The Disorganized Mind

I am hypomanic, occasionally slipping upwards to anxiety-wracked manic episodes, with what one of the doctors I saw in my recent hospital stay - the first - called a "disorganized mind".

I pounced on the phrase, "Yes! That describes it perfectly!"

My voice was strong, enthusiastic, and I was oh-so-delighted at this utterly brilliant phrase that sparkled with meaning.  Hypomanic glow gives me such appreciation for everything - words, butterscotch pudding, the doctors and nurses.

But that didn't happen until later.

First was the mixed state, the thought fragments that slipped and slid through my consciousness, energy sawing through my body that hurt, the inability to completely understand what was happening because I just couldn't quite manage to put together all the pieces.

I knew what was happening, but I didn't quite know what to do.  I have so effectively trained myself to take so little action when I am manic that I was frozen solid - don't speak, don't move, and for God's sake, do not buy anything. 

I could not bear to look anyone in the eyes, that was the strangest part.  I suddenly understood the symptom where manic's believe they can read minds - people's emotions and thoughts were betrayed by body language so loudly, even as my ability to accurately interpret it was so impaired that I couldn't bear to look.

I could write a huge post about the hospital, but this isn't it.  I'll leave it at - it was good overall, I got a new med, took lots of notes about depression that might be useful at some other time, and left a three page feedback note for the staff pointing out that advice for depressed people doesn't really scale well with manic episodes.  I played along nicely for the most part, set boundaries fairly effectively and came out stabilized - sort of.

So, third week in on my new med.  I'm still too high, too over-reactive, too close to the edge.  This med has seemed to help, but I usually have honeymoons with meds, as my body adjusts.  It's what is happening a month from now that will tell.

Too high, set up for a fall upwards - not downwards.  I had something happen yesterday that triggered me sharply upwards, with jagged edges, panic-not-delight.

I wish for resilience, but can't understand how to make it happen.

Angel, Angel, Burning Bright

There was an angel.

She wasn't a heavenly angel, because she was kind of me, but maybe me-who-I-wanted-to-be, wished-I-was.

She was tall, in that way that mothers are tall, to their children.

I have walked, walk, will walk along a cliff, it is my life.

Pacing me, along the cliff of my life is a dark cloud, a void, a portal to nothing.

The Neverending Story, The Wind In The Door, they described that dark, so I knew I wasn't the only one who saw it, others saw it.

They saw it, they Named it, they fought it.

Artax was lost to it, no matter how loud Atreyu screamed his name.

Sporos, stupid little Sporos, someone gave their life for you (me), because you (I) played too close to the edge and almost fell (don't do that).

That angel was my Meg, my Progo, my Empress (my mother), and she was me.

She brushed the hair from my eyes.

She put her hand on my shoulder.

She was warm, and reminded me that the dark was too cold.

She was cool, and reminded me that the dark was too hot.

Somehow, because of her, I kept turning away.

I'll keep turning away.

But I'll always need her help.

Lithium, Part One

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes

http://dorinta19.bizland.ro/FLOWERS%20FOR%20ALGERNON%20.htm

         Mar 28 Dr Strauss came to my room tonight to see why I dint come

         in like I was suppose to. I told him I dont like to race with Algernon

         any more. He said I dont have to for a while but I shud come in. He

         had a present for me. I thot it was a little television but it wasnt. He

         said I got to turn it on when I go to sleep. I said your kidding why

         shud I turn it on when Im going to sleep. Who ever herd of a thing

         like that. But he said if I want to get smart I got to do what he says. I

         told him I dint think I was going to get smart and he puts his hand

         on my sholder and said Charlie you dont know it yet but your

         getting smarter all the time. You wont notice for a while. I think he

         was just being nice to make me feel good because I dont look any

         smarter.

"You wont notice for a while."

         June 10 Deterioration progressing. I have become absentminded.

         Algernon died two days ago...

         ...I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me. Now

         that it's definite, I don't want it to happen.

            I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the

         back yard. I cried.

"I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me. Now that it's definite, I don't want it to happen."

         June 21 Why can't I remember? I've got to fight. I lie in bed for

         days and I don't know who or where I am.

         June 30 A week since I dared to write again. It's slipping away like

         sand through my fingers. Most of the books I have are too hard for

         me now. I get angry with them because I know that I read and

         understood them just a few weeks ago.

         July 7 1 don't know where the week went. Todays Sunday I know

         because I can see through my window people going to church. I

         think I stayed in bed all week but I remember Mrs. Flynn bringing

         food to me a few times. I keep saying over and over Ive got to do

         something but then I forget or maybe its just easier not to do what I

         say Im going to do.

