A BLACK CAT IN A DARK ROOM – My story of manic depression

How do you prevent mood disorders from destroying you or your loved ones’ lives? By knowing about them.

S.M.I.L.E.: See it, Manage it, Improve upon in, Let it go, Expect it to be better

Trouble begins

The troubles started 3, 4 years ago. At first, things seemed benign. I just seemed unmotivated. But the troubles would eventually chase away my husband, convinced that I was a bitch who had never loved him, in another continent of the world.

After he left, I wandered in the otherworldly city for a month before I started seeing a psychiatrist referred by him and taking meds, a habit I will likely need to keep for the rest of my life.

My husband, who I’d call the Bear because he really tried to protect and help me, lived in this condo with me in the quiet part of town. He is a kind, talented, smart, and hard-working guy, with cute eyes, a wicked smile and a wiz-kid kind of humor. As information professionals, the Bear and I were used to working from home. We would occupy different sides of the room, holler across the room when we thought of something amusing to tell each other, and then revert our attention back to the screen.

Sometimes we’d dance and sing in the condo too. I exploded in bad temper from time to time, but generally we lived peacefully together.

When we were dating we were pretty childish and silly and we said we were like two little fools in the woods. The condo was like our little hut in the wood. We lived in it like two little self-sustaining animals. Well, four. We adopted two cats: a skinny black cat (“my cat”) and a big fat Maine Coon (“his cat”).

When it started, I was just watching tv. I’d watch shows on YouTube. Since YouTube had a size limit, each show would be divided into 5 segments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and each segment would play for about 10 minutes. Soon after I started watching tv online, I got very good at going through these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 segments.

It was a state that I’d call binge tv-watching. It sounds pretty tame and lame, but very soon I was unable to not watch tv when I was at home. Since I worked from home sometimes, when I was not working I developed the habit of watching tv as soon as I woke until late at night. I would start with my favorite show, then when it was over, feverishly clicked for another show as soon as possible. I would watch tv non-stop for hours, only stopping to drink the occasional water or eat the necessary meals.

I couldn’t tolerate not watching tv during those seconds or minutes that I had to switch from segment to segment or from show to show. When a segment ended, I would get depressed (though at the time I didn’t realize it consciously), and to avoid those seconds of depression, I trained myself to start a new video segment in the shortest time possible.

When the network was slow or down, I got nervous or irritated.

I’d stay up as late as I could, and became highly reliant on the tv programs to put me to sleep. The Bear bought the iPad 1 when it first came out, and although iPad 1 was much clunkier than the latest models, when my tv habit developed I basically snatched the iPad from his hand and monopolized it. I’d hug it close in front of me, laying on the little guest bed we had in the work room, and watch shows late into the night until I could fall asleep.

Sometimes I went through periods of not watching tv as much, but slept a lot.

Much like binge tv watching, I binge slept.

Have you tried waking up whenever you want in the morning, checking emails, watching some tv, eating lunch, then having a nap, then watching more tv, then eating dinner, watching some more tv, then falling asleep with the screen still on till you wake again?

I could do this for days, weeks, even months. Neither of us suspected that it was the start of a serious problem.

I developed an odd way of sleeping/watching: curling up in fetal position on one side, propping up the iPad against a side table, then, when I got tired of that position, turned over to fetal position on the other side and propped the iPad up against the wall, never taking my eyes off the screen the whole time.

The Bear noticed that I was sleeping a lot, but since I had always been a slightly inactive girl, we never thought that that could be a warning sign of an unhealthy mind.

I still have a video on my iPhone taken by my Bear. In it I was taking a nap on the couch probably right after lunch. Despite the broad daylight shining bright outside, I slept as if there was no tomorrow. He thought I was adorable, oblivious of the foreboding of a long, dark storm.

By the time I realized it, this kind of binge sleeping/tv-watching had lasted on and off for almost 4 years. It only ended when the Big Change came.

During a depressed phase, symptoms include:

·                feelings of sadness or hopelessness

·                loss of interest in pleasurable or usual activities

·                difficulty sleeping; early-morning awakening

·                loss of energy and constant lethargy

·                sense of guilt or low self-esteem

·                difficulty concentrating

·                negative thoughts about the future

·                weight gain or weight loss

·                talk of suicide or death

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/bipolar/ 

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Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder rather than a personality disorder... To me, mood is the equivalent of weather... Weather is real... It’s absolutely real. When it rains, it rains. If it gets wet, you get wet. There’s no question about it. Also true about weather is you can’t control it. You can’t say if I wish hard enough, it won’t rain. Equally true is if the weather is bad one day it will get better. What I had to learn was to treat my disorder like the weather...

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(Stephen Fry of Monty Python, talking about his experience with manic depression)

Up States

One or two years into the intensive tv watching and sleeping, I started acting strangely.

Again, it was not obvious at first. During long periods of inactivity, one of those days I just woke. And when I woke, I felt guilty for having wasted so much time and wanted to do something.

I did a lot of things when I woke:

·                Volunteered

·                Tried to change career

·                Made new friends

·                Tried new things like clubbing, partying

·                Tried to start a new business

·                Travelled and found peace in travelling

·                Explored different cities as possible places to move to

I was often very enthusiastic when I started those projects, which had varied success. 

When the ideas ran out of steam, I went back to sleepiness and tv watching.

I brought strange things into our lives.

Like that one time when I was convinced that I should get a non-profit job to make my life full. I applied for an “Online Media Specialist” position at a local non-profit. I had no experience whatsoever with running online campaigns, though after reading up on two books about managing online campaigns for NGOs, I convinced myself that I could do that job and it would be fulfilling. I interviewed. I even impressed the hiring manager enough in my first phone interview to get a second interview. Of course I didn’t get the job. Disappointed, I went back to binge sleeping/watching.

I also tried to make friends with my Bear at the time. I was convinced that our lives were too lonely, and wanted to expand our social circles. While it was somewhat true that we were a bit isolated, I viewed it was a life-or-death issue.

During a manic phase, symptoms include:

·                heightened sense of self-importance

·                exaggerated positive outlook

·                significantly decreased need for sleep

·                poor appetite and weight loss

·                racing speech, flight of ideas, impulsiveness

·                ideas that move quickly from one subject to the next

·                poor concentration, easy distractibility

·                increased activity level

·                excessive involvement in pleasurable activities

·                poor financial choices, rash spending sprees

·                excessive irritability, aggressive behavior

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/bipolar/

We met a friend who was a typical social center of influence. He generously introduced us to his circle of friends. I wanted to make more friends very much, but was very nervous about it.

My Bear had been supportive of all of my strange activities. He is just a Saint.

One time, when a new friend didn’t call me back, I got incredibly depressed. I was convinced that nobody liked me, and nobody wanted to make friends with me. I cried violently for over an hour. My Bear tried to soothe me, assuring me that people liked me, that the friend just happened to not return my call but still wanted to me my friend (that particular friend would eventually become a good friend of mine).

Pretty ridiculous, huh? That was one of the first times that I had the kind of “manic-depressive” episode that would later become chronic and cyclic.

The clinical reality of manic-depressive illness is far more lethal and infinitely more complex than the current psychiatric nomenclature, bipolar disorder, would suggest. Cycles of fluctuating moods and energy levels serve as a background to constantly changing thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. The illness encompasses the extremes of human experience. Thinking can range from florid psychosis, or "madness," to patterns of unusually clear, fast and creative associations, to retardation so profound that no meaningful mental activity can occur. Behavior can be frenzied, expansive, bizarre, and seductive, or it can be seclusive, sluggish, and dangerously suicidal. Moods may swing erratically between euphoria and despair or irritability and desperation. The rapid oscillations and combinations of such extremes result in an intricately textured clinical picture.

(“The Unquiet Mind”, Kay Jamison, Ph.D.)

Fast running mind

Now I know more about what had happened, I feel incredibly sorry for the times I was manic to my Bear.

We were living away from our families and led a typical “young professional” life. When my manic-depressive episodes hit, he had to bore those attacks by himself without any help or protection. While he was very brave and kept assuring and helping me, I was only getting worse. It was highly stressful to him.

I continued to do strange things.

I remember taking showers and being convinced that everyone I knew thought ill of me. I would get very hurt, and at the end of a shower, I’d utter to myself “fuck everyone and everything!”

I became convinced that I needed to be away from everyone and everything.

I pushed my Bear away more and more. That was obviously very hurtful to him.

There were other things I did that I did not recognize as signs of symptom until very recently.

Like one late night exactly 3 years ago, I drove the car alone to a lake nearby and paced around it. I speed-walked and ran around the lake, but I couldn’t catch up to my thoughts, which were racing like mad. I was very upset, so upset that I thought the only way around it was to be alone. I wrote in my iPhone “Learn to be alone. Learn to take care of things of yourself. The world is still big.” If not for the file that is still in my iPhone, staring at me with the 3-year-old date, I would not remember this episode.

How can I describe the experience of an overrunning mind and its effects?

It was like your brain has no brake. Like that noisy scan your computer makes when it tries to locate for a certain place in a DVD, but it never finds it, it just keeps scanning and scanning.

Inside, there’s the beauty of darkness. In this darkness, a millions things happen at the same time: you see fireworks; your see orchestras; you see dramas and the tender of the night. All the neurons in your brain fire up simultaneously and they are busy connecting. Like the movie of the same title, you feel like you are “limitless”. You think you have “unique insights” about the world. Invariably, what follow the beauty of this spark are unrealistic thoughts and a non-stop fever. Or simply: mania.

When it ’s two o'clock in the morning, and you're manic, even the UCLA Medical Center has a certain appeal.  The hospital— ordinarily a cold clotting of uninteresting buildings— became for me, that fall morning not quite twenty years ago, a focus of my finely wired, exquisitely   alert   nervous   system.   With vibrissae twinging, antennae perked, eyes fast-forwarding and fly faceted, I took in everything around me. I was on the run. Not just on the run but fast and furious on the run, darting back and forth across the hospital parking lot trying to use up a boundless, restless, manic energy. I was running fast, but slowly going mad.

The man I was with, a colleague from the medical school, had stopped running an hour earlier and was, he said impa­tiently, exhausted. This, to a saner mind, would not have been surprising: the usual distinction between day and night had long since disappeared for the two of us, and the endless hours of scotch, brawling, and fallings about in laughter had taken an obvious, if not final, toll.  We should have been sleeping or working, publishing not perishing, reading journals, writing in charts, or drawing tedious scientific graphs that no one would read.

Suddenly a police car pulled up. Even in my less-than- totally-lucid state of mind I could see that the officer had his hand on his gun as he got out of the car. “What in the hell are you doing running around the parking lot at this hour?” he asked. A not unreasonable question. My few remaining islets of judgment reached out to one another and linked up long enough to conclude that this particular situation was going to be hard to explain. My colleague, fortunately, was thinking far better than I was and managed to reach down into some deeply intuitive part o f his own and the world’s collective unconscious and said,  “We’re both on the faculty in the psychiatry department.’’ The policeman looked at us, smiled, went back to his squad car, and drove away.

