Tag Archives: manic

Stuff Sarah Says

My Bipolar Brain Hates Me

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Bipolar pushes me to the end of a rapidly fraying rope.

It steals my temper and hides it inside a grenade that I must hold gingerly, never knowing when or how it might go off.

It drives me into a manic state, where every sound is amplified and the air takes on inglorious texture.

It burdens me with terrible habits and compulsions, then robs me of the force of will to control them.

It makes me depressed so I loose interest and passion in things I once enjoyed.

It curses me with a lethargy so powerful, I can barely keep up with my toddler, my work, or the demands of daily life.

It causes me to withdraw from human contact, and then convinces me that I prefer to be isolated.

It constantly demeans and belittles me, making even the smallest transgressions feel like capital sin.

It is easily distracted, never settling on one task long enough to invest time into the task’s quality or completion.

It tells me I’m fat and ugly, then demands soothing in the form of binge-eating.

It causes me to to act recklessly, to say and do things that are potentially harmful.

It constantly warps my perception of my environment, so benign things appear hostile and minor barriers become major obstacles.

It makes me paranoid, suspicious, and jealous, robbing me of my good intentions and the ability to be happy for others and their successes.

It makes me sad — so sad that I see no potential worth in myself, my endeavors, or my future.

It exhausts me in body and in soul, such that I would rather sleep my idle hours away than face the bleak stretch of time before me.

It makes me perseverate, circling the same thoughts round and round the drain of my feeble mind until nothing makes sense anymore.

It confuses my energies, steals my words, befuddles my mind, and makes my hands feel small, inept, and useless.

This is your brain on bipolar.
This is your brain on bipolar.

Bipolar depression bridles me, as mania drives me forward into the Sun. It dampens me, as the cool depths of depression well up and weigh down my limbs, my head, my mind. It is within and without. My beginning, and also my end.

Stuff Sarah Says

On the other side

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It’s been a rough couple of weeks, mood-wise. Again, nothing in particular to blame except for my faulty brain chemistry. This is just another reminder that all of the work I do in therapy, the medicines I take, the personal development I devote myself to, is not always going to be enough to manage this disease. I sometimes get complacent in periods of mood stability where I think, this isn’t so bad. Then, without fail, I am surprised by the fallout, as if this hasn’t happened a hundred times before. As I’m bouncing between mania and depression, it can be really hard to keep my eye on something still, which is the most disorienting side-effect of bipolar disorder.

I’m pretty familiar with these ups and downs, but the preceding events to my most recent upheaval were new to me: I was in a very demanding interpreting situation and emotions were running high — not necessary in the assignment itself, but in me, because I wanted to do well. Ultimately, I think I did: I walked out of the assignment feeling that my team and I had faithfully represented and maintained the message, and that we were as unobtrusive as possible. Typically, I might suffer from a bit of nerves before or during an assignment, but it dissipates once I’ve the assignment is over (unless, of course, I mucked everything up while I was in the hot-seat, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog). On this day, however, I walked out of that assignment as jangly as a skeleton on a string. My whole consciousness pinged like a struck piano wire. The anxiety was so great, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and ultimately, I experienced something very akin to what I’ve read about sub-drop. With no where else to go, the adrenaline in my system caused wide-spread emotional and mental shut-down. I was so wiped-out, it was all I could do to just get into bed and throw a quilt over myself.

Of course, living in Hawaii makes this version of self-care a little sweaty.
Of course, living in Hawaii makes this version of self-care a little sweaty.

Since that day, my mood and my energy level has been rather variable. I know it will get better, but I have to carefully tiptoe around that mental trap: “happiness is on the other side of this despair.” Because it really isn’t. Happiness is a thing you experience intermittently in the best of situations, and if you’re lucky, even in the midst of a depression. Happiness comes and goes just like everything else — it is not a destination, and no one has the right to 100% happiness one-hundred percent of the time.

So rather than try to convince myself that my happiness is waiting for me, if only I can push through and endure these difficult days, I am going to alter my narrative and focus on appreciating these days for what they are: a natural ebb and flow of positivity, unfortunately made more burdensome by my illness, and nothing more. If that means that I need to decompress by listening to Metallica at prohibitively high volumes after demanding assignments in order to burn up excess adrenaline before coming home to collapse into a cocoon of blankets, so be it. I empower you to do the same, and to be gentle with yourself — you are doing the best you can.