Bipolar Disorder ask a question/discussion thread

nesf

So another topic:

Where does the illness stop and my real personality begin?

This is a very complex question. It can be very hard to distinguish where exactly the boundary is if you've suffered from chronic low level symptoms at any point. Am I really an irritable person? Do I just normally feel glum sometimes? Am I really a bad/poor sleeper or do I naturally have a circadian rhythm that is offset multiple hours from most other people's?

I'll post my own thoughts later when I've more energy, but I thought it might be an interesting topic for people to chat about.

PIOP

A really interesting question nesf, and one that I've been kinda struggling with recently.

I've spent most of my life cycling, even as a child. I only finally got some help for it a few months ago (almost a year, I think). Now I'm starting to wonder how much of me is me, and how much is the illness.

I saw a marked change in myself when I started on medication and in therapy, and my friends have seen it too. It's definitely made me wonder how much of me is left... I've spoken a bit about this to one of my close friends. He says that he likes to think that I've always been a nice person, and that now, the medication just lets me show that, without the mood swings and other trouble. I spoke to my doctor about it too, and he was careful to emphasise that the drugs wouldn't change me, but just help me manage. Still, it's hard to ignore the changes that I've seen in myself, and how much that has changed my situation in life.

I've always been a ridiculously high achiever in life, winning awards, academic success, etc. I wonder how much of that drive was my own, and how much was fuelled by sleepless manic nights and bursts of uncontrollable energy. I wonder if my school days would have been the same if I'd started medication years ago.

It's hard sometimes to tell if I'm just feeling a bit glum simply because everyone feels a bit off sometimes, or if it's the start of a down cycle, or if it's the down-ness breaking through the meds to make itself known.

I'd like to think that the creative, funny, and nice person who occasionally broke through the mood swings, and who is seen more often now, is the real me. I would like to think that the drugs haven't changed me that much.

Truth be told, this time last year I had a personal crisis. I headed down a very bad path, and was more profoundly depressed than ever before. In a very real way, I completely lost myself. All of my being was just the feeling of misery. I think that now, a year on, I'm still trying to find myself in amidst the symptoms and the drugs, and everything else.

Totoro_

Hey im doing a project on this for my mental health class in school and if anyone knew of sites that explained this in a easy way it would be great thanks

nesf

Totoro_ wrote: »

Hey im doing a project on this for my mental health class in school and if anyone knew of sites that explained this in a easy way it would be great thanks

What information are you looking for?

Totoro_

nesf wrote: »

What information are you looking for?

Well how it happens? Why it happens? What can help it ect??

sam34

the royal college of psychiatrists website has some good info for patients and families, would give you some good basic info:

www.rcpsych.ac.uk

Flamed Diving

Wikipedia page is fairly good.

carsc

Hi

My mam is 70 and has suffered from bipolar most of her adult life. Unfortunatley when she was diagnosed the treatment in this country was even more backward than it is now and she had ECT and has been on countless combinations of medication.

My Dad was brilliant at helping her live with it. He kept her out of hospital for 10 years by supporting her and trying to keep her away from the horrible hospitals for as long as possible. He died in 2006 and since then she has been in and out of hospital since 2007 every few months she is just now coping at all and she has gone down hill rapidly plus she is developing some physical problems now that she is 70.

I am an only child and she lives alone i have two children and a husband so i can't give her full time care and her moving in with us is not an option. I don't want to see her spent her last few years in and out of the horrible instituions in this country i want her to go somewhere nice where i know she is safe and cared for, where she can live independantly when she is well but can get support when she needs it. Does a place exist? Does anyone know. She owns her own house but other than that we don't have money. I am desperate to get her help she is currently in a really hellish secure unit of a mental hospital that is so in bits it should be demolished and i can't stand to see her there.

Any help would be great

Flamed Diving

Have you contacted Aware?

http://www.aware.ie/index.php/

They would have this type of information.

LegacyUser

I don't know that much about bipolar disorders and have recently been seeing someone who has been wonderfully honest and told me they have bipolar type 2. I really like this person but I have suffered from depression due to bullying and a friend threatening suicide so I tend to push people away. What I would like to know is how do people who have bipolar find relationships and what should I expect and how can I help.

nesf

I'm in a good mood today (non-manic, just normal good) for the first time in months. This kind of positivity about things and general feeling of wanting to do things is so lovely that I want to bottle it!

Hopefully over the next few months I'll reach a medication stage where this will become the norm instead of the exception (it's heading this way with micro-adjustments to medication to get rid of the stubborn residual low grade depression).


How're the rest of ye doing?

PIOP

Glad to hear you're feeling better nesf. I'm not too bad at the moment, but struggling a little bit with, as you put it, stubborn residual low grade depression. I find that some days, I manage to feel blue even through my meds. Not as bad as I used to, mind you, but still a bit forlorn.

Feeling pretty ok the last few days, as I've had a few minor victories in my constant war against my social anxiety issues. Makes me happy that I'm making some progress.