Being professors of psychiatry explained everything.

(“The Unquiet Mind”, Kay Jamison, Ph.D.)

Pushing people away

My compulsion to be alone would eventually lead to my thinking that I *had* to live on a particular island to get on for the rest of my life.

What hurts my husband the most was how I was emotionally unavailable to him. My sadness and my anger had inserted themselves into our marriage like a raging and damaging third party.

I am incredibly sorry that I made him feel second best and unloved. Part of the reason why I write this is that I want it to be known that he is utterly and thoroughly loved.

I used to choke up in embarrassment when I thought of the slightest possibility to be judged by others. When I let those negative emotions out, I hurt his feelings. I cannot be more sorry.

I used to tell him that I had already swallowed a lot of emotions inside. I wasn’t lying. Only I didn’t realize that my emotions were at abnormal levels and that I wasn’t supposed to swallow them at all. All swallowing did was bottling them up.

Until it popped. And popped. Like the devil’s fireworks.

I am sorry.

5 Coping Strategies for loving someone experiencing depression

by Robin Mohilner - a licensed psychotherapist in the state of California

(Her info: https://www.facebook.com/teamTHRIVE/info)

Strategy #4: Interpreting Rejection

When your loved one is in a depression rejecting you and pushing you away as best they can.  They’re not saying, “I need you and want more of you.” It would be easy to allow their rejection to cause you to dive into a depression yourself and feel heart-broken.

Here’s an alternative interpretation to their rejection:

“I need to be alone.”

Interpretation: “I need to escape this by sleeping as much as possible. I can’t escape it as easily if you’re here talking with me about it. Why don’t you go do something you need to do for yourself.”

“I’d rather be with my friends [than you].”

Interpretation: “When I’m with my friends, it distracts me from how horrible I feel.  My friends don’t ask me how I’m feeling. They don’t ask me if anything is wrong. If they see something is wrong, they wait until I share.  If I don’t share, they don’t ask…they just keep talking about themselves.”

“I don’t know if I want our relationship.”

Interpretation: If your relationship was in good standing when your loved when went into the depression…”I’m not myself. I don’t like who I am being. This is not who I want to be. I don’t want to treat you this way. This feels permanent.  

If this is how I will always treat you. I don’t want to be with you.”

“You don’t make me feel better.”

Interpretation: “You can’t make me feel better even though you really try to. When I am with you, I still feel so depressed because I don’t get to pretend to be okay when I’m with you. When I’m with you I’m stuck feeling whatever I feel and there is nothing you can do to make me feel better.”

Strategy #3: Perspective: Depression is in a relationship with the person you love, not the person you love

Your loved one is not depressed.  Depression is NOT who they are.  Your loved one is experiencing depression.

http://thrivewithbipolardisorder.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/5-copingstrategies-for-loving-someone-experiencing-depression/

An angry, joyless, flying mind

As my emotional condition deteriorated, my Bear and I tried to live as normal as possible.

He and I took on projects at international organizations to support ourselves. We also worked on the side for our dreams.

Actually, for 4 to 5 years since we’ve gotten married, we supported each other to pursue our dreams. It was a blissful experience. We often talked about our aspirations and prospects over dinner. Emails from that time showed we sent each other supportive messages back and forth.

(I am so sorry I stopped supporting you as a wife. If you remember the times before, remember how we worked together in our living room, how we sent each other stuff to cheer one another on, how I asked you to kiss me every time there was a full moon, so we’d stay together... That was the real me.)

We went out, sometimes together sometimes separately. People thought we were cute together (we’re a cute couple).

I went back to my hometown in another continent once a year.

Email exchanged showed that we were still pretty sweet 2 years before, but 2 years ago, things decisively went for the worse.

I became unhappy about everything.

EVERYTHING.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when I couldn’t feel any joy in life. I just gradually became more and more joyless and restless. No matter what I did to fight depression during my “up” times; no matter what my Bear did for me, I felt it was not enough, because I was still depressed.

I complained about the way we lived, the social life we had, our goals, our future, anything I could think of.

If my brain was a computer that was supposed to be able to run a range of emotional programs any brain could access and feel, at the time, I could only access the “anger” and “sadness” programs.

It’s like everyone is given $100 to spend each day. People may gain or lose a bit of money depending on the happenings of the day, but generally they are supported by a stable income. Except to me, the $100 felt like $1 million. So when I gained some money, I felt like I was winning the lottery. When I lost something along the way, I felt like I had gone bankrupt. Consequently, the decisions I made were very different from the average person.

Negative thoughts took root like a viral weed during my long depressive seasons. I could only think of bad things: how no one liked me; how I needed to be alone.

Trapped in anger and sadness, I couldn’t feel my Bear’s love. I had a very bleak outlook of our lives. I thought over and over again that I was dying in the condo one day at a time.

I became convinced that our marriage was problematic. I regretted incredibly about getting married. I thought that was the source of all my sorrows.

I was wrong. I am so sorry.

Since I started getting treatment a few months ago, I heard an incredible story from another bipolar patient:

She said she once had an argument with her husband, who came from a different cultural background. The argument started with the husband accusing her society to be ungrateful to his people. He said in the last economic crisis 15 years ago, his government had generously helped her city out financially. The problem was, to the wife’s knowledge, her city dipped into its own reserve to resolve the economic crisis.

(Some facts: his government is notorious in misinforming its people while her city allows the free flow of information.)

So because this husband and wife had received different information from their own respective societies, they made different judgment about her city’s people.

A mood disorder affects a sufferer in a similar way: our brains constantly send and receive erroneous distress signals, prompting us to make desperate decisions.

When a healthy mind gets sad, it is distressed for a time but it bounces back. When a healthy mind gets hurt and angry, it blows up for a while but eventually calms down.

An emotionally imbalanced mind is a rubber band that has lost its elasticity, a kettle that is ever boiling.

Healthy people often suspect emotional disorders. From their own experience, a person can control their own emotions and the emotions usually go away when their times are up.

What if, just what if, there’s bug in the mind and the emotions don’t go away? What if depression and anger stay for a long time and when they are gone, you know you can count on it coming back often? What would you do? How would it affect your thinking?

It’s a strange idea that you need certain chemical balance in your brain to feel comfortable, have confidence, feel open, and most of all, feel love. But that was precisely my experience.

This difference in subjective experience (I feel sad all the time and you don’t) creates a vast divergence in judgment of how normal folks view life and how we view life. It is as if we live inside our own special weather that no one else can see, all the time. Without understanding how our devastating weather forecasts are induced (i.e., without getting proper psychiatric and psychological treatment), we take them seriously and do things normal people don’t do: we hide at home a lot; we go out at strange hours.

Knowledge is power. Without knowledge about the ways we may get ill, we are vulnerable to even the common flu.

Haven’t we only learned to wash our hands in the last two centuries? Before that, no one had any concept of “germs” for they were invisible to the naked eye.

Bipolar disorder is primarily a biological disorder that occurs in a specific area of the brain and is due to the dysfunction of certain neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers, in the brain. These chemicals may involve neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, serotonin and probably many others. As a biological disorder, it may lie dormant and be activated on its own or it may be triggered by external factors such as psychological stress and social circumstances.

In everyday life, people have a variety of moods and feelings. These feelings include frustration, joy and anger. Usually these moods last one day rather than several days. For people with bipolar disorder, however, moods usually swing from weeks of feeling overly “high” and irritable to weeks of feeling sad and hopeless with normal periods in between.

An important distinction between bipolar disorder and the normal emotions of life is that bipolar disorder results in an inability to handle daily activities. The person cannot work or communicate effectively and may have a distorted sense of reality (for example, unrealistically high or low opinion of one’s skills).

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/bipolar/

It’s real

These experiences are quite shameful for me to share. Some might think these emotions are fantastical and are only pigments of my imagination. Still I want to share, for I don’t wish our tragic experience to happen to anyone else. I hope family members could get a glimpse of what bipolar patients go through and be more ready to help the patient as well as themselves.

Our minds are not as simple as a plain. It has many contours and concaves. Sometimes we could get stuck in the shadowy caves of our minds.

Murphy’s law: if anything could go wrong, it will. Mood is one part of our brain; it could become faulty too.

The problem is, mood is encoded in our thoughts and we have only one mind to think. When we don’t understand how it works, extreme moods can easily be interpreted as mandates issued from the deep of your own mind.

I truly believe that understanding how our emotions affect us should be part of our society’s common language.

The kindness and generosity of most people was heartening, the vitriol and irrationality from others disturbing. The subject of mental illness tends to bring out a complex humanity in people; in others, it hits a deep vein of fear and prejudice. Far more people than I had realized conceptualize mental illness as a spiritual flaw or shortcoming in character. Public awareness lags behind the progress in our clinical and scientific understanding of depression and bipolar illness. It has been appalling, and at times frightening, to come face-to-face with attitudes more usually associated with the Middle Ages than with the twenty- first century.

(“The Unquiet Mind”, Kay Jamison, Ph.D.)

It’s biological

Last month, in a session with me and my family, my psychiatrist explained to us that anyone may plunge into depression for some time in their lives. Sometimes the passing of a loved one or an unfortunate life event could lead people to a prolonged depressive state. However, only people with the bipolar gene would exhibit manic signs along with the depression.

When I think back on my personal history, I can pick out different moments in my life when I was affected by extreme moods. I had a pretty carefree childhood. As a kid, I was introspective, sensitive and always felt a weakness inside. At the same time, I learnt things effortlessly and had very good grades without trying very hard. I liked to talk to myself, and I always had a vast imagination (one of the benefits of having a high-speed running bipolar-wired mind). In primary school, I had a literally photogenic memory. I could recite whole chapters and could recall the exact location of each word in each chapter. To prepare for exams, I developed a learning method of turning each chapter in the textbooks into a story and pretending I was telling the story to a class. It helped me get close to full marks and graduated first in class in primary school.

But when I entered secondary school, I began to stress out socially and academically. I constantly felt embarrassed by my being. I never knew why. I just did. My grades reflected my mental strain and slipped steadily downwards over my secondary school years. Every time there was a big stressful event, like graduation exam, I became so nervous that I couldn’t bear. I developed a bad, unshakable habit of hiding from pressure.

I am so sorry my sweet bear baby.

What I didn’t realize in the previous 3-4 years of tv watching was that my brain was over-running all the time. In fact, over time I got more and more irritated. It was not the tv watching that induced the irritation. In fact, I was using tv watching as the sedater for my overrun mind.