         July 28 I did a dumb thing today I forgot I wasnt in Miss Kinnians

         class at the adult center any more like I used to be. I went in and sat

         down in my old seat in the back of the room and she looked at me

         funny... I said hello Miss Kinnian Im redy for my

         lesin today only I lost my reader that we was using. She startid to cry.

         ...everybody looked at me and I saw they

         wasnt the same pepul who used to be in my class.

            Then all of a sudden I remembered some things about the

         operashun and me getting smart...

That progression - from understanding to incomprehension was Lithium for me. 

And yet Charlie was able to speak his truth, sporadically as it sometimes was, and in that sense I envy him. But he had to live with the knowledge that it was irreversible and impending doom, and that is something I do not envy at all.

That round circled pill is to deliberately choose that unnoticeable path from understanding to incomprehension for me. Can you wonder that I might shudder at even the smallest amount, and balk?

Lithium, Part Two

My inner world is one of shapes - sculptures, lines, webs, rounded squares and rectangles, a distinct landscape, colors of association flashing the connections everywhere. Knowledge is brightness, ignorance is dark - metaphorical, but very organized.

Slowly, unnoticably to me, my inner world slowed and gradually crystallized into a round-edged block of brown glass. It was inexorable, and created edges and boundaries around what had been seemingly limitless space. It was heavy, dull, and it severed and suffocated those lines of connection between thought to thought, thought to action, thought to words to action. Dull lights flashed bravely in the dark, isolated, far away, unreachable, without connection.

Blink. Stop.

Feel. Stop.

Speak. Stop.

Touch. Stop.

Stop motion without motion.

Nancy Andreasen, in Secrets of the Creative Brain (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/secrets-of-the-creative-brain/), talks about the "association cortices".

"To read, your brain... needs to forward those black letters on to association-cortex regions such as the angular gyrus, so that meaning is attached to them; and then on to language-association regions in the temporal lobes, so that the words are connected not only to one another but also to their associated memories and given richer meanings. These associated memories and meanings constitute a “verbal lexicon,” which can be accessed for reading, speaking, listening, and writing. Each person’s lexicon is a bit different, even if the words themselves are the same, because each person has different associated memories and meanings."

The brown crystallization blocked my ability to create those associations, until I could no longer function even as the blood tests reported "below therapeutic levels". My life (beyond breathing and sleeping) depended upon being able to make those connections, but my ability to make them was being crushed.

I could no longer even make the connections that Lithium was causing it. 

I could not connect the thoughts that I could stop, I needed someone to explain to me that I could, tell me I must.

Testing... Testing...

Today is my 5th day with my new med. I am deeply frightened of how happy I've become. It was almost an overnight change, which makes everything more frightening, because I've learned from my life that when I'm happy I make mistakes - big ones, small ones, some invisible to anyone else but me. Somehow the mistakes are more bearable if I'm not happy, but when I make them when I'm happy the crash starts, dropping first to the place where I have enough misery to do something terrible and enough energy left to do it, and then into blankness then into utter indifference to everything.

Happiness is tinged with guilt and fear for me and I don't know yet if I can ever unhook those things. Inside I'm vigilantly watching my hands moving, afraid they will do something they shouldn't. If I laugh, I frantically search everyone's face around me in case I laughed at something I shouldn't and hurt them. I'm trying to not say anything until I've thought through it twice, and if I do say something without thinking through it, I search everyone's faces again.

No, I'm just now in a constant mode of looking at people, wondering when I will do something wrong, because I will. And there is a wise part me that knows this is going to be okay, and I will be forgiven. But what I don't know at this moment is whether or not this calm peaceful, but still deliciously giggly sometimes, happiness will turn into what it always does. Or will I somehow get through it without the normal destruction?

One of the most horrible things about the dynamic of the crash that happens when you are manic is that in the middle of the storm you have just had unleashed in your mind is how at the very moment you likely have done something wrong, you become the most vulnerable and in the most need of support, often from the very people you have just hurt. That starts a vicious cycle of guilt like you wouldn't believe.

So I'm scared... and happy...

But it's a different kind of scared, and still... happy!

^_^

To A Friend

My friend, when I found out that you went to the hospital yesterday, I was so relieved. 

Mixed states.

Rapid cycling.

When you feel terrible enough, shameful enough to think you should probably die and - most dangerously - with the energy and impulsivity to be capable of actually doing it. A firestorm in the brain, neurons crashing and shorting and you can't even remember what peace and calm is, much less how you can navigate back to center.