Now if only I could kick this constant tiredness, I'd be sorted!

Flamed Diving

Been a bit "sine wavey", lately. Final exams in 9 days. Oh dear.

LegacyUser

6 months ago I was not in a good place. I'd been off work for over a year thanks to my bipolar. Not because my moods swung excessively (and they never went too high anyway) but because I could not get a regulated sleep pattern to allow me to get up in the morning and sleep restfully at night. Bipolar medication had pretty much stopped the mood disorder but made the energy disorder worse. I did get down at time because I had no schedule to my life, but most people wouldn't notice it except I could never get up in the morning. My doctor says that for some people like me, the energy disorder is the worst part of bipolar.

Then I started to take Melatonin. Within weeks I was falling asleep within 15 minutes of turning the light out and as a result able to get up at a reasonable time because I got a good night's sleep. All the good 'sleep hygiene' practices that were recommended to me never worked, but this stuff did. I got my mojo back, and I returned to work about three months ago and things are going great.

Melatonin is on the market here now for the first time I think so if your problem is with sleep/ energy, it might be something to consider with your consultant but of course there's no guarantee it will work for everyone. It just seems to be my magic bullet. And I know that there are other people attending my consultant who have found it worked for them too.

PIOP

Hope the preparation for final exams is going well for you, FD.

In my own news, I've been working on lots of stuff in my CBT sessions and my therapist has decided that I can start seeing him less frequently, as I've been stable for a while now, and things are going well. This is great news for me, as it represents real progress from the mess that I was last year.

nesf

So, I've been low/anxious the past few days. Pretty annoying to be honest. Just focussing on getting through the day at the moment. Not very low thankfully, just enough to colour everything in a negative light and remove all wish to do anything.

LegacyUser

Hi,
I've had problems since as long as I can remember beginning with always being in trouble in school. Got involved with the wrong crowd in teens and got involved with drugs etc.

I was constantly trying and trying for years to fix things and I know I always had in the back of my mind that when I was 25 I would be all sorted. As I opproached 25 (I'm that age now) three or four years ago I finally went to see a doctor to explain all symytoms and I couldn't talk - ended up with a diagnosis of depression....anyway on and on nothing improved and last year I got a diagnosis of ADHD....I'm not doing that well on my meds and I have now been diagnosed with hypothyroid so I just started meds for that.

I've always been afraid to discuss a possible bipolar problem with my psych as I'm like a feckin' sales person when I believe something so I've been looking for him to identify it via intuition which did not work and now I've been giving hints to start looking in that direction which are being ignored mostly.

I've to wait a while now to see how this hypothyroid thing turns out. I dunno what I'm writing this post for really. I rang my psych many times to say the meds were working for adhd but I'm half convinced that they put me into hypomanic episodes and possibly manic.

I remember when the meds started working first I was staying in the house on my own and I thought I saw something in the night - I rang up my friend and went down to sleep on his couch - got up at 6 coz I was cold and drove into town and went to sleep in my car. I was phazed up for about a week.

I've had many of these episodes dating back a good few years but last year since starting the meds I've had the most - albeit they were fairly mild compared to my inital one - I was really grandiouse - I put it down to my lack of experience feeling such a way and that any high states I now have I've learned from that.

I also have weird opinions and beliefs about some things - often I don't feel human at all and can be very socially anxious. Drink destroys me the way I feel the next day in that I don't drink at all. Everything I've done in life has been a failure yet I still think I'm right about everything - I've a messy personality which doesn't make alot of sense and that kills me - all I want to do is make sense.

Dunno how to say any of this stuff to my psych tho. I wish he was intuitive (my intuition would see issues right through my words) or maybe that isn't the way a professional is taught to deal with situations??

PIOP

@abitlost if you think there is something your psych isn't picking up on, you should definitely mention it. It can't harm things, and may help. No point in keeping things from him/her.

PIOP

Lately, I've been a bit up and down. Spent most of the past weekend very manic - barely slept and ridiculously giddy the whole time. Now I've hit a bit of a bump though. Turns out I've developed a post-op infection, so I'll need to take tablets and recover from that. It's making me feel tired and drained, and it's hard to keep that from affecting my mood.

Since I've been having such huge problems with daytime tiredness, probably as a result of my meds, my doctor thinks I have a problem with my circadian rhythms. So I've now got a short course of sleeping tablets to try to kickstart my sleep cycles and get me working normally again. I took my first one last night, and combined with my regular tiredness, my illness, and everything else, I am just feeling rubbish. I feel like I'm not really here, I'm interacting with the world through a screen or a fog bubble. Very unpleasant.

I'm tempted to go home from work, as I really feel that all I'm up to doing at the moment is lying very still and sleeping, but I keep pushing myself to get through these last few hours of work, just make it through...

PIOP

Having a really rough one guys. So low. Typing this through non stop tears and I'm just feeling like I can't go on. The temptation to do something drastic is awful and I'm just really struggling tonight.

nesf

PIOP wrote: »

Having a really rough one guys. So low. Typing this through non stop tears and I'm just feeling like I can't go on. The temptation to do something drastic is awful and I'm just really struggling tonight.