I didn’t realize until my psychiatrist confirmed 3 years later (marriage wrecked) that I watched tv back then to escape from a chronic depression.

Even now, my Bear is convinced that I never had mood problems. Whatever I did I did because of character flaws or cultural influences. And because (he thinks) I had never loved him. I can see how devastated and confused he must feel to come to this hopeless conclusion.

My “character” would gradually evolve to be inconceivable, inconsistent, and inexplicably destructive.

So what can you do to make your partner an ally in recovery?

The first step, says Parikh, is education—for both of you.

The more that both partners know about symptoms, treatments, and coping strategies, the more they can work together to address common challenges. Reading and online research, workshops presented by mental health organizations, discussions with mental health practitioners, and peer support groups are all good ways to get informed.

A partner or spouse who is up to speed on what it takes to live with bipolar will find it easier to understand when you ask for support.

The next step is learning to discuss matters relating to your illness openly and honestly.

For one thing, being able to share what’s going on in your life and your head provides your partner with a context for any irritability, sadness or high spirits you exhibit. For another, it gives you both a touchstone for recognizing early signs of a mood shift.

Elizabeth and her husband, Rory, who have been married since August 2012, have a conversation at least once a week about any symptoms Elizabeth might be experiencing.

“Regular communication is really important,” says Elizabeth, 32, of British Columbia. “We talk about what I’m feeling and things that he notices about me. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to see the forest for the trees, especially if I’m not feeling well.”

Rory’s feedback provides her with a reality check, Elizabeth says.

“Last year I had a manic episode and Rory realized something was wrong when I told him: ‘I want to go on a 5K run.’ I’m a pretty sedentary person, so for me that’s out of character. It gave Rory a clue that I might be experiencing mania,” she recalls.

In most intimate relationships, it’s important to make significant others aware of red flags, according to David Miklowitz, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Child and Adolescent Mood Disorders Program at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California–Los Angeles.

“People with bipolar disorder can make a list of symptoms and behaviors that they know indicate early signs of a manic or depressive episode. The partners can then refer back to these lists in order to spot early symptoms,” Miklowitz says.

http://bphope.com/Item.aspx/1053/the-power-of-two

Asking for a divorce

There was one thing that I wished happened when we got married. When he proposed, I wish he could have honestly and assertively said: If you marry me, you would have to stay here in this continent with me for the rest of your life. But, I promise to visit your family with you often and treat you well since you choose to live in another continent with me.

Instead, when I moved to the NW city for him, we vaguely said he would move once for me too. I asked him if he would come and get me if I went back to my hometown, he said he would.

If we had been straightforward from the onset about where to live, that would really have helped me adapt to our new married life and I would not have felt so emotionally stuck in between two continents for years.

This is a classic project management problem: vague requirements in the beginning of the project. This two-city issue would eventually become a major stress trigger for me.

Trapped in the thinking that I was dying in the condo and I would never have joy again, I started fantasizing about living in my hometown in the other continent. As a relief from my chronic depression, the “manic” side of me started to construct fantastic dreams about the other city.

I fell in love with the idea of living between my hometown and our city.

The problem was, I knew my husband would never move to my hometown with me.

I asked him for a divorce.

I did it in a very calm way. In my mind, I told myself: it’s very sad, but it has to be done, because I would die if I don’t move back but you wouldn’t move with me.

Looking back, I understand that I made a bad assumption that many sufferers of mood disorder make: that the depression would never go away unless you do something drastic.

As such, I hurt my Bear tremendously.

The first rule of Fight Club: you never talk about Fight Club.

(Movie “Fight Club”)

First rule about mood disorders: Don’t make decisions when you are emotional

(My psychiatrist)

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During this same period of increasingly feverish behavior at work, my marriage was falling apart. I sepa­rated from my husband, ostensibly because I wanted children and he didn’t — which  was  true and impor­tant— but it was far more complicated than that. I was increasingly restless, irritable, and 1 craved excitement; all of a sudden, I found myself rebelling against the very things I most loved about my husband: his kindness, sta­bility, warmth , and love. I impulsively reached out for a new life. I found an exceedingly modern apartment in Santa Monica, although I hated modern architecture; I bought  modern   Finnish  furniture,  although   I  loved warm  and old -fashioned things. Everything I acquired was cool,  modern ,  angular,  and,  I  suppose,  strangely

soothing  and  relatively  uninvasive  of my  increasingly chaotic  mind and jangled  senses. The re was, at least, a spectacular— and spectacularly expensive— view o f the ocean. Spending a lot of money that you don’t have— or,  as the form all diagnostic criteria so quaintly put it, “engaging in unrestrained buying  sprees”— is a classic part of mania.

(Kay Jamison - An Unquiet Mind)

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Know That You Can't Tackle This Alone. People Who Are Depressed Have A Medical Condition: Before I get into telling you how to handle the request for a divorce, I first want to stress that no matter how much you love your husband, unless you are a medical professional who deals with depression, you can not and should not handle this alone. Most people who are severely depressed need medical help. This is a disease just like diabetes or cancer. It's no one's fault, but it can be managed...

http://www.articlesbase.com/breakup-articles/my-husband-is-depressed-and-wants-to-leave-me-or-get-a-divorce-2939036.html  

Ever Changing Decisions & the Ugly Truth about Negative Thinking

My Bear was distraught that I asked for a divorce, but because he loved me, he thought he would do what I thought was best for me. He treated me with nothing but respect. He was that kind and pure.

He didn’t know that I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I talked absolute terms: must, should, have to, forever... but I didn’t have the ability to think things through.

Try not to express your feelings in absolute terms like “must”, “should”, “forever”…

Instead, try expressing your feelings in terms how you feel. Start your sentence with “I feel...”

(My psychologist)

After asking for a divorce, for some time I thought the madness in my mind would stop. During Christmas, I went to New York by myself instead of visiting his family. Sad and left alone, my husband had to make excuses for me to his family.

In the meanwhile, I turned away from everyone in the world, while trying to stop my over-speeding mind. One night alone in New York, after starving and drinking some caffeinated sofa, my minds flew: I came up with a dozen of ideas for the future, including being a manager to new stars - I had nothing whatever to do with the media industry - I was that crazy. Of course, all of those ideas seemed very sensible to me.

I didn’t know that I was going out of my mind at the time. After years of accumulation, my disorder finally became “pathological”, as my psychiatrist said.

After I came back from New York, the pressure of getting divorce started to mount. I couldn’t figure out exactly why we had to be divorced. I became very lost about what I should do after getting a divorce (managing stars?)

Like a maniac, I asked my husband for reconciliation. Should we cancel the divorce? I asked him sheepishly.

I was not coherent or sensible from this point on. For over a year, my mind was flying as high as a kite, dragging my depressed body along in the dark, deep, manless waters. Two or three toxic thoughts kept cycling in my mind:

1). Divorce

    In my mind, divorce = going back to my hometown = a way out of my depression = separation from my husband = imminent sadness

2). Staying in our original city

    In my mind that = wildering and death =continued depression = unbearable

3). Dark thoughts

My head cycled between these few thoughts uncontrollably like a halting computer. I couldn’t think of anything else; I couldn’t see 3 inches ahead. 


Bipolar wife wants a divorce 

She's threatened to leave before, but has never really done it. She usually changes her mind after about a day. To make an example, 4 days ago she said we'd be together forever. 2 days ago she said that she wants a divorce.

http://ojar.com/view_4554.htm

 
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It can be tough to tell if you’re making a decision based on your wise mind or your emotion mind, because, as Van Dijk writes, both include emotions.

She suggests assessing the strength of your emotion. If your emotion is intense or overwhelming, you’re likely in emotion mind. If it’s not overpowering, you’re likely in wise mind.

Also, making a decision from your wise mind means sitting with it. If you find yourself vacillating, you’re probably letting emotion mind take over. That just means that you need to give yourself more time.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/04/28/making-healthy-decisions-when-you-have-bipolar-disorder/

Dark thoughts

Close to being divorced, I didn’t know what to do. I kneeled down in the workroom and begged the gods to help me reconcile with my husband; to help me be normal and loving enough to take care of myself and him.

Writings from that period showed that I thought of asking his dad and his brother for help.

My Bear was still forgiving. Reluctantly, he agreed to reconcile. Nonetheless, he was destroyed. His health began to weaken and he was very stressed out.

He is truly a superman. He was taking care of a person with a mood disorder and he didn’t know it. I am so sorry for all the hurt I brought to my Bear.

I looked healthy, even dangerously radiant. I spoke clearly, in fact, I spoke a lot, often nonstop - although what I said really didn’t make much sense.

We made up. We had a brief spring. I tried to be a better communicator. I set talking rules with him. Then the summer storms came and I broke all the rules.

I was truly wretched.

Because I still couldn’t figure out how to slow down my mind and stop the depression, dark thoughts came to me for the first time.

I stopped going on Facebook. I didn’t want to tell any of my friends about divorce or other problems.

At this point, I pushed everyone away. Everyone: my husband, my family, his family, my friends, our friends.

However, fear is often the reason for not seeing a doctor.... -- even though relationships and careers can be at stake.

If you're concerned about a loved one who could have bipolar disorder, talk to him or her about seeing a doctor. Sometimes, simply suggesting a health checkup is the best approach. With other people, it's best to be direct about your concern regarding a mood disorder. Include these points in the discussion:

·                It's not your fault. You have not caused this disorder. Genetics and stressful life events put people at greater vulnerability for bipolar disorder.

·                Millions of Americans have bipolar disorder. It can develop at any point in a person's life -- though it usually develops in young adulthood -- and is responsible for enormous suffering.

·                Bipolar disorder is a real disease. Just like heart disease or diabetes, it requires medical treatment.

·                There's a medical explanation for bipolar disorder. Disruptions in brain chemistry and nerve cell pathways are involved. The brain circuits -- those that control emotion -- are not working the way they should. Because of this, people experience certain moods more intensely, for longer periods of time, and more frequently.

·                Good treatments are available. These treatments have been tested and found to be effective for many, many people with bipolar disorder. Medications can help stabilize your moods. Through therapy, you can discuss feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that cause problems in your social and work life. You can learn how to master these so you can function better and live a more satisfying life.

·                By not getting treatment, you risk having worse mood swings -- and even becoming suicidal. You risk damaging your relationships with friends and family. You could put your job at risk. And your long-term physical health can also be affected, since emotional disturbances affect other systems in the body. This is very serious.

Trust is crucial in shaking someone's denial, in motivating him or her to get help. Trust is also important once treatment for bipolar disorder starts. Through the eyes of a trustworthy friend or family member, a person with bipolar disorder can know when treatment is working -- when things are getting better, and when they're not. If your interest is sincere, you can be of great help to your friend or family member.

http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/convincing-to-see-doctor

Secretly I started to write suicide notes. I looked up places to hide and die. In this mac that I am using to write my story now, I have a file that was dated in April 23 of last year. It’s titled “To Police”.

