Please can I skip this bit

From feeling exhausted and dizzy for every moment of the day, to a week and a half of hypomania (with the attendant overspending, over talking, over committing at work, and under delivering) I’m back to something approximating normal.

It’s a hell of a hangover. Financially, physically, emotionally, socially.

I can’t talk about this out loud. I’ve had a lot of conversations with myself in the shower. But I can’t get the words out of my mouth. If I say it, then I have to hear it. And I don’t believe myself when I say it. Or perhaps I do believe it but I can’t accept it. Or I don’t want to accept it and saying it out loud, having another human hear me, makes it real.

I’m not bruised by these extreme intervals, I decided today. I think I’ve called it that in the past. Bruise is the wrong word. Bruises fade and leave no sign they ever existed. They don’t change your physiology.

I feel scarred.

Scared. Scarred.

A week of hypomania feels like I’ve lost something. Not money or trust or friendship, although that’s sometimes true. But a piece of me. Something of me, something really fundamental that you only get a finite amount of. It feels like that is chipped away or burned up and lost.

In time, that missing piece will seem less starkly absent. But I’ll always be a little different for its loss.

That happens once or twice and maybe you’ve got enough to spare that it doesn’t really change you at your core. Doesn’t deform your soul. But how many times have I done this now? How many times before there is more absent than there is me? What am I after strips of me have peeled away in one crisis or another?

I am afraid

I remember the feeling of isolation. Not sadness, as such, at that. Just an absolute certainty of being apart from everyone around me. Communicating with my partner out of habit and a knowledge of that mattering but without a solid core sense of ‘connection’. I didn’t feel I needed anyone. But I was desperate to be with everyone all the time. I couldn’t hear anyone else, operating in a deeply solipsistic haze, going through the motions of asking after everyone else.

I hate that. I hate who I was – who I am? How long until that’s all there is?

I was afraid, I am still afraid, of how isolated I felt. This paragraph and the above were both true. Needing nobody, terrified of having nobody. Needing people to see how fast I was running, terrified nobody would notice and therefore confirm my fear that this isn’t real, isn’t legitimate, which is also my absolute conviction. A bipolar relationship to every element of this. See me/don’t notice me, be with me/I don’t need anyone, I’m invulnerable/I’m desperate

I can’t say any of this out loud. The words die in my throat. It’s true and it’s not true. Absurdly dramatic and self mythologising and so fantastically real that it’s too much like exposure.

I want to go to sleep and wake up and find the last 3 weeks never happened.

Thinking about chronic mental ill health

I’ve been reflecting recently on the way I view my own mental health.  I write often on here, and on twitter, about hitting a ‘hypomanic period’ or a ‘depressive period’ because, as I leap from one to another, I think of them as separate events.  But not only does a hypomanic ‘period’ inevitably lead into a depressive one, they aren’t isolated incidents.  They are, cumulatively, cyclothymia itself.

It’s been useful (necessary?) for me, up to now, to think of them as separate events which I pass between and through rather than thinking of them, along with my ‘stable’ periods, as a whole, and a connected manifestation of cyclothymia.  I needed to think of them as distinct periods which had clear starts and ends because then I am not always ‘within’ cyclothymia – I didn’t know how else to conceptualise it, how else to describe it without suggesting it defined my entire life.  Increasingly, this kind of thinking has made me feel more despairing about experiencing highs and lows; why can I never stamp those emotions down permanently? Why do those feelings keep resurfacing when I beat them down last time? What am I doing wrong that I can’t win the war?

I’m thinking, today, about the language of chronic illness.  I found this article an interesting read: 5 ways you’re not ‘living’ with chronic illness which recommends some shifts in how we think about our own chronic ill health in order to prevent it taking over/directing one’s entire life.  When I decided to stop therapy and come off meds I believe I addressed the first point – stop looking for the why.  There are many, many theories from genetic to social and beyond that propose reasons why individuals develop cyclothymia and other conditions; none of them offer me a solution. So why was I pursuing treatments which offered me little help but were founded on one or more of those theories?  As I’ve said before, med free is not the right choice for everyone, but I got so little from the various drug treatments I tried, walking away instead of pouring more energy into finding the ‘miracle’ cure for me was the right way to stop living under cyclothymia and start living with it.

Point 2 is also something I’m fortunate I’ve been able to achieve.  

Point 3 gives me pause though; you’re not living with chronic illness if you’re hating yourself.  Self-loathing is both symptomatic of cyclothymia and caused by it.  I, like many other people I have spoken to with this illness, have lost things and people that mattered because of some of the ways cyclothymia manifests itself in both action and personality.  And, as I mention above, I come to hate myself for not being able to fix myself, for not being able to simply step out of this restrictive jacket of cyclothymia and into a life of cheerful ease.  Which leads me, as it does the article, into point 4; you’re not living with chronic illness if you’re fighting it.  This doesn’t mean stop trying to improve my health and manage my illness; it means accepting a paradigm shift from thinking of it as something to be ‘cured‘ or ‘fixed’ to thinking of it as something to be managed, contained and yes, as the article’s title says, lived with.

