Writing To Figure Myself Out: Bipolar Thoughts

Writing has always helped me work through my emotional issues, relationship stuff, etc. I wrote about my Struggles with Social Anxiety a while ago and it helped clarify some things and I got some helpful suggestions as well.

I've been feeling really out of sorts lately (really not feeling like... me) and I finally thought that maybe doing some writing would help me find some sort of realizations as to what is up with me.

On top of my other… issues… I am bipolar. I have bipolar? I don’t know how to say it and it really doesn’t matter to me either way. I don’t generally care much about semantics.

At any rate, being diagnosed as bipolar is probably the least worrisome thing that I’ve had to come to terms with as far as my mental health (not that it's a minor thing, by any means!). If nothing else, it made me feel MORE sane than I had before, because it meant that all of the feelings, the crazy stupid shit I did had some sort of reasoning behind it, rather than just some unknown reason that I just felt crazy and out of control for so long during my teen and young adult years (Of course I still don't know how much of my personality/acting out/issues are directly tied to the sexual abuse in my childhood, either).

After I had the understanding of what was going on in at least some small way, for at least a decade or so, the swings were easy to identify. My depression looked and acted the way that I had come to understand and recognize. I developed coping mechanisms and sometimes used medication to take the edge off so that I could function or deal with the things that were exacerbating the depression. The manic phases meant that my house got clean and I didn’t sleep as much. I had boundless energy and could create things seemingly out of thin air and life felt grand. Of course there were the irrational impulses, horrible choices that I made during those times because I was feeling invincible... those were pretty times.

I eventually began to recognize not only the phases as they happened, but I learned that the higher the manic phase went, then the lower the drop was going to be when the pendulum swung in the other way.

It’s been years since my manic phases looked that way. I’m not even sure my depression looks the same anymore.

Now it’s more like manic phases are demonstrated by a short temper, rabid irritability and anxiety that makes me feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin and punch someone in the throat. I definitely don’t sleep as well, so that’s the same, but instead of just feeling like I don’t need the sleep, I just can’t Get the sleep I need. My moods cycle through raging irritability and leave me wracked with guilt for being so angry or annoyed. I find that I miss the 'high energy' manic phases, because now I just hide away from people for fear of biting everyone's heads off because of my moods.

Depression, I think, has become even more difficult to recognize. Instead of feeling devastated, wanting to cry and feeling just hopeless… it seems to slide into my mental self as almost an apathetic feeling. I still get to the point of feeling the recognizable depressive state that I remember, but it’s such a slow slide. I just lose interest in things that I used to love. Instead of jumping off of an emotional cliff into the sudden throes of depression, I just kind of… wade into it without realizing it.

I realized sometime this past week (or so?) that I was definitely not feeling like myself. I am carrying around this black, pulsing weight of despair in my gut that is just sitting there. It isn’t obviously weighing me down, but it is just there, casting a pall over my thoughts, plans, feelings. It makes every slight seem either worse than it is, or causes me to just shut that person out completely. Of course my anxiety does the exact same thing, the result being that I speak with people even less than I did before. My husband’s long silences make me feel like he’s personally upset with me, even if that’s not the case.

I can recognize this in some ways, but at the same time, it was such a slow crawl to this realization this time that I feel incredibly apathetic about fixing it. I think that was probably my biggest clue that things were just not quite right. Usually (unless I’m in the throes of depression), I want to fix things. I want to talk about things, discuss it, find answers, things to try. I want to read other people’s stories about how they fixed things or found ways to cope…

But this time I just find myself backing into my own brain.

I know this isn’t a healthy way to deal, but I’m also sick and tired of beating myself up for being ‘broken’ or an emotional basket case. I need to find a balance somehow. I need to figure out what I need!

I want to write more about what is going on with me. I used to write almost daily in a journal and sharing things that were bothering me or just thoughts that were bouncing around in my head almost always made me feel more clear. I am hoping that writing through some of my thoughts will help.

Something else I’ve done in the past was to go through self help-style workbooks and use the questions or exercises to write out what I thought/was dealing with/was feeling. That gave me a place to start, rather than (like this post!) spending days or even weeks trying to put a finger on what I was feeling or even WHY I am feeling this way lately… etc.

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So, I guess this ended up being a very long post to ask if anyone has any workbook style things that they could recommend for dealing with depression, relationship issues, childhood crap (that I still need to deal with in some ways) or just anything that helps you when you feel like things are getting out of hand or just feeling like it’s too much to deal with alone.

I know therapy can be a good thing, but I’ve just had way too many times of bad experiences and I can’t afford a good therapist at the moment, even if I could find one, so for the time being, it is just me and my laptop and lots of writing.

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