I don’t wish to garner any sympathy or spread any morbid thinking. I am only sharing this to share my personal tragedy and to hopefully raise awareness to the destructive sides of mood disorders. Unfortunately, they are all too real to the people who experience it. Despite this fact, suicides or suicidal thoughts are often a taboo in families and in societies and they are not openly discussed. I think as a society, we have a responsibility to talk about these very real issues so people who experience it could get prompt help.

One year ago, I really needed medical support. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I had the knowledge or understanding about mood disorders to seek professional aid.

As a consequence, both my husband and I were rubbed of the protection of modern medicine. Due to ignorance, we were denied of a basic human right in an advanced society: the right to health care.

Can you believe it? We both have postgraduate degrees; we were living in a city that invented some of the most advanced technologies for the 21st century; we had access to one of the best medical systems around the globe, and yet, because our understanding of the mind was still primitive, we were susceptible to its faults and let them affect us in the most hurtful ways.

My Bear is right: I can’t blame it all on the illness.

Ignoring it altogether had a price though. Have you ever wondered why Mike “had to” throw out Kate? Why Kate resorted to being homeless? What if her real problems were not drugs, but moods? They were just like us: professionals, cat-owners, worked from home. Have you wondered about the price of being free?

And we were so free. Familially, occupationally, financially. The unbearable lightness of being.

Freedom has a price, and it is: not knowing what one should do next.

I entered a rapid cycle of manic-depression. If my ups and downs used to last a month to a few months, they came and went every few days or even every day.

I started compulsively discussing the problems in our lives.

Every few days, I tried to discuss how we should work on our future.

I dreamt up charts, tables, checklists. All to be filled out and discussed.

During the process, I discovered that you thought our lives were fine as they were. There was no need for any change and for any thinking to be done about the future.

Your future is to be led by you and my future by me, I learned. Other than sharing the condo,  there was no plan for our future together.

I freaked out and got very angry. I went on and on and on about what we had done wrong. My speech was high-speed, my language was crystal-clear, but my thoughts were as muddy as the grass field after heavy rain.

Bear was upset that I attacked our marriage in many ways, but was still very patient with me in finding a solution. I can only imagine the psychological pressure he underwent.

What eluded both of us was: why I had the intelligence of a grown-up professional with an advanced degree, but the emotional maturity of a distressed child.

I was like our cat in the box, on its way to the vet. Terrified of the prospect of being sent to the vet but unable to stop us from transporting him, he could only express his distress by pooping in the box and meowing violently.

If he got a chance to, he would claw us without thinking and escape into the streets just to avoid going to the vet.

He didn’t mean to hurt us, anger us, or run from us, and yet he felt compelled to cry and run away.

In order words, his lizard brain was turned on.

I was just like our big cat since a year or so ago. I felt like our marriage was making us “go to the vet” (although that was not real), and I felt like I had to resist with all the might of my life.

Speaking assertively, the marriage has always been very scary to me. I had to stay in another country, away from my culture and family. To a person with a fragile mind like mine, it was quite stressful. Not that I cannot be successful in that culture or I cannot get adjusted. In fact, we were living a pretty normal life there - with jobs and friends and things to do. But the mental instability and ambiguous common goals for the future had always been a huge pressure point for me, especially when I hadn’t fully been independently single before I got married. While staying with my Bear was a good feature welcomed by my Bear in the early years. Eventually, the unclear foundation of our union became a major trigger for my emotional ups and downs and pushed my Bear away from me.

My husband could see that I was unreasonable and unrealistic, but I argued with him. I made myself sound very sensible, but if you really listened, you could hear madness.

With my sense of reality gone, my humanity also went out of the window. It is the most shameful thing to admit but it was true. I became unable to empathize with my Bear or see anyone else’s point of view. Anyone sane person could see that I was chasing a ghost - anyone except me. My sane and awake Bear, still keeping guard for my interests and our common interests, had to witness this steady deterioration of my humanity. He kept reminding us what we had: our support for each other; our common language in the industry, his support for my work, our castle that was the condo, the exhibit of our love that was the cats... It was most cruel to him that for over a year he was all alone in safeguarding our bond. I just couldn’t hear him. I was not just him, I couldn’t hear anyone. I couldn’t comprehend a thing. My mind was gone. Where? In my mind. My mind had gone in my mind had gone in my mind had gone in my mind... 3 toxic thoughts cycled.

I still have the remnants of those days: endless parade of comparison charts, chronological tables, analytical reports. All to prove that we made the wrong choices all along and the red sirens were running.

It is painful now to read through all the “analysis” we went through.

My psychologist said I was using “over-planning” to try to control my emotional turmoil inside.

My Bear, mad but still patient and respectful to me, worked with me on all of those.

What a sensitive and loving person. He was superhuman.

But he was getting stressed out too. He was lost as I was. The only difference was that he was sane and I was not.

When I travelled back once to my hometown, my depression only got worse. I felt I was living in a suitcase. I imagined dying curled up in our large suitcase (which is lying right next to me as I type this). I moved all my money to one account. Just in case.

A month later I went back to our city, and went back to bed to watch tv: I watched whole seasons of Downton Abbey (became very agitated when Season 2 hadn’t come out on DVD), the whole 7 or 8 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, all seasons of Dr. Who and countless other shows that I couldn’t remember. My depression became acute.

If only we knew not to accept odd behaviors as normal, not to accept outbursts of emotions as acceptable, we could have had a chance.

Those suffering from bipolar disorder can also say and do very hurtful things that will seem like a personal attack - something you don't experience with a traditional illness. This may be the most difficult aspect to handle, and you must come to understand and be able to separate the behavior of the disease from the person you love.

...please remember the most important thing of all - the person you love is still there, still loving you, and will always regret the painful things he or she says and does during an episode. Fortunately, with proper medication and counseling, episodes can be few and far between.

http://www.bipolarcentral.com/articles/articles-34-1-Awareness-is-Key-to-Successful-Marriage-to-a-Bipolar-Sufferer.html

Mood disorder and self-identity

All your life you think you are a good person.

You see injustice and you think: those people should be punished.

You firmly believe in “siding with the eggshell”.

Your world was neatly black and white and it was splendidly romantic like a Cartier-Bresson picture.

You love your cats. You love all animals.

You love your husband and think of him as another animal just like you.

You believe in the world village. You believe any people in the world should have the right to self-govern if they really want to. It only makes too much sense. You support Kiva, borrowing money so people in poor countries can self-sustain. What a beautiful idea.

You care about the environment (a little too strongly). You argued with your husband about the serious impact of plastic bags on our planet. You were adamant. You don’t understand why people don’t think about the longevity of plastic (50 years!) or the importance of reducing their carbon footprints in our day-to-day activities. Your husband dislikes you for getting so worked up.

You listen to NPR. You are abreast with all the humane issues facing our society and humankind in general.

You adore Stephen Pinker. You believe in evolution and the progression of human as a race.

You volunteer all over town. You make jokes about how there were more volunteers than people being helped in a volunteer event. You poke fun at first world problems, feeling very smart.

You cried after watching “March of the Penguin” - you couldn’t bear how the polar bears exhaust themselves swimming but couldn’t reach the safe shore of an iceberg (you still do). Secretly you regarded protecting the environment as the single most important deed that you and humankind should band together to work on.

You wouldn’t eat meat. You believe in these day and age you can get nutrients elsewhere, hence it’s really unnecessary to consume animal meat as a source of protein.

You love literature, films, and all forms of art. Walking in a museum calms you down.

You once had a beautiful heart. You once had purity of thoughts. You once had a relatively healthy mind.

Once you were starting off new lives with a nice boy you fell in love with, just like everyone else. Once you were regarded as the polite and shy girl that you were instead of someone who hurts, or worse: someone not worth talking to, reasoning with.

Sometimes your mind runs so fast that you feel limitless. You get insights into the very existence of being. You connect past, present and future in a neat thought.

You hear about people hurting other people. You can’t comprehend it: how can they be so cruel?

Until one day you push away the dearest person in your whole life and in the whole wide world; you hurt the one person you love other than your own family, and the tragedy is: you wouldn’t even realize it until it is all too late.

You think: Who am I? Am I real? Was I real? Where does my disorder start and my free will end? Later, you’d wonder where does the pill start and your free will end. Pill and free will, are they the same thing?

The moods had taken hold of you for so long you are not sure if you’ve had them all your life. Your sense of self is trashed. Your identity destroyed.

Psychiatry. 2008 Summer;71(2):123-33. doi: 10.1521/psyc.2008.71.2.123.

"I actually don't know who I am": the impact of bipolar disorder on the development of self.

Inder ML, Crowe MT, Moor S, Luty SE, Carter JD, Joyce PR. Source Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago Christchurch, Christchurch, New Zealand. maree.inder@otago.ac.nz

Abstract

The majority of patients with bipolar disorder have onset prior to twenty years with early onset associated with increased impairment. Despite this, little attention has been given to the psychosocial developmental impact of this disorder. This qualitative study explored the impact of having bipolar disorder on the development of a sense of self and identity. Key findings from this qualitative study identified that for these participants, bipolar disorder had a significant impact in the area of self and identity development. Bipolar disorder created experiences of confusion, contradiction, and self doubt which made it difficult for these participants to establish continuity in their sense of self. Their lives were characterized by disruption and discontinuity and by external definitions of self based on their illness. Developing a more integrated self and identity was deemed possible through self-acceptance and incorporating different aspects of themselves. These findings would suggest that it is critical to view bipolar disorder within a psychosocial developmental framework and consider the impact on the development of self and identity. A focus on the specific areas of impact and targeting interventions that facilitate acceptance and integration thus promoting self and identity development would be recommended.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18573034

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What then, after the medications, psychiatrist, despair, depression, and overdose? All those incredible feelings to sort through. Who is being too polite to say what? Who knows what? What did I do? Why? And most hauntingly, when will it happen again? Then, too, are the bitter reminders—medicine to take, resent, forget, take, resent, and forget, but always to take. Credit cards revoked, bounced checks to cover, explanations due at work, apologies to make, intermittent memories (what did I do?), friendships gone or drained, a ruined marriage. And always, when will it happen again? Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me’s is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither. Virginia Woolf, in her dives and climbs, said it all: “How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?”

(“The Unquiet Mind”, Kay Jamison, Ph.D.)

The Invisible Enemy & Feeling Cheated

We kept solving the marriage, never seeing who our enemy really was.

For sure we had problems that we needed to solve as a couple. All married couples do.

My emotional modulations were presented (by me) and interpreted (by us) as my dissatisfactions for the marriage.

We made a big erroneous assumption: that I had a healthy emotional mind.

We thought: Y = Z. Never suspecting that X + Y = Z.