I am not failing because the ups and downs keep coming. I am not [and I struggle to write this, but I must try to explore the idea] unlovable because I have mood swings.  I am coping.  I am managing to get through my life in lots of ways that are great, and celebratory.  I am not a fighter – I am resilient.  Winning (if we must persist with the language of a fight) with chronic illness like cyclothymia, means carrying on each day and finding and using new ways to make life easier, moods more manageable, and life more fulfilled.

For example, right now I’m once again in a particularly brutal down-swing.  And I find myself compulsively harming myself; simply to contain my emotional extremes, in order to, for example, prevent myself from crying on the bus home, or from weeping during a party.  If I think of each down-swing as a separate event, I have no explanation for my self injurious behaviour.  

If I think of all my down-swings as part of a single experience of mental ill health (which of course, is precisely what it is and why my entire emotional experience is diagnosed with a single condition) then my current behaviour is simply a resurgence of a symptom I have less frequently than some others. It’s just a ‘flare up’ of one of the least pleasant elements of this illness. And if that’s true, it’s not that I’ve totally failed to maintain my previous progress, it’s just that, this time, the down-swing is particularly intense and as long as I keep moving forward (point 5 from the article) after this, and keep thinking of what I can do to make those symptoms less destructive and emerge less frequently (perhaps by identifying what has pushed me that bit further this time – stress?) then I am living with cyclothymia. I am still in control.

You’ve Got that Manic Feeling

I’m back on the roller-coaster.  Or rather, I never got off the roller-coaster and right now I’m cranking back up to the top.

I felt it coming, as usual.  Over the last week I’ve had groggy morning brain which evaporates in the shower and leaves me with LOADS OF FUCKING ENERGY.  Today and yesterday I’ve barely slept – or rather, I’ve slept for the usual amount of time except for the second 4 hours I sleep lightly, waking frequently, drifting in and out of trippy dreams.

And there’s the anxiety.  That’s the other clue.

Skin crawling, brain itching, restless body anxiety. Tick tick tick tick….can’t sit still, can’t rest, can’t focus, can’t calm down.  This is shaping up to be a period of unpleasant mania.  It was perhaps inevitable because my last couple of hypomanic periods have been relatively mild and largely positive.

Last night I mentally composed an entry for here about dealing with anxiety; dealing with the oncoming wave of hypomania.  I was going to recommend my two preferred activities; sewing and swimming.  The former is repetitive, time consuming, and mind-numbing, the latter burns off loads of nervous energy in a really productive way that is energising in a ‘natural’ way rather than a hypomanic way.  Today I’ve been sewing for 5 hours, went swimming for an hour this morning, and I’ve cleaned the flat top to bottom. Unfortunately like almost all of my ‘coping’ strategies, when I get to the extreme end of high and low, they just don’t cut it.

I’m a little angry with myself this evening; hypomanic confidence has assured me that I didn’t need to work on a piece of work  which is due on Tuesday. I’m battling my brain over this even now; the little voice of rationalism is saying: “but it really would have been good to spend just an hour on it to assess how much additional work is needed tomorrow” whilst the booming voice of hypomania confidently shouts it down: “if we get in at 10am tomorrow that’s an hour to work on it before 11am meeting. 12-1pm planning Tuesday’s seminar and then the rest of the afternoon to work on Tuesday’s piece of work. Really, we needn’t have even worked on it yesterday. In fact, maybe we don’t even need to get in for 10am, we can definitely just wing it on Tuesday, now how about a nice triple vodka and orange?”

I’ve got a glass in my hand.  I think the comforting, friendly, fun voice of hypomania might have won this round.  It usually does.

As in thesis, so in life….or something.

This blog has been rather neglected the last couple of months; not for lack of ideas, plenty of topics have flashed through my mind but somehow, I haven’t managed to put fingers to keyboard.

I’ve spent much of the last two months being blocked on writing a particular section of my thesis.  Last week I decided to put that section aside and begin revising another section.  Suddenly words flowed again and I began to believe it would be possible to physically turn out enough words, if not sufficient quality of words, to complete my PhD in the next 12 months.  As in thesis so, it seems, in life; I decided to delete my facebook and twitter accounts this weekend (temporarily, most likely) and found I had more hours in my day and lo! The flat is clean, my admin for my job is up to date, and I’m sticking to my daily writing goals.  Which brings us to the blog; I find I have time to think and write and construct a blog post.

I’ve actually had a steady period of mood for about a month now and kept noticing it, and silently celebrating, before returning to whatever I was doing when the thought occurred to me.

These last few weeks I’ve been getting angrier and angrier.  Tiny things began aggravating me, I snapped at everyone for everything they said. I watched myself doing this, watched myself getting angry but didn’t feel I had any power to stop myself – my mouth was running ahead of my head.  I expected this to turn into a depressive period, somehow, it hasn’t.

