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Imposter Bipolar Syndrome
I had therapy today and I was talking about my last manic episode, and as I was telling about this, I felt like I had made it up. Â As if, I know these symptoms and I had kind of LET myself have those symptoms, like I was exaggerating them to make myself more sick in the moment out of… attention seeking? Â (I was alone, but… you know… for my own attention?) Â I have this cognitive dissonance because, part of me has always felt like I’m not really THAT sick, I’m just exaggerating it.
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Behind the Curtain
Someone emailed me a question about whether, when I post a diary type entry and I’m in a certain mood or mindset, and then I post some intervening things that are of the non-diary variety, do I ever consider posting in my next diary about what happened between then and the previous entry – a sort of “When last we visited our heroine, she was clinging to the side of a cliff…” type of synopsis of the intervening time. This made me think about my manic episode a couple of nights ago. For those of you who saw that, I apologize. Sir went in the next morning and set those…
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Impulse Control
In this part of North America (USA and Canada) we have a holiday for labor. Â Yeah… a day off… from labor… for Labor Day. Whatever. Â I got chores done, lesson plans done, went to a barbecue, came home and have pork chili verde in the Instant Pot. Â Yeah, baby! Â We had a nice time with K and J. Â It was stupid hot, but… you know… that’s how we roll here. The instant pot makes little noises and totally freaks me out because I’m always sure it’s going to explode. Â And neither of the guys can hear the little sounds, so I’m running up and down the stairs to check on…
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Decisions
I haven’t been sleeping well. Â For a while. Â Probably why I got sick… and now… mania… It’s been coming on for a couple days now that I look back at it. Â And the drugs for the asthma… trigger me… and not sleeping… and beginning work… and so much… stimulation. Today I had to work on the computer and I forgot to wear my blue light lenses and I can’t type fast enough right now to keep up with myself, I keep messing up my typing and I type really fast anyway, I just… running a little faster than my fingers can move right now… I got my blue light glasses…
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Secrets
I slept better last night. Â A little. Â Weird dreams, but I managed to sleep until 10, so… little better. Sir and sub brother have been home (they went away on their own trip) for a couple days now. Â But something has been bothering Sir. Â He hasn’t said that, I just know. The thing is, he doesn’t talk about it. Â He won’t talk about it. Â So my best guess is that it is work related because… that’s really the only thing he doesn’t talk about. Â Ever. And I… Â feel strange about my feelings about that.
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Rain – Moments with Sir
This story references this post: Shroedinger’s Rain. I could hear him approach me, and I flinched. “I don’t want to be touched! Please…” Sir stopped, one hand already outstretched to comfort. That hand hung for a moment in the air between us, then curled into a fist and I heard him sigh. “Okay.” A spasm of agony wrenched my chest and I turned away from him, gripping the edges of the counter and focusing my gaze on the branches outside the kitchen window. I could hear the confusion in his voice, the threads of hurt and concern. I heard his footsteps retreat but then they stopped and I heard soft…
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Schroedinger’s Rain
I wrote once about a conversation I had with Ryan about having a mental illness. Â He and I both have bipolar and PTSD and anxiety. Â I was talking to him about reality, about when you have a mental illness, it is like standing in the rain. Â You know it is raining. Â You can see the rain. Â You can feel the rain. Â You can smell the rain. Â You are soaking wet with rain and rain is dripping into your eyes. Â It is raining. Â And then someone comes up and tells you that it’s not raining. Â Now, you can see that this person is also getting rained on. Â It is raining. Â The…
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Slider
I had a rough patch for a few days. Â Therapy went hard and I went into a spiral and for some reason (I’m sure therapy could explain it) I became almost intolerably self-critical for several days. And I know it’s easy for people to scold or dismiss my self-criticism. Â It’s easy to say, “You’re too hard on yourself,” or “Why are you being so mean?” or “Don’t do that…” The thing is, it’s a disease. And I think even I forget that too often. This week, when this hit me, I had an episode when I was putting on clothes (my ordinary clothes that I wear all the time) and…
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Being Normal
My life has been a long and strange pursuit of “seeming normal.”  I think I’ve gotten good at it at this point.  But it took a long time to learn to hide it this well. I had a psychotic break when I was 16, but I had (undiagnosed) early onset bipolar…symptoms showing shortly after birth, definitive symptoms by 2-years old… They documented them, but the “early onset” hadn’t yet become psychological knowledge, nor had “bipolar II.” And so I was undiagnosed, though my childhood was filled with periodic rounds of testing, experiments, trying to deal with these varied symptoms than left my parents feeling frustrated, impotent, and…at times, like…
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Output
I’m having a less than easy night. Â It’s not terrible – certainly not by the bar set by multiple nights this summer – but not… great. I think it’s depression, or at least the leading edge of a depression front. Sir thinks that possibly my feeling is akin to burnout (and potentially that’s enough to tip my bipolar back towards depression) because I’ve been… outputting intensely for several days and likely not getting enough inputting.
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