My husband went to his family for help. We are indebted to his dad and his brother for their well-meaning advice.

Not knowing the history of my condition and thinking that I was clear-minded about moving to my hometown, they advised my Bear to go with me as a last resort to save our marriage.

That would later prove to be a detrimental decision, but none of us knew at the time. No one knew that I had developed bipolar, and that my conditions would severely worsen with the stress of the move.

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·                Trust their feelings. Get help. Be there. Set goals. Don’t take it personally.

·                Don’t let them be. Don’t do stuff for them. Don’t scold and accuse. Most importantly, don’t give them up.

·                Do: Set goals with the patients. Be patient.

(Advice for family of mental illnesses from a seminar)

Later (now) my husband would be convinced that I had manipulated him with my emotions. (I am so sorry.)

It’s conceivable that he felt this way. Over time, my emotions became black holes that refused to be filled. Knowing what I know now, I cannot bear the kind of hurt my emotional ups and downs had given my Bear. Another devastating riddle about this disorder is that in it, the Oppressor is also the Oppressed. It’s a story where the victim and the bad guy are the same person. Needless to say, it leads to tragedy.

Once I had a chance of normalcy. Now I, like my beloved husband, feel cheated that my emotions had manipulated us for so long.

After months of treatment, the sinister spell that my emotions had cast on me like the bitter work of a black witch was finally lifting, leaving me barenaked. I found myself having to relearn everything from scratch: breathe, walk, speak, think.

I am unspeakably ashamed now. At the time, I was utterly convinced. I am so utterly sorry for what I did to my Bear and his family.

Some sobering statistics: Depression has a much greater impact on marital life than rheumatoid arthritis or cardiac disease. Ninety percent of marriages where one person is bipolar ends in divorce. Persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce as the general public, which is about 50 percent.

This is all to communicate this message: marriages in which one person suffers from depression or bipolar disorder can be extremely fragile.

I know, because I’m in one.

Here are six tips that have helped us and other couples I know defy the statistics.

1. Cut Through the Crap

If you are married to someone who is in denial, you have quite a job ahead of you. “I’m not crazy.” “There is nothing wrong with me.” “I am not taking meds.” These statements do little to move your marriage into the happy zone. In her book, “When Someone You Love Is Bipolar,” psychologist Cynthia Last, Ph.D. dedicates a chapter to the subject of denial and what you can do. She suggests giving your partner a book that he can relate to and providing literature on the topic.

You could also try a scientific approach and provide some evidence in the form of feedback from his friends and family, a list of compelling symptoms (embarrassing photos are great), or a rundown of the disorder in his family. He could balk at that, and tell you that you dress like his mother for even implying such things; however, you’ve done your job to try to educate, and that’s really all you can

do.

2. Find the Right Doctor

I consider shopping for the right doctor much like buying your first house. Many components need to go into the decision — it’s not enough to like the bathroom tiles and the bedroom closet — and some bickering is to be expected. If you rush the decision, you might wind up living in a house that you hate for a long time except for the great bathroom tiles. Good doctors save marriages. Bad doctors destroy them. Good doctors help you get better. Bad doctors worsen your condition.

If your partner is bipolar, this is especially important because the average patient with bipolar disorder takes approximately 10 years to get a proper diagnosis. About 56 percent are first diagnosed with unipolar depression. I know this topic well. I went through seven doctors and a ton of diagnoses before I found the right fit. She saved my life and my marria

3. Enter into a Triangle Relationship

In any other situation, I hate threesomes. Someone always gets left out and people play dirty — at least they do at my daughter’s play dates. But for marriages that involve illnesses such as depression or bipolar, a triangle relationship with a doctor or mental health professional is essential. It keeps your partner honest, or at least required to unfudge the truth. He reports:“ Feeling perfect. Meds really kicking in. All is going better than it ever has.” Then wifey comes in and spills the beans. “He has been curled up on the couch in tears for the last two weeks, not taking calls from any friends and skipping important meetings at work.”

The triangle relationship also allows you some education about his condition. For example, you might not be aware of what a hypomanic episode looks like until you hear the doctor describe it. In some cases a mutual understanding of symptoms is enough for a couple to avert a full-blown manic or depressive episode because together you can take steps to change the course.

4. Abide by Some Rules

My husband and I have several rules: I call the doctor after three days of incessant crying or nosleep. I tell him when I’m suicidal. He stays with me when I’m a danger to myself. However, the most important rule is this: I have promised him that I will take my meds. It’s like how Jack Nicholson told Helen Hunt in the movie “As Good As It Gets” that she makes him want to take his meds, she “makes him want to be a better man.” The truth is that many marriages get stuck on this one.

Without a doubt, the biggest challenge we face in treating bipolar disorder is medical adherence, according to psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison. “I’d like to make the obvious point that I don’t think is made enough, which is that it doesn’t do any good to have effective medications for an illness if people don’t take them,” she said at the Johns Hopkins 21st Annual Mood Disorders Symposium. Approximately 40 – 45 percent of bipolar patients do not take their medications as prescribed. Come up with some rules, and be sure to include in there “medication adherence.

5. Learn the Language of the Illness

Sometimes I forget how hurtful my words can be when I’m expressing how anxious or depressed I feel. “I just want to be dead.” “I don’t care about anything.” “If only I was diagnosed with cancer and could make a graceful exodus out of this world …” Oh, no offense. Thankfully my husband knows that it’s my depression speaking, not me. He has been able to separate his wife from the illness. That is the result of lots of research on his part and a few conversations with my psychiatrist

6. Keep Yourself Sane

Spouses of persons with depression and bipolar unwittingly become caretakers for major chunks of time. And caretakers are at high risk for depression and anxiety. Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine have found that nearly one-third of caregivers who are nursing terminally ill loved ones at home suffer from depression. A study in Great Britain found that one in four family caregivers meets the clinical criteria for anxiety.

Pay attention to these symptoms: feeling tired and burned out much of the time; physical signs of stress such as headaches and nausea; irritability; feeling down, deflated, reduced; changes in sleep or appetite; resentment toward your spouse; decreased intimacy in your relationship. Remember that if you don’t secure your oxygen mask first, no one gets air. If my husband didn’t take time to run and play golf he would be hospitalized alongside me.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/05/13/being-married-to-a-person-with-depression-bipolar-6-survival-tips/

Big Change & Leaving

One day in the midst of all the arguments, I got an email. It was a call to interview for a position in my hometown.

The pay was crappy. My husband didn’t want to move. We were having so much trouble between us. It was crazy to take the job.

In my messy mind though, I could only think: this is the chance. I can finally go to my hometown. My husband and I would have my salary to live on, and I can stay on the island of my dream; he’d be working on his own projects; I’d work to cover for us. We’ll go to the beach. We’ll go clubbing in town. This is perfect.

That would prove to be the final blow.

I had another massive manic episode - crying and yelling to get him to come to my hometown with me. He saw all the holes in the plan; I didn’t. Still trying to save our marriage, my husband agreed to move to my hometown with me for one year.

To save expenses, we rented condo to our neighbors and got someone to take care of our cats.

My husband was really unhappy about moving to my hometown. He could see the consequences that while I was feverishly trying to move. His parents objected, but I didn’t listen to them. I didn’t tell my parents about our problems, so they thought we were really trying to live in my hometown for a year.

I am so sorry to everyone for everything. I cannot be more ashamed.

Like I said, I was just doing one thing or another right in front of me at this point. I had the foresight of a cockroach. I couldn’t see even 10 minutes ahead. All I wanted to do was to move to the island of my dream and that would be the end of all of our problems.

The island of my dream is 25 minutes of ferry ride away from my hometown. I’ve been there once with my mom a few years back. I felt tranquil and happy that day. That was how it became my ultimate dream of peace and happiness.

I gave him all kind of reasons that we should move there: everything would be fine. We will have exciting city life, enjoy the country life of the island, swim, and work whatever we wanted. To “convince” him, I threatened divorce again in a public park.

Why couldn’t I see the ugly things I was doing? Why didn’t I sense the nightmare that I had created?

Bipolar individuals are not only more likely to set unrealistic goals, they can also be severely affected emotionally when their goals are not met.

"We find that they have problems with regulating goals, setting ambitions too high and becoming overconfident," Johnson said.

After establishing these triggers, the study outlines a therapeutic treatment to combat them, which researchers named the GOALS program.

Johnson, who conducted research on bipolar disorder for 13 years at the University of Miami, worked with Fulford to develop the educational program, which seeks to help people recognize and control early symptoms of a manic episode.

In Miami, the pair tried out the program on 23 volunteers with bipolar disorder, helping them design reasonable plans to achieve their goals.

"We teach them skills for when they're becoming a little too confident or too goal-oriented and ways to calm their moods," Johnson said.

http://archive.dailycal.org/article/104694/unrealistic_goals_tied_to_bipolar_disorder

The process of moving to the island was excruciating for my husband. He had to quit his contract job, dispose extra furniture in our condo for our renters to move in, and shipped stuff to my hometown for me.

In the meanwhile, the move was literally nerve-racking for me too. I found that working in my hometown is stressful and downgrading to professionals like us (as my husband forewarned). I had to work long hours and face distrustful clients who didn’t understand our line of work.

Stress, big changes, time zone difference, lack of sleep, dire consequences after reckless decisions... textbook triggers for bipolar disorder, happened to me all at the same time. The first day I started working in my hometown, I had trouble even forming a sentence. I thought my memory was going, but I hid my problems still.

I wouldn’t relent. I rented a place on the island and the Bear and I moved in.

I picked fights with him every night. I cried daily. Inside, dying appeared constantly on my mind. Out of control, I expressed all the anger and depression I felt outwardly.

I abused his love. It’s hard to admit, but I did.

I cried so much that my Bear said: “I am immune to your tears.” (That was a sign! A symptom! How come we didn’t know???)

At this stage, my manic-depressive could cycle several times a day. There were no distinct states of mania or depression anymore. It was all mixed together into a horrific storm that came back day after day.

The day we moved into the island, we bumped into my old friends from secondary school. Still avoiding my friends, I said I would call them back, but I never did.

Instead, tears came out of my eyes uncontrollably and publicly in an outdoor restaurant. I said to my Bear, resolutely: “I would never see my friends again. I would live on this island till the day I die”.

I brought him to the island’s beach at night. Those were the only rare moments when I felt peace those days. On some rocks out in the water, I thanked my Bear for coming to see my island.

Still we fought. I started hitting myself.

My knuckles turned reddish brown from hitting myself. My brother noticed them. I told him they were from working out.

As soon as the bruises healed, I got hysterical again and the brown knuckles came back.

It was not just my husband. I couldn’t stand being with my family or his family. I remember getting very agitated when my parents continuously talked about the foods and dishes we were having at night.

“How mundane”, thought I. My inside was boiling with impatience.