The last few days I’ve had terrible nights’ sleep, punctuating by frequent waking, feverish vivid dreams, and exhaustion come the morning.  I’m full of ideas but unable to settle on any one activity for more than 45 minutes. I’m still angry.  But I’m also periodically floored by acute moments, minutes, hours, of profound despair.  I think everyone hates me and am convinced everyone is talking about me behind my back/the moment I leave the room. The brain gremlins are chatting to me, recounting every stupid decision I’ve ever made and social faux pas, real or imagined, and assuring me I’m an ass.

It feels like I’ve been emotionally blocked in the same way I was blocked with my thesis writing and now I’m able to write everything I need to – blog, thesis, teaching feedback, teaching coursework – I’m also able to experience all my usual range of emotions, except, much like the writing, they are happening all at once.  Angry, sad, inspired, social, paranoid, exhilarated, manic, disjointed.

It’s a lot. It’s not bad…but it’s not good either. It’s just sort of…everything.

Mania Misunderstood

I’ve written previously about cyclothymia being misunderstood, and that having cyclothymia is not only and always characterised by bad things/negative symptoms, but I want to revisit parts of both of those posts and talk about a common belief that mania (or in the case of cyclothymia, hypomania) means feeling incredibly happy and positive.

It is true that hypomania can sometimes be an enjoyable stage in the mood cycle; hypomania can be characterised by feelings of happiness and well being, but it doesn’t end there.  To illustrate just how difficult hypomania can be, let me describe the circumstances which led me to be diagnosed with cyclothymia.

I had come out of a long term relationship and had a messy break up.  I moved into a new flat and I started going out.  All the time. With everyone. Dancing, drinking, a snifter of drugs here and there.  I’d go to work with a raging hangover on 4 hours sleep, then do it all again the next night.

In itself, probably not that remarkable.  But instead of levelling out, having my moment of grieving, and moving on and dropping back into a normal rhythm of life, everything got faster.

Drink, fall in to bed, sleep a couple of hours, work, drink, dance, fuck, sleep, drink…repeat.

I was at every party every night of the week, and if there was no party, I’d down a bottle of vodka at home.

I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t be quiet.

One day I got up after almost no sleep and rolled into town.  I started shopping. And I didn’t stop until my credit card was maxed-out.  I remember calling my best friend as I walked from one shop to the next. I was annoyed because I couldn’t find much to buy in the last shop I’d been in.  I gabbled down the phone to her for a few minutes and she cut in; “are you drunk?”

And so it continued.

Being [hypo]manic is like being drunk, but it stops being the fun kind of drunk really quickly.  It’s more like being drunk at the end of the night, everyone has gone home or fallen asleep but you’re only just hitting your stride. Except unlike being drunk, you’ve been ‘hitting your stride’ for days. Unlike being drunk, you can’t use tried and tested strategies to sober up. A good sleep, rehydration sachet, a jacket potato, black coffee, none of it works. And some of it, like a good sleep, is flat out impossible.  I’ve stayed awake through a triple dose of sleeping pills.  I’ve slept fitfully for 4 hours, felt exhausted but simply been unable to close my eyes and drift off. Day after day. Night after night.

And then there’s the spending. It took me over a year to pay off the credit card I maxed out in a day. People like Stephen Fry can, I am confident, afford their hypomanic spending sprees, I can’t.

Nothing is interesting enough to occupy you for more than 20 minutes.  You run rings around people at work and they look like they are moving at a snails pace to you.  Nothing you can smoke, drink or snort hits your brain where you want it to, occasionally it just takes the edge off long enough for you to fall exhausted into bed and sleep properly for a few hours.

It was in this state, nervous, anxious, exhausted, unsettled, bored and overwhelmed, that I went to my GP. I sat down and it all poured out of me; can’t sleep, exhausted but can’t stop moving and thinking and doing.  Calling my friends because I can’t bear to be alone but none of them having the energy or time to keep up with me.

He prescribed me sleeping pills. Assured me it would be ok, he would help me get help.  And I sat there, feeling empty and lost.

Later came the referral to a psychiatrist (although my GP was as good as his word, I recall only waiting a week or two) the anti-psychotics, and finally, a diagnosis.  And with the diagnosis came recognition and, over the years, an understanding of my mind.

Hypomania? It doesn’t mean happy to me, it means being afraid of the speed and volume of my thoughts. It means urges and compulsions that just cannot be quelled.  It means go, go, go.  It’s means exhaustion, it means an energy debt that’s going to be paid, really soon, with an almighty down-swing. It can be fun – free-wheeling confidence.  But it can take me to the very same dark places that depression does, and further, because insatiable desire and unquellable tongue are difficult to be around.  I think it can be harder to support someone who is manic than depressed because they barely know where to begin with what is wrong.  Even now, I rarely know what will help.

Sometimes I ride it out, grabbing at the good things that go past.  Other times hypomania is a terrifying ride in a car with no brakes, and I hold on terrified I’m a moment away from being smashed to the ground.