But you will.  ^_^

I think that somehow I knew, just from those two Facebook posts, no matter that I'd only met you once in person, even though we spent most of the party in two different rooms.

But those two posts were open enough for me to read between the lines, knowing what I know about us.

We understand extremes all too well. It's the pattern we've read in our lives, in our minds, even while our hearts are just pleading "Please, I just want peace, I just want calm, I just want to be in the center..." Happiness is suspect, knowing what inevitably comes next.

And those posts were a sign that you were looking for an extreme solution. The problem is that it's only possible to make them work when we ourselves are capable of acting extreme. And our minds don't give us that drive and force of will often enough or long enough to sustain that. So they can only be a sign that we're in dangerous territory, and we are about to become terribly vulnerable at the worst and most critical time, a time where we are desperately looking for something, anything to hold on to, to fix damage that we've caused.

People can't tell from the outside how close we are walking on the edges of a crumbling cliff, with two abysses below. The hardest lesson for me to learn is that often I can't tell either, and you are getting one of these lessons now too. If only we could warn people, "Watch out, I might be acting impulsively even though it's going to seem rational to me at the time!" and "Please, help... I don't want to hurt us..."  If we could at least warn people, then we could ask for grace and forgiveness ahead of time.

But instead, because we often are so unaware and used to our version of normal, we often aren't able to warn people and then it just seems like a really terrible and embarrassing excuse. The shame crashes down. We know this about ourselves, we know we are dangerous, we've navigated this before both successfully and not. We should know better by now. But we did it again.

But think about this really carefully right now. How many times have you gotten through this and didn't do any damage? I bet a lot. That's pretty incredible when you think about it.

So now, forgive yourself. It's not an excuse, it's just our reality. The truth is that the meds can mitigate a lot but not erase completely. Oh how I wish they erased, but they just don't. Adjustments become necessary, especially during times of extreme stress - the kind you've been going through lately.

Only when we can forgive ourselves can we ease our own pain enough to become vulnerable to empathize and sympathize with the people we've hurt. And only then can we heal each other.

This is easier said than done, of course, as I've already admitted...  ^_^

One of the scariest things, my particular monster in the closet, is the inevitable feeling of dependence on others. It just emphasizes our particular lack of control and stability. The dependence on meds is easy compared to the dependence on the people around us to watch out for us, pick up some the slack when we lose it, to deal with their own pain alone until we are capable of helping, and forgiving us before we are capable of asking with our whole heart.

That's a whole lot to ask of people, and boy do we know it. So we try to manage and fix it on our own, to try to ease the burden we know we are putting on them. In our attempts to control the uncontrollable and with the best of intentions, we set ourselves and our loving ones up for failure. Because when we fail, we need them to understand that we do try to fix it even as we've done our damnedest to hide how difficult it was to do so. It's the shock of it that often ends up creating the most havoc for us all, amirite?  ^_^

So I'm saying to you now - you have been trying so very hard and it's okay to be too tired. It's okay to let go of that. I see what you've been doing, and it will be okay. You don't have to be perfect all the time, but especially you don't have to do it right now. 

Whether or not you and I ever learn to be vulnerable and transparent is something we can't promise yet, I think. We can hope and strive and throw our whole hearts into the effort, but right now we don't know the way yet. Right now we probably shouldn't promise much beyond keeping ourselves safe and that we'll try our hardest. It's a bit humiliating, but perhaps it's the most honest and from what I've been hearing that's what they want. (And WE'RE the crazy ones?!) There are reasons we're the way we are, and it will take time and more mistakes as we fumble through to finding the reasons and understanding of how to do it other ways.

That's okay, it really is.

Your friend along the cliff,

Jocelyn

I'm Special-ized

Having undependable emotions presents unique interpretations of reality.
I've heard of a few different methods, and have a partial inventory of my own.

Believing you are special.
From everything I've been able to gather, this is a bipolar I specialty. I've not met, read a book of or by, or heard of a bipolar II who is able to successfully utilize this method. I've glimpsed small sparkles of how this is achievable in my very rare (hypo)mania states. I would immediately and utterly ruthlessly squish those sparkles with all of the abundance of evidence to the contrary, but if I lived in mania more often it would be a lot harder, possibly impossible.

You can't live without me.
Ahhhh, caretaking, my drug of choice, the favorite of bipolar ii's everywhere, from what I've seen, read, heard. What was a toxic mix of dysfunctional family dynamics gave me was also a helpful coping mechanism for a bipolar eldest child. It's a money-mix of distractions from one's own problems, and a heady sense of imaginary control over emotions. Sure it's not our own emotions, but it's control!