After a dinner with my Bear’s parents one night, I ran to a public bathroom and cried.

He repeated said to me, in desperation: “I thought moving to your hometown would make you feel better. Instead, you got worse.”

“She would never change", he eventually said to my mom. But I did change. I changed for the worse. I was steadily getting worse. Wasn’t that obvious enough?

How loud does a scream have to be before it is heard?

I can sum up the nature of bipolar disorder in three words: chronic, complex, and confusing; in two words: burdensome and bothersome. Or, if you want just one word: angry.

If you deal with bipolar disorder, you’ve probably dealt with anger as I have. (You may be dealing with it right now.) Facing such a disorder provides plenty of opportunities for anger to manifest itself. How you confront anger does impact the course your recovery takes and the quality of your life in general...

When anger is out of control, it can lead to clouded thoughts and impulsive actions. It can even result in aggressive behavior directed toward someone or something else. In addition, when you fail to confront anger constructively, others may see you as communicating destructive ideas, such as avoidance or contempt.

http://www.bphope.com/Item.aspx/164/making-the-most-of-anger-before-it-gets-the-best-of-you

--- 

I know exactly how you feel my son has bipolar and yes when in a manic state comes out with some strange things also rude and aggressive words and they do know what they are saying but cant help it it is in some cases part of the illness. And they are genuine when they say sorry I heard my son tell the Dr over and over again he doesn't want to be like this it was really sad.

http://www.mcrh.org/Bipolar-Disorder/172067.htm

 

What I don’t understand to this day is why my husband still thought I was mentally healthy.

Maybe he trusted me too much. Maybe he trusted my abilities to help myself.

He told me: the problems came from you. You have to get better first before we can tackle our problems. In the last month before he left, he sent an email to me asking me to be a “resilient partner”. Back then I couldn’t understand a thing he said. I just kept on meowing and crapping, kicking and screaming, panicking and depressing.

He was, of course, right on the spot. The problem came from me. Only at that point he or I alone couldn’t fix the problem in me. We needed medicine. I got too sick. My cold had turned into pneumonia. My body had become too susceptible to any external pressure. I needed antibiotics and other drugs to strengthen my body first, before I can properly love and support him.

Mood disorder or manic-depressions never ever entered our conversations.

Last night I bumped into my high school friend of a long time. Let’s call her Joey. I’ve been avoiding my old friends to this point because I am stilling figuring out what happened to us. Joey actually knew that I was back to the hometown but she respected my privacy. After pretending not to see each other for a few minutes, I went up and said hi. I told her about my conditions.

Surprisingly, she said she knew about bipolar disorder. One of her good friends had it. They were classmates and came back to our hometown from yet another continent at the same time. A lot of tragedies happened in her friend’s family, and her friend started to yell at Joey every time they saw each other. Her friend would get very angry and upset and even threatened Joey once. Unlike my Bear, who sincerely thought I was upset about our marriage the whole time, Joey went online to look up what could be wrong with her friend. She found that bipolar disorder fitted a lot of her friend’s behaviors. Trying to help, Joey brought her friend to see a local mood disorder specialist, accompanied her to relevant seminars, and eventually helped her friend to get better.

Joey could even explain to me how the lack of serotonin affects a person: the human brain is like a glass, she said, the brain of a mood disorder patient is either always empty or full in emotions, disturbing their thoughts and behaviors. Their emotions would need to return to normal range to function properly.

The illness is not everything. The illness is not 100% the cause. But as in anything else, how we handled the problem made a great deal of difference. Unfortunately, sometimes our brain needs a reboot and fixing before it could go on loving and cherishing.

How come we know to go to the doctor and get medicine when we have a cold, but we don’t think we need to go to the doctors when we have a serious mood disorder?

When you are diagnosed with cancer, you call your family, you call your friends, you know you talk to your employer, and you know you get flowers you get sympathy and everyone is running around you rooting for you. Uh... unfortunately when you are diagnosed with mental illness which is also a life-threatening illness, you don’t get that. You don’t get flowers. You don’t get your employers to say

um... we understand, we’ll scheduled your time depending on your treatment. Uh... you don't get choruses patting you on the back, giving you a hug and saying we understand we are here for you. What you can get, and many have gone is

okay, silence.

… I think it's really important for employers to realize

that what they do really can affect a person's life.

The hardest thing is I just want people to see me as me, and not as bipolar me. And that's been hard.

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(“Living with Bipolar Disorder: Stigma”)

Those days on the island, I stared at the water as I walked from the ferry everyday. Sinking occupied my thoughts. I imagined all the ways I could keep myself down in the water, including the way Virginia Woolf did herself in.

Depression is: you are in the water and you can see a little bit of light above you far, far away. You know you can never get up to the surface because you keep sinking down, and you learn to rely on yourself sinking down (learnt helplessness). So instead of looking up, you look down. You see a bottomless void, an all-consuming darkness that has no end to it. Because you have spent the past months and years in depression, you know you can keep sinking forever. Without knowing a way out (again, meds & treatments!), you wish to reach straight to the bottom to end the anguish...

That’s what depression feels like. That’s what drives people to self-destruction.

Bipolar II is a very severe mood disorder that affects 3-4% of the population. Like Bipolar I it is genetically transmitted and runs in families. It is first and foremost a disorder of abnormal neurochemical functioning in the brain; not due to psychological stressors or character.

Bipolar II has recurring mood episodes that include: severe depression and hypomanic episodes. Hypomanias are mood episodes that arise spontaneously (i.e. not triggered by life events). They can last from a day or two to a week; sometimes longer. During hypomanic episodes the person feels very up-beat, optimistic, very self-confident, and experiences a decreased need for sleep. Such episodes are not pathological and in fact can be experienced as a huge relief from depressions that are so much of the landscape of bipolar II. However, it is the depressive side of this disorder that can be devastating.

Recurring depressive episodes dominate the lives of people with Bipolar II, unless controlled with mood stabilizing medications. Depressive episodes can last from a few months to a few years and if sufferers are not treated or are inadequately treated more than 50% of their lives are spent in severe episodes of depression. Surprisingly, Bipolar II can have a worse outcome than Bipolar I (unless appropriately treated). Divorce rates are higher in Bipolar II than in Bipolar I. The lifetime suicide rate is 19% and serious medical problems are much more common in Bipolar illness; e.g. twice the death rate from heart attacks compared with people who do not have mood disorders

http://www.sharecare.com/question/is-bipolar-disorder-serious

On top of the hurtful fights and the crying, I disappeared twice into the night. At this point, any stress would stimulate me to hysteria.

One of the major stressful triggers for me in that period was work. I started getting panic attacks, which in me manifested as panting heavily. I was petrified to do any work and I had to bring work back over the weekend. I sat in front the computer for a long time, staring at the screen. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I froze. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do the most basic thing in my job.

One night in October, I disappeared for 3 hours from our home on the island after work. My Bear called and called. He was worried sick. 3 hours later I went home. I never did tell my Bear where I went: I cried and climbed out into the farthest rock closest to the sea, and tied my office bag tightly to my left ankle.

I couldn’t do it at the end.

My husband, on top of being not used to a strange city, was utterly helpless about my behaviors.

He knew that I was experiencing big troubles, and started to get very depressed himself. He drank. He threw away all the knives. He asked me to get psychiatric help. In anger, I said: OK! Make an appointment for me.

Why didn’t I listen to him? His love for me led him to continually tolerate my behaviors when I was obviously so unwell.

Of course he cared me very much and respected me and my wishes. He only had the best of intentions - however in hindsight it had proven to be a choice both unhealthy for him and for my health. (I can be nothing but sorry that I stopped him from telling my family. I am sorry I didn’t protect you from my emotions.)

Instead, he was still trying to help me as much as he could by himself. He was so brave, yet so helpless.

I know I keep saying this over and over. It’s because the lack of awareness was so destructive to us that I keep emphasizing this: watch out for the signs, don’t think you can fix it on your own, get professional help!

With treatment, my husband and I may still have to suffer from confusion and pain for some time, but our marriage would not have to be ruined.

The good news is that most people with bipolar disorder can stabilize their moods with proper treatment, medication, and support—so if your friend or family member has bipolar disorder, take hope. Furthermore, you can play a significant role in his or her recovery.

Here are some ways you can help a person with bipolar disorder:

·               Learn about bipolar disorder. Educate yourself about bipolar disorder. Learn everything you can about the symptoms and treatment options. The more you know about bipolar disorder, the better equipped you’ll be to help your loved one and keep things in perspective.

·               Encourage the person to get help. The sooner bipolar disorder is treated, the better the prognosis, so urge your friend or family member to seek professional help right away. Don’t wait to see if the person will get better without treatment.

·               Be understanding. Let your friend or family member know that you’re there if he or she needs a sympathetic ear, encouragement, or assistance with treatment. Remind the person that you care and that you’ll do whatever you can to help.

·               Be patient. Getting better takes time, even when a person is committed to treatment. Don’t expect a quick recovery or a permanent cure. Be patient with the pace of recovery and prepare for setbacks and challenges. Managing bipolar disorder is a lifelong process.

He never once cried. Until one night after he had left and thought how much I had betrayed him as a friend.

I am so sorry I left him helpless, hopeless and unprotected from my raw emotions.

In the last days on the island, he bought a book for me. It’s a book written for children about building self-confidence. He even read it to me on the beach. I was so touched. I kissed him out of sheer gratitude.

I tried to get better following the book’s advice. Again I tried to set rules for arguments. They didn’t work.

My mind was too far-gone. Cross my heart. My memory was slipping. Anything could trigger my manic-depression. My mind was, honestly, a mash.

I mentioned divorce daily. I said plenty of mean things to him. Things people in their healthy mind wouldn’t say, but in their malicious malfunctioning state would use as weapons to hurt.

He must have felt such anguish, such solitude.

If I could give my arms and my legs to undo the hurt, I would in a second.

In between the fights and yelling, sometimes I would have one or two lucid moments. One night, after a big tantrum, I disclosed to him: I am scared. I don’t know what to do.

He said he was scared too.

Poor brave man.

Another time when I was stressed out (because his parents were in town and unhappy about our situation), I cried in despair. I screamed: This is hell! This is truly hell. And I can’t get out of it... I was talking about my mind.

But I continued to threaten him not to tell anyone. I was very mean to him.

I am so shamefully sorry.

One night after threatening to divorce, we had a temporary truce. He said would go back to the city we lived while I worked here and figured things out. I asked him to visit me sometimes. We were actually sweet.

The next day, only a few days after Christmas, we had a big fight. Fearing that he would never come back, I asked him to promise to come back to see me after going back to his own continent. Very soon and very easily my emotions had reached hysterical heights. For the first time, he had had enough and attacked back, using the b-word. In utmost anger, I pulled all his stuff from to sad temporary closet into a luggage case and threw him out of the apartment on the island, asking him to never come back.

