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Coping Depression Slider

Wounds Can Close but Not Fully Heal

The path of recovery and change is long and hard.

You can spend twenty years working on a dysfunction, doing everything you can to learn how and why it happened, work to make sure it won’t happen that way again, but end up with it thrown right back in your face. It starts with a simple error in judgment and can easily start to run away from you. You get sucked up into the emotions that you thought you had overcame a long time ago. They fuel more bad decisions, you don’t listen to the people you should, and you only look forward with blinders.

The next thing you know, you’re staring at yourself in the cracked mirror that you thought you had fixed years ago. All of the horrible feelings that went along with it, all of the crushing blackness of depression and self-loathing, is sitting right there on your shoulder again. It laughs and mocks. It digs and picks at you. It will try to throw you straight back down into the hole you spent years climbing out of.

But, you have to forgive yourself. You have to acknowledge you’re human and will make bad decisions. And it doesn’t mean you are less of a person or stupid. It’s just the nature of the road that leads to self-improvement. The best approach is to own it, do your best to repair it, and move past it.

In related subject matter, I can’t tell you how stupid I used to think adjusting negative self-talk was. Like many people, I would colossally fuck up, look in the mirror, and tear myself to pieces. Many moons ago, I did end up learning from a therapist that it can play a major role in helping to alleviate future crashes and depression. The more you dwell and focus on it, even in using negative language against yourself, the more fuel you throw onto the fires so they can burn hotter and longer.

So for the people out there who think the idea of positive self-talk is stupid (which I did for many years), it’s really not. It’s just no one really explains that it helps adjust the whole way in which you perceive yourself and deal with your mistakes. It’s not a one time thing and it’s not going to drastically swing things for the positive, but it does make dealing with the lows a bit easier. It’s one small piece of the overall picture.

You’ll have setbacks, you’ll make mistakes, and ghosts from your past may come back to haunt you from time to time. The important thing is to not dwell too long on them. Acknowledge them, work to repair the damage, and move forward. And try not to be too much of an asshole to yourself when it eventually does happen; because it will.

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Coping Relationships Slider

The Secret to Maintaining Your Sanity While Helping Another

Many people in my audience are here because they are attempting to better understand mental illness, help a mentally ill loved one, or better help themselves. The ups and downs associated with the process are emotionally taxing and difficult to handle. So today, I want to share an important tip that can significantly ease a lot of the stress and emotional turmoil that goes along with not only this process, but several other aspects of life.

That is: work to reduce the amount of emotion you invest in the process or outcome.

What the hell does that mean?

In trying to help a mentally unwell person, their instability can be a great deal of stress and anxiety. It’s only natural to start letting hope peek in when they appear to be balancing off. Maybe this time they will finally be ready to seek help? Maybe this time they’ll listen to reason and their doctor? Maybe this time they will take their medication as directed?

In a situation like this, it’s also possible that they don’t make the right decisions, aren’t ready to commit to their wellness path, or have a bad reaction to the medication they do take. Investing hope into that situation is fruitless because the pursuit of wellness and stability is not a straight line. It has it’s ups and downs. It’s a long road to travel and there are many obstacles that can knock a person off their course. And most people, I find, have to learn things the hard way. You don’t want to find yourself getting angry, frustrated, sad, or depressed because things didn’t resolve how you thought they would.

That is not to say that you should never be emotional. You’re human. You’re going to be. You should celebrate successes and acknowledge failures; just don’t celebrate or mourn until you have an actual, tangible reason to.

Work to maintain neutrality and it will make things much easier in the long-term. The ability to last long-term is important because the realization that one needs help and the pursuit of wellness often takes years. You can’t compromise your own mental and emotional health in the process of trying to help someone else.

And really, it applies to most other areas of life as well. It dramatically reduces the emotional impact of the process of pursuing your goals.

Far too many people look at things like failure and rejection as an end all, be all. They’re not. They’re just part of the process of succeeding. That’s why you can’t let your emotions dictate a setback, failure, or rejection as a devastating end.

Let me frame it in one of the most common examples that people write to me about.

