Today was a typical #bipolar roller coaster. It started with a catatonic #depression this morning, lifted for a few hours and allowed me to work on an article without too much stress, moved into a simple depression and then started with a bit of #psychosis this afternoon. By 7 PM, I felt a mood boost that wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was creative. This is the mania coming into the mix.
This is why what I’m experiencing is called a MIXED episode or dysphoric mania. It is energized depression that is very physically and mentally uncomfortable.
I also live with psychosis and experienced olfactory delusions and hallucinations for a large part of the afternoon. This means that when I smell something unpleasant I am positive it comes from my own body- a delusion as I am ridiculously clean. Or, I will smell something that isn’t there which is the true definition of a hallucination. These are symptoms of my psychotic disorder and are a regular symptoms of schizophrenia. I don’t have schizophrenia, but I’m close to it on the spectrum.
What a life!
My goal is to work though my mood swings while continuing to do the work I love. This means finding ways to accept that I am in a mood swing while not allowing it to dominate my life.
Here are my suggestions on how we can live with our mood swings without letting them take over.
1. Acknowledge them and TREAT BIPOLAR FIRST. If I am not better by tomorrow, I will let my nurse practitioner Julie Foster of Pohala Clinic – A Place of Healing know and ask for help. We often do a homeopathic shot or I up my lithium orotate dose. Checking in with her is enormously helpful. I hope you have a health care professional who care for you as she does her clients. I also check in with her regarding my sleep.
2. Turn the mood swing into something useful. I wrote an article about unipolar and bipolar depression as well as a few blogs about being ill. This allows me to use my creative energy for work and not something that takes me on a very unneeded tangent- such as starting a new project!
3. Create something artistic. I am not an artist. I am teaching myself to express myself visually by using all of the free apps at our fingertips today. My only rule for myself is that everything I do has a message of hope and teaches some form of bipolar management.
The image on this post is a visual representation of the thoughts I’m having while looking absolutely NORMAL. I know these thoughts from my Health Cards lists. They are not the real me. Oh, I always hear a lot about how uneven my eyebrows are on camera! But that is actually true, so I can’t call that a bipolar thought.
HEHE.
Julie
PSS: This is a reposting of a Facebook post. Please join me on my Facebook pages.
My Julie A. Fast Facebook page is for those of us with the illness and people who want to know more about daily life with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, psychosis, anxiety, irritation and anger, focus problems and more!
Julie A. Fast Books is my page for those of you who read and use the management plan explained in Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder, Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder, Get it Done When You’re Depressed and The Health Cards Treatment System for Bipolar Disorder.
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