It'll pass, they always do. Just keep focused on getting through to the next day and so on.

PIOP

Thanks nesf. I'm still here, and doing a little better. I'm just struggling with some issues at work (namely, too much work to do, which is really stressing me out and spiking my anxiety levels) and some personal issues (to do with self esteem and self image). It's all just been mounting up and I hit a bit of a manic peak before slumping into a deep low. I'm ok now, but still not quite right - still low.

I want to try to be more proactive about the work situation, but I'm finding it hard to work up the courage to speak to my boss about my workload, particularly given how insecure and generally rubbish I'm feeling at the moment.

All in all, a rough few days. Sometimes, I just wish I was normal, you know?

bob50

PIOP wrote: »

Thanks nesf. I'm still here, and doing a little better. I'm just struggling with some issues at work (namely, too much work to do, which is really stressing me out and spiking my anxiety levels) and some personal issues (to do with self esteem and self image). It's all just been mounting up and I hit a bit of a manic peak before slumping into a deep low. I'm ok now, but still not quite right - still low.

I want to try to be more proactive about the work situation, but I'm finding it hard to work up the courage to speak to my boss about my workload, particularly given how insecure and generally rubbish I'm feeling at the moment.

All in all, a rough few days. Sometimes, I just wish I was normal, you know?

PIOP just try and keep going you will get trough it I had the same probs as yourself and hopefully you get some respite once i found the right meds for me i am now able to manage life a bit more but still their are ups & downs as you know

i will be thinking of you

nesf

PIOP wrote: »

All in all, a rough few days. Sometimes, I just wish I was normal, you know?

Almost every day I think that tbh.

freddiefox1

Hey Everyone, just looking for advice. I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this but mods feel free to move. I put it here because I'd really like some replies. Over the past couple of months, I have got close to a girl. We began texting all the time, sometimes all day. We have been out a few times and everything seemed to be going fine until last week. She suddenly became very distant and said that sometimes she needed to be on her own and it had nothing to do with anyone else. She stopped sending me texts and didnt reply to any of my texts and ignored my calls. This really hurt me as we had been so close. I honestly thought that she had gone off me or met someone else but it didnt make sense, only a week ago, she was telling me how much she liked me, how she was so happy and that it was all down to me etc and now nothing.

I confided in a work colleague and was told that they remember her saying before that she took medication for bi-polar disorder. They also said that they have observed her in work and can be high sometimes and other times very low. I have noticed in the past that she can be very moody etc but didnt think anything of it. This behaviour of the past week in total contrast to the weeks before and I am genuinely worried. I know that she has regular doctor appointments but never asked what they were for. I also know she has trouble sleeping and takes sleeping pills. She text me today again to say that she's sorry for being quiet but she sometimes needs time alone. The texts were very short again and very little feeling.

Sorry if this doesnt make much sense but I guess I'm just wondering if anyone knows if these sound like the characteristics of somebody with bi-polar and if they have been in a similar situation.

Thanks

sam34

sorry freddie, its impossible for us to make a stab at diagnosis over teh internet.

PIOP

Just checking in, it's been a while. Have made some good breakthroughs in therapy lately, and I'm moving from weekly scheduled appointments to on-demand appointments, which is a big step for me.

Still struggling a lot with tiredness, I'm so sleepy every day that it's hard to function. Have another doctor appointment soon to see if we can figure out what's causing it. I hope it's not the meds, because I'm reluctant to change them when they're working pretty well, but I'm desperate to get this sleepiness thing sorted because it's really affecting my life badly, and it's been getting worse over the last few weeks.

Does anyone else find themselves really drained sometimes? I feel like, if no one disturbed me, I could just sleep for days right now.

nesf

PIOP wrote: »

Does anyone else find themselves really drained sometimes? I feel like, if no one disturbed me, I could just sleep for days right now.

Yeah I get like that when I'm low. Fatigued all day regardless of how much sleep I'd gotten the previous night. It's very tough to work through, possibly one of the nastiest symptoms really because it makes it hard to even do the basic functions of life never mind anything complicated or difficult!

PIOP

Ugh.

Still running the gamut of medication side effects. So sleepy the other day that I couldn't make it in to work. I slept til lunch, at a bit, slept again til dinner, ate another little bit, and then managed 2-3 hours of wakefulness in the evening before sleeping again.

Blood test results have come back negative for what the doctor thought was causing the massive fatigue, so that means that the only explanation is the medication. And that means that I have to change the medication, and that makes me worried and nervous. I have reached a bit of stability on my current meds, and I'm not looking forward to tinkering with them and having to deal with all new side effects and issues.

Again, ugh! Why can't I just be fixed!

nesf

Similar for me PIOP, going through a prolonged low period and it's really grating at me. Probably not the best time to quit smoking but meh, 3 days into it and it's going well with my new e-cigarette.