I called him a few minutes later after I had calmed down, asking him to leave his luggage.

He never turned back.

Misunderstanding and blame

His family, kind and educated as they are, finally used a cultural reason to explain why I behaved these ways.

I understand why they think this way. My behaviors were too horrid and absurd. For over 2 years I was full of negative energy, and at the critical hour of our marriage breaking down, the bad energy spread.

I faced a double jeopardy: because I was from another side of the world, I not only had to leave my family when I married my Bear, but when I was distressed, my outsider status somehow became evidence that I was unfit for their culture. I didn’t respect marriage, they said. I thought Bear’s career was not good enough, they said (although I complained about EVERYTHING).

I really want to say to them:

Bipolar can happen to anyone, regardless of cultural background, race, or level of education. I really didn’t know that I was sick. I followed my feelings. I am sorry to you all.

Both my husband and I should have had the protection of modern medicine, but we didn’t know our rights at the time and we missed the chance of getting treatment together.

We missed our chance to heal together.

Maybe they are scared of my illness too. Maybe they are ashamed. Maybe they are worried for my husband, or about offsprings... I don’t know.

Nevertheless, his family did try to help me until they felt they couldn’t. I am grateful. After my husband left, his dad suggested that I got psychiatric help. I am indebted to him.

Running around in a strange city

After my Bear left, I stayed on the island all by myself.

I panted in panic attacks. I froze. I hid myself on the island during the entire New Year holiday.

All of these were still hidden from my own family.

My mind was still running like mad. I opened my Bear’s iPad and turned on a game I had finished the year before: Zombie vs. Plants.

I played the same rounds over and over again until it became second nature for me to pick the right plant to battle the right zombies. Although the effect was temporary, the game kept me distracted from thinking about suicide and other perils. It was a sad, frightening extension of my days of watching tv.

Frankly, with all the pressure and separation, my intelligence was reduced to that of a rat. At this point I was not a fully functioning human being. All that recycled in my mind was: What is going on? What am I doing? Why am I here?

I would continue to not know what was going on until a few days ago when I started writing this story down. Even now, I am learning about the idiosyncrasies, the absurdities, bipolar has given us over the years.

Ironically, at the time, I could still write emails. I wrote to him, to his family, admitting that I had depression and behaved horribly.

I took on my husband and his family’s explanation: I was weak. I had low self-esteem. I had dubious morals.

I still didn’t know about bipolar. There were no other explanations.

My love was resolute about going.

I wandered in the city I haven’t lived in for 15 years.

I flowed from place to place, from one subway station to another. Later in understanding my condition my psychiatrist would ask me if I had gotten out of at the wrong station. Indeed I had. I wondered how he knew such a specific thing. I went through big, air-conditioned malls like a lost ghost. My mind was blank. My eyes were wide open.

I came to appreciate how mad people felt. You know those mad people you see on the street. Wandering around. Eyes fixated. Iris dilated. Zombie-like and soulless.

I was one of them. I experienced how they feel: their minds are too full. Their thoughts are running all the time and wouldn’t let them rest. They have a halt CPU between their ears.

It could happen to any of us.

In a way, we’ve all underestimated the effects of “moods”. From our cultures or from our experience, we believe that moods can be controlled by all of us at all times, as long as the person is willing to. We can understand that people can be crazy, out of their mind, have hallucinations, hear things… but we can’t perceive that how healthy-looking people can’t control their moods.

Both are true: his hurts are true and my misinformed emotions are true.

Thus is the nature of this illness. It creates an odd vortex where both of our hurtful feelings are true, resulting in a lose-lose situation. We have lost so much, though we don’t know who stole our cheese.

Untreated Mood Episodes

Studies conducted before the availability of medication for bipolar disorder suggest that on average untreated mood episodes (of any type) go on for about 6 months. Looking at specific types of mood episodes, we know that manic and hypomanic episodes tend to be shorter—lasting days, weeks, or a few months—than major depressive episodes, which frequently go on for many months or, in some cases, for a year or more.

Research indicates that bipolar II depressions persist for longer periods of time than bipolar I depressions, nearly twice as long (1 year versus 6 months). Also, for both forms of the illness, but particularly strikingly for bipolar II disorder, the total percentage of time people are depressed is much higher than the total percentage of time they are manic or hypo manic (ratios are 3:1 and 37:1 for bipolar I and II, respectively). So if your loved one has bipolar II disorder, it’s likely that most of the time he will be fighting depression, not hypomania. 

Mixed episodes of bipolar illness, where both mania and depression exist concurrently, generally last for weeks to several months, but about one-third of people still have significant symptoms of the mood disturbance 1 year after it has started. And it’s not unusual for a mixed episode to change into a major depressive episode or, less frequently, a manic one.

(When Someone You Love is Bipolar by Cynthia G. Last, PhD,)

Family Support

Accumulative effects of the disorder, in combination of bad decision-making, grew like an out-of-control snowball.

These days I look at the little tablets (250MG of Quetiapine) I have to take every night and feel very conflicted about them. If I knew to take them before, I had a chance to stop the overloading as well as the disconnecting of my mind. I could think positively, protect my Bear from my hurtful tempers.

We could be happy together.

Two fools in the wood.

Finally a few days after I threw my husband away. My mind finally slowed down enough to realize that I had to tell my parents. I texted my husband to tell him that.

Then dreadfully, I told my mom. She was shocked but calm (if only I had her emotional genes). In fact, my whole family had been very supportive of me and respectful for Bear’s space.

I was the only person who couldn’t appreciate all of it.

I was still, like before, angry and sad. I yelled. I accused.

My husband met with my mom and said he really respected marriage and really meant to stay with me for the rest of our lives.

He was sincere about marriage, yet firmly believed that I never loved him and my behaviors were due to my dissatisfactions in life. He had decided to go.

My behaviors pushed and tested the limits of “in sickness and in health, until death do us part”.

So far I have asked for a divorce, backed out from it, started fights everyday to “fix our marital problems”, eventually mentioning divorce daily, cried daily, hit myself, and disappeared a few times to deal with my very, very dark thoughts.

What I never did was physically leave him. Even when I disappeared into the night, it only lasted a few hours.

My mom asked him: What if she changes?

He replied: She would never change.

This time he was wrong.

Yet this psychology of him at this point would determine that we never got to heal this wound together.

We met for a brief time afterwards. I was trying to save the marriage but had simply no tools at hand to do so.

I promised him that I:

-      Will see cognitive behavioral therapist. Resolve my psychological knots and learn problem-solving skills

-      Will think deeply about being together. Will not get back if I can't participate in our lives or take care of you

-      Will evaluate what I can offer to the relationship

-      Will take your advice of being in the moment, doing something about my life while focusing on one thing at a time

-      Will track progress over time and email progress.

He and I still thought of my problems in terms of cognition and psychology.

I would soon get a diagnosis, but by then he had already made up his mind to part ways with me.

Divided we fall.

The difficulty Davis and Strickland experienced in obtaining an accurate diagnosis is not uncommon due to the complexity of symptoms that can mimic other disorders...

“It is not unusual for an individual to first present with some of the symptoms rather than a full-blown manic episode,” says Husseini K. Manji, MD, FRCPC, a pre-eminent researcher of bipolar disorder and the global therapeutic head for neuroscience at Janssen  Research & Development, Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

“This can sometimes result in a diagnosis of depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or anxiety disorder and it is only over time that the correct diagnosis is reached,” said Manji, who says the biggest diagnostic challenge is between depression and bipolar disorder.

When misdiagnosed, individuals experience the prolonging of both the symptoms and consequences of the illness.

“This is problematic because the treatment for depression (often an antidepressant alone) is not the best treatment for bipolar I or II (which often requires a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant),” said Manji. “This is one of the reasons why having biomarkers that can distinguish depression from bipolar II would be immensely important and beneficial. Research is currently under way.”

The onset of bipolar occurs when individuals are young. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, those between 15 and 25 are at highest risk for developing the disorder.

Further, the delay between the first symptoms and proper diagnosis and treatment is often 10 years.

Davis waited 11 years and Strickland 20 to receive a proper diagnosis.

Although bipolar is a highly genetic disorder, Manji says it is important for individuals to learn about the environmental factors (such as sleep deprivation, severe stress, drug use or hormonal changes) that they are particularly susceptible to and attempt to avoid them.

Such factors can trigger episodes and destabilize the illness.

“There is reason to be hopeful,” said Manji. “The last decade has truly been a remarkable one for biomedical research and cutting-edge technologies are revolutionizing the way we think about, study and approach the development of novel treatments.”

http://www.redding.com/news/2013/mar/06/bipolar-disorder-patients-spend-years-looking/

If before our experience in life was diverged due to the overwhelming emotions I felt inside, at this point, our lives went separate ways. His leaving was like a big cruise ship leaving for another shore. Our story became two stories, each had its own narrative.

My husband believes that it was my character that caused all these woes in our lives. To him, I have become the lying bitch that uses emotions to hold him hostage.

In another continent, I just discovered that I have a complex disorder that not only caused a lot of pain in my Bear and our families, but would also take a lifetime of learning and care to tend to.

To him I am the horrible girl who kept hurting and hurting him.

To me he is the Bear who kept loving and loving until he was convinced I didn’t love him.

If my condition was diagnosed earlier, we don’t have to be on such different paths. If we had detected the problem when the thread started running, and stitched it properly with external support, it wouldn’t have run its course and eventually tore into two pieces of wretched clothes.

He went back home.

I went to see the psychiatrist he recommended. I told to the psychiatrist about all that happened before. For the first time, I realized I might have bipolar.

After going home, I went online to look up “bipolar” on wikipedia:

Individuals with bipolar disorder experience episodes of a frenzied state known as mania (or hypomania), typically alternating with episodes of depression.

At the lower levels of mania, such as hypomania, individuals appear energetic and excitable and may in fact be highly productive. At a higher level, individuals begin to behave erratically and impulsively, often making poor decisions due to unrealistic ideas about the future, and may have great difficulty with sleep. At the highest level, individuals can experience very distorted beliefs about the world known as psychosis. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes; some experience a mixed state in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. Manic and depressive episodes typically last from a few days to several months and can be interspersed by periods of "normal"mood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

It made strange sense, especially that part about “unrealistic ideas about the future”. We all know about depression, but seldom hear about the unrealistic side of the “manic” states.

I dug deeper and deeper. There were a lot of matches in my behaviors and symptoms of manic-depression. I saw another way of looking at my emotional abnormalities other than my self-confidence or my character.

The first time I took pills the doctor gave me, the confluence of the pills, eating dark chocolate and reading sci-fi prompted me to write 10 pages of my emotional history in a few hours. My brain was on a electrifying super-highway; my hands could hardly keep up. All the relevant references of stories I’ve heard of: books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, celebrities who were also sufferers of bipolar, came to me all at once looking like one bright light bulb.

