You know, when I walked away from that last post, I was thinking that there was something odd about you that wasn’t being said. Well, from one bipolar to another, it takes one to know one, and we can feel each other even when we don’t know what we’re feeling. I can’t say I was thinking bipolar, just that something didn’t feel right, and therefore, I felt my advice was not very good.
Now, I understand. Of course, you are right. You need a support system, and you need it more than anyone, and you don’t have it. Well, there’s hope. One of the folks in my group (we meet every two weeks) has been telling us of his adventure off his meds. He’s a single guy, and he drinks and he smokes pot. He was staying up until at least four in the morning, every night, having fun.
He came to the group, and confessed this, and we asked him what he wanted. Do you want us to chastise you? Tell you you’re doing the wrong thing? We all knew, him included, that he was self-medicating, and that what he was doing would make him spiral down, eventually, after the mania is over.
His answer was that “I’m scared.” He came to the next session, and said exactly the same thing. We urged him to do what he knew was right. This week, the fourth since he first told us, he told us that he’d gone back on his meds two days ago, and he was trying to stop the drinking and smoking. We applauded because we were glad he was doing this, and we care because we know him.
He has no support network. No family and no friends around. We’re his only support. He can call his parents, but really, he has to do this on his own. The wonderful thing is that he’s decided to. He’s trying to do what he knows is good for him.
We all know the litany. Take your meds. See a therapist. Go to bed before 11:30 every night. Get serious exercise every day. Build a support network. Write up one of those statements and put it in our wallets, so if we get hospitalized, they’ll know our drugs, and our psychiatrists, and they don’t have to treat us blind when we’re in no position to say anything sensible.
If you haven’t already done this, go to the DBSA web site and locate a support group in your area. Join it. The support of people who have experiences what you have experienced is a life saver. Many times over.
And now I understand about your friends and your boyfriend. You’ll see this if you stick around long enough, but the advice most people give to people involved with bipolar folk is “run as fast as you can.” There was a husband who was trying to figure out his wife, last night. She wanted a divorce. I told him what I just told you, and he said that he’d heard that a lot.
When I was depressed, I tried to push my wife away, like you wouldn’t believe. (Well, you would). I was nothing. Shit. Worse than shit. Worthless. You name it, I was worse than it. I didn’t deserve my wife, my house, my kids, my economic security, my job. I was too awful for those things.
No one seemed to understand this, and so I had to make them understand it. I had to push them away. Push. Push. I attacked everyone who tried to help me. Oh, God, was I good. I hurt them something fierce, and only with words. I made them doubt themselves, feel insecure, and still, they hung with me. I tried so hard, but not hard enough to make them go over the edge. Somehow, something held me back from going that far. With many of us, that’s not the case.
Why did I hold back? Because I knew these things I had were truly valuable. I loved my wife, even though I cheated on her. I loved my kids more than anything, and I was horrified when I lashed out at them. Maybe that gave me the strength to not destroy everything, especially myself. But boy, that eight story drop from my office window looked mighty tempting.
I suspect that you’ve been pushing everyone away, too. The curious logic is that if you are worthless, and people refuse to get it, you have to make them see it. That’s why you attack.
Most so-called sane people run when attacked over and over. It takes a peculiar kind of love to make you stick with a person who is relentlessly furious at you. Parents do it. Siblings do it. Sometimes spouses do it. Rarely friends or significant others, unless you’ve been together for decades.
But that’s what we need and want. Someone to love us even though we despise ourselves. Someone to see something inside us that we cannot see. Someone who will ignore the attacks, knowing they aren’t true, or suspecting they aren’t true, until we get diagnosed, and treated, and we come back to health.
This is a rare thing. People are scared of us. They think we might be violent (some of us are, but not many). There is such stigma attached to mental illness. That’s probably why you didn’t mention it at first. It’s safe here, though. No one knows who we are in the flesh world, unless we choose to divulge it.
Sometimes people here are merciless in their attacks. Well, not fluther, but I’ve seen it on other places like this. People are so judgmental. They can’t understand that there is any reason to behave in an immoral way: cheating and hurting and lying and all that. They can’t conceive that people can hate themselves so much.
Now, I have no idea how much of this is like your experience. We are all different. But we do have commonalities, and one of them is that it is difficult for people who haven’t been there to understand why we do such horrible things.
Wow! When your self-esteem is shit, you drive people away. You do’t think you deserve them, even though you need them. If you fix that, you will get what you want. The therapy is crucial. Your meds are crucial, and you have to take them as prescribed. Don’t try to OD. They don’t give us enough to kill ourselves. When you need help, try to learn to ask for it straight out, instead of showing you need it by trying to kill yourself.
I hope your psychiatrist is a good one that you have a good working relationships with, and who explains his or her thinking in deciding what to prescribe. If not, there are other psychiatrists. I know how hard it can be to find one, though. If my wife hadn’t done it for me, I would be in that gutter I so desired. I would be divorced. I would have destroyed my job prospects.
Therapy can help with self-esteem. There are many approaches. A lot of people like CBT, but that didn’t work for me. It just made me blame myself more, and spiral down faster. I am trying mindfullness, and reading a book about this approach. A therapy called ACT helps people learn a mindfullness approach.
You are doing many of the right things. I think if you understand yourself better, and are honest with yourself, you can make a lot of progress. You may have to give up on your boyfriend. My God! Those must have been some arguments. Some things people have a real hard time forgiving, even if they know you’re mentally ill.
A support group with other folks like us, I believe, will provide enormous help. You might find people who can help you out in a lot of situations. Your parents may be problematic. Maybe one of them is bipolar and denying it?
Look. I believe in looking at things honestly. I don’t think it helps to be told we’re doing fine when we aren’t, and that things will be easy, when they won’t be. So I’ll tell you that you have a lot of obstacles to overcome. You may lose some of the things you really want (like your boyfriend).
However, when you get the right meds, and you’ve had therapy for a while, and you get a support network from people who understand, or who are willing to put up with the shit, you will become much more stable, and much more able to get the stuff you want. First things first. Make sure the meds are helping, and if not, get them changed. The other things will come after that. It is possible.
and this is a record for me, but obviously, this is something I care a good deal about
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