The mind of a Bipolar spouse runs screaming into an unwell cycle. The cycle is burning hard for months with all of the “fun” that goes along with it. Eventually, the cycle ends and the Bipolar spouse reaches back out because their perspective is finally starting to clear up. So, what is the Supporter spouse now feeling? Hope since it appears the person they loved is back and clear again? Anticipation that the situation is changing for the better? Relief? Happiness? Comfort? It can be any number of things.

What happens to the emotional state of the Supporter spouse if a few days later, Bipolar Disorder takes off into another drastic swing and all of those relief-based emotions are yanked out from under them? What happens if the Bipolar person realizes they need help, but can’t get in to see their doctor before another cycle takes hold and convinces them that they are fine? That it’s everyone else that’s fucking crazy!!!  Not me!!! And then you find yourself back to square one after months of suffering with little to show for it.

You must work to maintain your wellness, balance, and stability while trying to love and help a mentally unwell person or their instability will destroy your emotional health. It is very common for Supporters to develop their own mental illnesses as they try to cope.

I use a very simple process myself.

1. Identify what the long-term goal is.

2. Temper emotions by keeping your eye on the long-term goal.

3. Force yourself to not dwell on the immediate successes and failures.

4. Repeat until you reach the long-term goal.

Seems simple, right? It’s not. At all. It takes time and practice to get used to; and you’re not going to get it right all of the time. I mean, you don’t need to look too deeply into my work to find anger or frustration. I definitely have it and experience it still. But, it’s a lot less intrusive than it used to be. Even a small gain in control over these emotions can make the overall journey much easier.

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The Problem With Mental Health Professionals

There are a lot of people out there who have had terrible experiences with mental health professionals. Sometimes those experiences are valid, other times they are the result of the way we interact with them. But you want to know the real problem with mental health professionals?

They’re human beings; not so different than you or I.

We expect them to understand hundreds of mental illnesses and the way they affect each of us specifically. Mental illness is an incredibly personal experience. Though we are bound by threads of symptoms, they can manifest in very different ways from person to person.

Many of us walk into their offices, withhold important information, lie about what we’re experiencing, and then blame them when they can’t meaningfully help us. Too many of us walk into their offices and expect them to fix decades of mental illness in the course of a couple hours a month.

It’s easy to think that many professionals don’t give a shit because they are under tight time constraints to meet whatever quotas they have to meet standards imposed by other parties; be it a medical conglomerate, the government, or just keeping up with paying the bills. Thus, they can appear to be callous when harshly enforcing time limits or being rigid.

Nobody becomes a mental health professional to get rich. It’s one of the lowest paying, highest stress divisions of the medical industry. The people that do go into it are often there due to personal reasons, be it a mental illness of their own or having been affected by watching a loved one suffer. And I have talked to several who have reached out to me over the years who are dealing with their own mental illness while trying to help their patients.

Too many of us expect perfection out of our professionals because we are suffering. But they can’t give us perfection, because they’re human. And they certainly can’t read your mind if you choose to withhold information or misrepresent what you’re dealing with.

Do you want to know the secret to making meaningful progress with a mental health professional? Be a proactive participant in pursuing your wellness with as much honesty as you can.

What does it mean to be a proactive participant?

You need to work to understand your diagnosis and how it affects you SPECIFICALLY. Bipolar Disorder, and several other mental illnesses, can look very different from person to person. A lot of material that is produced is written from a perspective that may not necessarily reflect your personal experience. A counselor can be very helpful for working to better understand how your mental illness affects you.

Ask questions. Know why your professional is making the decisions that they are making. How is this medication supposed to help you? What is it supposed to do? How will I know if it is working or not? What side effects should I be looking for? How long should it take? A good professional will take the time to explain it to you; a bad one will just ask for blind trust or make you feel like you can’t understand.

There are a lot of good people in mental health care that want to help, but caring about people is a very difficult thing to do. The chaos and instability of mental illness, bad decisions, malicious and toxic people all take a very drastic, deep toll on caregivers.