Intellectualize Everything.
I can't feel, therefore I am. It's how I'm still alive.
No joke.

If I can't see it, it's not there.
Intellectualization also requires compartmentalization, although the reverse isn't true. The ability to compartmentalize is hardly a bipolar specialty. Getting through a workday successfully when we're worried about our sick dog, or through a Friday when we have a party that night both require compartmentalizing emotion. It's a skill where you successfully or unsuccessfully slice huge chunks of reality off and shunt them out into the netherworld either forever or temporarily. If it's temporary, and you can manage to re-integrate that reality intact (or relatively intact, let's be real here) then compartmentalization is a healthy coping mechanism. If chunks go into the netherworlds and never come back in any recognizable form, it's pretty crazy-making for everyone involved. And if we're the ones gas-lighting our own-damn-selves, it also gets really truly absurd.

It's a war zone out there.
A huge number of bipolar ii's have agoraphobia - ie, a fear of places. I'm riddled with it.
The speculation is that the unexpected can trigger swings and so we learn to fear places where either swings have happened, or might happen. This rings astonishingly true to me. Knowing this, while it gives some reassurance that there's a logic to my crazy, does not therefore make it go away. Going to places I've never been makes me sick with fear.

To Thine Own Self Be True

I'm in a very precarious stage in my life right now.

I'm trying to learn new things.
Perhaps I should re-phrase: I'm trying to learn if I might like different things than I've ever thought I would like.

Given the number of people in my life who are used to me being a certain way, this has now caused the first amount of distress.

This shall not be the first post on this topic.
I have developed a certain amount of rigidity in my life, as a coping mechanism for correspondent chaos. I don't feel bad about the rigidity, anymore than I feel bad for my rigidity about breathing -it helps me survive. But in going through this period of growth, I am looking certain fears straight on and challenging them.

And then doing what I've always done and charging straight at them, sometimes falling off the cliff that was between them and me.

I used to sigh about Roland doing this, without realizing that I do the exact same thing. I never found it strange that I always understood Exactly what he was doing and found it something to admire. Of course, I don't even realize I'm doing it unless I fall off the cliff, it's so instinctive, it's so how-I-do-things.

What I'm going to take away from this is that it would be a good idea to try to be self-aware enough to warn people - " Hey, I'm pushing a limit here, that I developed along through my life-fumbling-around in, and I might have some emotional cliff that I won't see coming and suddenly Totally Freak The Fuck Out on you, and It's Not Your Fault."

That presents certain uncomfortable scenarios in and of itself though.
Being self-aware requires awareness of discomfort with certain unavoidable things - like people who I may or may not know, deadlines, expectations, locations that are unfamiliar, and such.

Does this mean that the horse that goes in front of the cart is growing into a comfortability with discomfort? I'm not sure that I can afford this nice tidiness. I'm not sure that life and growth can be so easily arranged.

Words of wisdom from an 8-year old:
“If you cannot control your peanut butter, you cannot expect to control your life.” ~ Judah-ism

And yet, dear nephew, I make excellent peanut butter sandwiches. Perhaps I should content myself with this and make everyone around me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk.

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside

Every time I think about describing how bipolar II works it crazy thing in my brain, I automatically start by humming the lines sung by the Duke in Moulin Rouge.

Here's a link: "It's a little bit funny...this feeling inside" Spectacular, Spectacular

Poor man was told the girl actually loves him, and acts like a goofy idiot because of it...

Unreliable information...

There's been something that has been simmering around in my brain for a while, ever since I started talking to autists and their experience with something called Sensory Processing Disorder. What happens to them when experiencing sensations seems really similar to how I experience feelings with bipolar.

There are difficulties of modulation - it's too strong, too loud, exhausting, too weak, too quiet, ephemeral.

What really got to me was the question of - what happens to a person when they cannot experience the world reliably through sound, vision, touch, balance?

It's the profoundly unreliable experience that really got to me. I get that with an understanding that prickles along my skin, aches in my bones.

What happens to me because I can't reliably gauge whether something will make me happy or sad? Or -too happy- or -too sad-? Or have any feeling at all?

___________________________________
There's been additional insight into SPD actually being a THING, since the oh-so-lovely invention of fMRI's. I really hope they are getting bipolar brains under those electric microscopes.
Sensory Processing Disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_disorder
Intense World Theory Interview: http://www.wrongplanet.net/article419.html
Intense World Theory Science-y stuff: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/
SPD Study Science-y stuff: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039906