cope I suppose.
My mood changes have caused some terrible things to happen - separation from husband, bankruptcy, loss of work and friends - luckily I have a few very good ones who just wait until I have come back - one of my friends calls and says she thought I must have dropped off the edge of the world again. An apposite and perceptive comment.
I think I must have been bipolar from my teens, but it was just assumed to be normal adolescent angst. I had times when I completely isolated myself (difficult in a family like mine) but I was almost always able to shut myself off from the world, my drug of choice being reading. I read everything and anything. In fact, at about 16, my father told me I must limit my reading to two books a week after a bout of sleepwalking.
In a high state I was sometimes out of control - luckily my parents didn't know some of the dangerous stunts I pulled, although they were aware of my odd behaviour at times and just allowed it to go on as long as it didn't impinge on family life too much. Frankly, our family are quite eccentric anyway and rather proud of it.
Because I am having a great deal of treatment now and am trying hard to manage my illness I have decided to look back and consider the pattern of my behaviour over the years. Many of the incidents are funny, some sad, but I hope to be more waving than drowning in the future. Over the last 18 months I have been waving for about 13, but the drowning was serious in August; hence the treatment regime I am no now.
It was rather amusing how my diagnosis was reached, now I think about it. My partner and I had been offered family therapy to help manage my depression which had become worse as the years went by. It was a new sort of treatment - a therapist talked to us while a gang of three watched a video link in another room. At the end of the session they would come into the room, sit to one side and discuss their opinions about us. We were not expected to comment ourselves, just observe. They then left the room and we talked briefly to the therapist about our feelings on what they said. For the first six months or so we talked about management of my depression and my partner's difficulties coping with the really deep pits I fell into (for the purposes of anonymity I shall call him Jack). Some of the time it was difficult to make myself get on the bus to make the appointments and there were times when I did little but cry, but then one memorable day we reached our little room for therapy and I was feeling really good. Jack was very concerned about my excitable behaviour, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with it - I was just glad to be out of the doldrums. I suppose I was talking too much, waving my arms about and generally euphoric. Then I noticed our therapist - she had a very expressive face and she looked scared! That stopped me in my tracks and one of the gang of three came in and said she felt there was 'something more going on' and she felt I needed to see a psychiatrist. I was so shocked by the intervention and the therapist's look that I agreed. The psychiatrist I saw told me the diagnosis was bipolar and that the antidepressants I had been taking on and off for several years could have exacerbated my condition. I was a bit annoyed about that, but he pointed out that I probably had never seen a doctor when feeling good so that it wasn't surprising that I had been misdiagnosed as being depressed.
Enough! I hope that will be the last time I refer to the boring bit about bipolar - the drugs, the therapy etc. This blog is going to be more about the weird and wonderful things in my life and how much I want to be waving not drowning.