That’s not even touching on the unethical or bad mental health professionals out there. They definitely do exist. Not everyone is good or even competent at their jobs.

Mental health professionals do not fix mentally ill people. They are there to help us fix ourselves. Mental health recovery is like 95% personal work and effort. No one can just hand wellness to you. It’s something you struggle, fight, and sacrifice for.

Understand that and you’ll have a much better time dealing with your professionals.

And, to any mental health professionals that may be reading this, thank you for your personal sacrifices and doing what you do.

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Updating My Bipolar Manifesto Blog

Just a short note, don’t be concerned with changes you’re seeing in my blog. I’m working on getting a better mobile experience set up for visitors as well as streamlining some things I view as inefficiencies.

Thank you for your patience!

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5 Universal Qualities of Bipolar Disorder Recovery

I’ve always enjoyed troubleshooting and trying to find solutions to problems. I find it to not only be fun, but a great exercise for the mind. Well, finding a solution to help with Bipolar Disorder and Depression is far less fun, but it is a worthwhile endeavor. That is why I’m presenting to you five qualities that I feel are essential building blocks of Bipolar wellness. Every mentally ill person I know of that attains a high degree of functionality and long-term recovery possesses these five qualities.

Knowledge

The people I interact with regularly tell me how important my lived experience and wisdom gained is. I often counter this point with the importance of book learned knowledge. You see, mental illness is mostly a giant gray area. It is very easy to confuse one mental illness for another in the course of trying to be correctly diagnosed. And frankly, that’s not necessarily the fault of medical professionals. It is often the result of the consumer not understanding that certain facets of their personality are bad or symptoms.

Personal knowledge is important because it helps a Bipolar person separate themselves from their mental illness. Once you understand what is the real you and what is the mental illness, it makes it much easier to spot when medication isn’t working, unwell cycles, or destructive actions.

Understanding

The other side of the Knowledge coin is Understanding. Understanding relates more to the wisdom of knowing how to apply the knowledge that a person has. There is a universe of information on mental illness out there; and only a fraction of it will actually apply to each of us individually. We must reflect and understand how our mental illness applies to each of us, specifically.

Question 100 Bipolar people and you will come up with a 100 different examples of the manifestations and beliefs about the mental illness. We each must figure out how our diagnosis applies to us. A therapist is very helpful for this process.

Communication

All of the knowledge in the world doesn’t mean much if a person can’t meaningfully communicate what is going on in their mind. I’ve known quite a few mentally ill people who could not make the most of their professional appointments because they would lie or misrepresent the truth. That does absolutely no good. The only people that get hurt in that scenario are the consumer and their family members.

Meaningful communication between consumer and professional, consumer and supporters is necessary to find and maintain wellness. If you have a hard time saying certain things, write it down and hand it over that way! I did this a lot when I was still struggling with my instability and mind.

Trust

Trust, but verify should be the mantra of everyone in life, really. The mind and mental health are complicated, vast subject with a lot of room for interpretation. Many people view the DSM as a “Bible” of mental illness; and when it comes to symptoms it may very well be. But, it doesn’t exactly add any kind of personal perspective or understanding in how behaviors are interpreted.

That means that mental health professionals can make mistakes if they make a bad judgment call on what they’re seeing, if they are assuming previous experience will be the same as the present experience, or if they simply aren’t that knowledgeable on a subject. No one can or should be expected to know everything. It’s just not possible.

So always; trust, but verify.

Desire

No one recovers from mental illness without Desire. Period. Mental wellness is a marathon, not a sprint. Each of us must find the Desire to want to be better, to do all of the tedious garbage work that goes along with being mentally well. Sooner or later, things are going to go bad. Medication stops working. Motivation is hard to find. Depression can come in and derail the progress we’re trying to make.

Desire may not be able to carry us through the overwhelming nature of Depression, but it can help us get back to our feet when the burden becomes to heavy to shoulder. A person must find their desire, find their passion, wherever they can get it, in a way that makes sense to each and every one of us.

Find a way to build on these five qualities. It will make your journey in life and towards wellness much easier.

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