That night was a classic example of my “high” state. I thought if I could write everything down and show it to my Bear, he would understand. In fact, everyone in the world would understand.

The following week, the psychiatrist started giving me mood-stabilizing medication.

Anyone who has taken mood disorder meds could tell you: the drug makes you feel really awful and it’s hard going through day-to-day life when you are adjusting to it.

I went through a very difficult period of adapting to the drug. The following are some diary entries from this painful time showed:

Depression since early this morning.

Continuous heartbreak into the PM. Couldn’t work. Crouched in the meeting room floor.

But it passed after all. I have to remember it always passes. I got some energy around 4pm. Ate candies and drank green tea.

Then I got home late again (let me plan ahead next time). Hurt by the love songs. Cried again tonight.

Going to read books on depression that my brother gave me.

---

Brother’s feedback today: Zone out when talking. Worse than before... Speech too fast or too slow. Try too hard.

---

I had my pills earlier last night (before 10). Fell asleep around midnight and was sound asleep throughout the night.

In the morning I dreamt of you. I dreamt that we were side by side. You were really mad. I know. I tried to talk to you. Then I tried to kiss you all over the face. And suddenly you kissed me all over the face back. Like cats do to one another. Like old times. Then I woke, happy. Then I realized you were gone.

I was too focused on my own pains that I didn’t realize how much hurt you. I was so focused on my anger that I didn’t realize how much I adore you.

I do love you. I love your smile. I love your smell - that was the first thing I fell in love for you - the smell you made on your shirt. I love your chest. I love resting on your chest. I love talking about tv shows with you. I love our snack runs. I love it when we work in the same room and we suddenly remember something and we yell across the room to each other. I love it when we held each other till we fell asleep, like children do. I love the way you do the Harlem Shake. I was so prideful and I never told you that you were so precious to me. I just let you tell me that. I thought that was love. With that and other things I got really sick and I never thought how much I hurt you. Or how much I love you. I wish for the world to and would give my arm to undo the hurt. But I can't tell you.

---

I remember the day we went to The Beach. Before all the trouble began, we walked around the small town. There’s a small fairground, a racing field. We had a good sandwich breakfast on the road side. The days were quiet and good.

---

Still struggling on how to tell you about my illness. I’ve struggled for over a month now. Anything I said seemed to be misunderstood and denied... I am extra careful. Really don’t know how to communicate my illness to you.

Saw you again in my dreams this morning. I tried to sleep as much as possible during the holidays so I could recover faster. Dr. T said sleeping was crucial. I can’t quite grasp you in my dreams now, unlike before you seemed still so close to me. Now you seemed like a concept... A song keeps playing in my mind... “The most romantic thing I can think of, is to grow old with you...” We haven’t talked for over two months now... how are you?

I want to tell you that I’ve been learning the ukulele. My brother taught me how to and I bought a ukulele with him yesterday. I like the sweet and soothing sound of the instrument and it gives me a lot of relief. My brother has been a great help to me through my treatment and medication.

…

With great difficulty, I read the “self-confidence” book he bought me. Little by little, the tools made sense to me as my brain had a chance to rest, heal and gel.

For the first time in a long, long time, I could feel the emotional normality of other people.

With my temperaments finally in check after extreme fluctuations over the years, my feelings for my Bear came rushing back.

At first, all I could feel was all the hurt that I had given my Bear. Every second of the day, the guilt in me manifested as a continuously muted but forcible punch in my stomach.

That lasted for about a month. Then, enigmatically, love feelings came back to me. I was so happy that my love for my Bear was there all these time, only buried beneath my extreme emotions. With the fights and my Bear being convinced that I never loved him, I doubted my love for him too. Now with my emotions in check, the most absurd mixed feeling kindled inside me: the sadness of the separation, the hurt of being left behind, and the love feelings for my Bear were all blended together, alive in me.

I think of him every day and late into the night. I dream of him every morning, as soon as I reached REM.

I stormed through the difficult times thinking about the love of my Bear. I insisted on working, despite the fact that for a period I was simply unfit for work and I had no idea when I would get better. The faith of being emotionally stable and financially independent enough so not to burden my Bear (and can take care of my Bear) kept me going, as I had told his dad clearly, albeit through tears, during a phone call. I kept his encouragements, his reminders for my forgetfulness, and his tips on handling difficult work situations, close to my heart.

Only after slowly rebooting my brain and strengthening my cognitions through therapy that I realize my emotional turmoil had ravaged my mind for years and depleted its resources like a tsunami to a unprepared coastal town. I have consumed years in unrealistic thoughts and destructive pursuits that had uprooted the life of Bear and me. The hut is gone, our bond is broken.

Bipolar disorder costs twice as much in lost productivity as major depressive disorder, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has found. Each U.S. worker with bipolar disorder averaged 65.5 lost workdays in a year, compared to 27.2 for major depression. Even though major depression is more than six times as prevalent, bipolar disorder costs the U.S. workplace nearly half as much — a disproportionately high $14.1 billion annually. Researchers traced the higher toll mostly to bipolar disorder's more severe depressive episodes rather than to its agitated manic periods.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2006/bipolar-disorder-exacts-twice-depressions-toll-in-workplace-productivity-lags-even-after-mood-lifts.shtml

Everyone: the psychiatrist, the psychologist, my parents, his parents, asked me to respect my Bear’s space and rest and heal before contacting him. I took their advice.

For months, we kept my brother and my learnings about the disorder to ourselves.

In the meanwhile, he and his family slowly gave me up.

Since his family did not go through the ordeal of treatment, they believe it was my thinking that mainly caused our problems, despite the list of awful things that happened and were left unexplained:

·                Why have I started hiding myself suddenly two years ago? Before that I went to all of his cousins weddings. I was there during Christmas unions. We had travelled to different cities with his family, etc. Since two years ago, I started hiding not only from you guys, but from my family and my friends? Everything we did together seemed hopeless to me

·                Why over a year ago I suddenly wanted to get a divorce? Then decided not to. Then decided to try working in Hometown for a year, and wanted Bear to come with me?

·                Why did I think I could not live in our city anymore and had to live on the Dream Island, and wanted to spend the rest of my life on the Island? Why did I get much worse when I finally made it there?

·                If I really want to get a divorce, and it's premeditated, why would I know not what to do afterwards? Why do I find myself taking meds everyday, going to therapy every week, trying to stay alert at work everyday, and managing my cycles every day? I ask myself every day.

·                Why did I feel compelled to resolve problems between Bear and I day after day, night after night? Then cry uncontrollably?

·                If I only wanted a better life and that's all I was after, why would I want to move to Hong Kong? Bear knows that I had to take a big pay cut and the company I joined was inhumane.

·                Why did I cease to have love feelings? Wanted to be alone all the time?

·                Why was I so eloquent about my pains, but couldn't even plan for the next day?

·                Why couldn't I feel your pain, my Bear? Why couldn't I understand what people could clearly see as overly passive and overly aggressive? For these I blame myself every day and night.

·                Why were my episodes only shown to you and seemingly not others (it turns out to be not true)? It was not fair.

·                What percentage was the disorder? What percentage was cognition?

·                Is it true I will never change? Can I get better?

He promised he would follow me home once when we got married.

We were supposed to come to my hometown for a year.

After he left, we made a pact to spend 6 months of separation time to think over what happened.

Those are all gone. After he left, my husband quickly asked me to “move on”, citing that he has moved on.

This obviously became a new source of stress for me as a bipolar patient. This and moving back to my childhood room, discovering and dealing with a chronic disorder at a middle-age, facing a possible lifetime of medication and loneliness, and most of all: deep misunderstanding of my husband and his family, who had since stopped communicating with me and my family.

I feel hurt that I don’t even get a chance to share our learnings with them.

I constantly feel like being tossed in the air, three-times over.

Starry, starry night

Paint your palette blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills

Sketch the trees and the daffodils

Catch the breeze and the winter chills

In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand

What you tried to say to me

And how you suffered for your sanity

And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how

Perhaps they'll listen now

(Vincent by Don Mclean)

Remembering her good

Shy and timid, but generally good-hearted.

Just as geeky as he is. Understands all his nerdy jokes.

Very sweet to him (he said “her sweetness” was what was most attractive quality about me when we got married).

When we first held our hands, we held them for hours, feeling so lucky we had found one another. The other who fully accepts you.

Giggled when we played silly games.

Those eternal days we walked in the nice summer weather, not doing much other than enjoying each other’s company.

I married him almost right after college.

I followed him to the town where he wanted a job at the famous company. He later hated that job, but we stayed in that city.

I never had time to grow as a girl on my own. When I finally did, he was gone.

I love him. I miss him. I miss our days in the sun, however brief and however long the winters were. The eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

A spotless.

Mind.

Those days felt like eternal at the time.

Eventually we had to grow up, unprepared as we were.

In the most violent way.

I am so sorry.

Treatment has not been easy breezy. I fall back into anger, depression and unrealistic ideas a lot, especially during times of communications or miscommunications with my husband and his family.

As my mind gets healthier. I start feeling the subtle emotions that normal people have: instead of crying, I can weep. Instead of yelling, I can whisper. Instead of anger, I feel love. I am no longer too shortsighted or too farsighted. I can see things in the their proper distance.

Emotional resilience. It’s finally possible for me – but he’s gone.

Sometimes a dream does come true – the cruel joke of life is, when it happens, the dreamer no longer wants it. In fact, he only wishes to end it.

6 months after he left, I get the confusing feelings of falling in love with him in our first months of meeting. All the raw emotions that prompted me to fall in love with him rush to me like a returned tide every morning and throughout the day. Like a raw image recorded by the most high-res SLR camera, although it has been diluted and pixelated by my cyclically bipolar brain over the years, it turns out the original file has always been there inside my mind, intact, unblemished.

I don’t know where the feelings come from or why they come back. They do make me see clearly why we chose each other: I am his special girl and he is my special boy. As simple as that.

But I cannot be a solace to him anymore. Angry. Feeling cheated. In a new city. Bearing pain that only he could feel.

I’ve hurt the dearest person in my life. The same person I still dream of tenderly every morning.

This is a pretty ridiculous separation for a pair of college sweethearts who have been together for 12 years, got married and supported each other’s dreams for many of those years: they move to another city, the girl keeps throwing tantrums and saying extremely hurtful words, the guy leaves the other city and starting a life in a place unknown to the girl, their families never talked again except for two 1.5-hour phone calls.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Stranger and stranger yet.

It started when a girl with the wrong genes never learned to be assertive as a child.

It started as someone watching too much tv.

Be forewarned.

Protect yourself and your loved ones from emotional disorders.

They are only all too real.

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