May 10, 1997
"She won't recover from her losses"
The following is some homework that my therapist had me do. It's meant to have me remember what I felt and how I acted and I will recognize the signs of a relapse. I don't know if it's complete or not but it's what I have now.
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Preamble -In writing this, I have brought up memories I had forgotten I had, and again realized how little I do remember of my life from about age 11 or 12 to the present. Depression and fear and mania have robbed me of the memories of my past and robbed me of the ability to enjoy or "live" my life. This paper is a homework assignment from my therapist to look back on my illness and to "catalog" things and to try to put some order into my life. It will also serve as an early warning device should I go into another manic-depressive episode. The therapist says that bi-polar folks have a 60% chance of having another recurrence of manic-depression after their first significant "cure". This fills me with a little dread because of just having come out of the last episode. I know that after the next episode is over I will feel okay about my skills in combatting a recurrance but now I am a little fearful since manic-depression has kicked my ass in the past and damn near killed me this last time.
Rememberances -
I can remember being manic and depressed since I think about age 14 or 15. As I look back now it becomes hard to distinguish between the physical and emotional since the family I grew up in was sort of screwed. I remember going through periods where I didn't sleep or eat much for days. In fact, I remember going without sleep a number of times for days at a time. I thought that it was just involvement in something or other but now I see that it was mania and that no one around me recognized it as such.
I would also go into depressions with regularity, but no one recognized them as depressions. I remember being told by my Mother to "get my lazy ass out of bed" and always thought I was lazy. It wasn't until I was diagnosed that I realized that this was depression and she did not understand it. She herself was depressed and would exhibit the same behavior. I was a pleaser in order to deflect anger from my Mother so many of my traits of depression and mania were used to survive in my childhood.
As I got older, I remember becoming more "moody" and "crazy" with wider gulfs between these emotions. It seems I can't remember ever being stable during this time. I remember very little now about this time anyway.
Symptoms -
My symptoms for mania would be a feeling of needing action, craving excitement, restlessness, a desire to "do" something, to change myself, to be somewhere else. I would often feel like I had to stay up all night so that I could appreciate this feeling. As I was often depressed, when I did feel motivated or energized, I would often run that feeling into the ground before the depression returned. Of course, looking back now, over-extending the mania was just a way to bring on the depression faster.
Paranoia, fear, sicknesses, O/C behaviors, sleep disorders (both sleeping too much and too little), over and under-eating, isolating, minimizing and compulsive lying. Future tripping and most of the 15 commonly accepted styles of distorted thinking were in my toolkit.
The older I got, the more bizarre my behaviour became. I remember once a co-worker wouldn't even talk to me because I was so bitter and strange. My sicknesses would come on in no time. Every couple of months, I would wake up and not be able to function (very real nausea, muscle and bone pain) and this would last 1 to 3 days. Often, I just couldn't get out of bed and would call in sick because I couldn't face being at work and having to work at working and keeping up a facade.
How It Felt -
It sucked. It felt like I was always expecting the hammer to drop on me or that I was disappointing someone or that I was about to get in trouble over something. I always felt bad when someone came to me because the thought would come into my head "what have I done now...".
In a manic phase, I would be capable of doing many things at great speed and sometimes doing them well. But, I did many things that were not valuable or were just repetitions of something else. If I did a lot of work at work, often it would be non value-added and when it wasn't appreciated (and rightly so) I would instantly go into a depression thinking I was no good, would be fired, go hungry and homeless, etc.
When I was depressed, I would go for months at a time barely able to function. I knew that something was wrong but not what. I felt as if I was under water and that I couldn't breathe or move. Any motion exhausted me and I protected my sleep by isolating. Isolating became my primary activity. I cut off friends, became sicker and would develop almost psychotic or pathological problems about being outside or interacting with people. Since any activity would tire me, work was especially difficult because I had to "act" in front of people and keep up a false front while I had no energy to do so. I would sleep all weekend and would invert my sleep patterns so that by Sunday I was sleeping until afternoon and couldn't fall asleep (if I did at all) so that on Monday morning would not be caught up with sleep and thus start the week off in bad shape. I could not get myself out of these depressions. I did not even know I was depressed. I thought everyone lived their lives like this which is why I was/am so distrustful of cheery, energetic people. Since I would have to be acting and lying to look like that, I assumed they were too.
Suicide as a solution did not really become a serious possibility until sometime in Fall 1995. I saw that I had been on a down arc of destruction, seemingly just waiting to finish what I had started with my divorce from Jane. I knew that I felt bad and that I could not continue at that level of pain for too long. I thought I wanted to end my life. I just wanted to end the pain. For years I had been praying almost every night that I would die. I just wanted not to wake up. I didn't want to go on with the pointlessness of my life and living and acting and feeling bad. I couldn't see how anyone could live like that. I thought everyone did and that they were all lying about enjoying themselves.
How I Acted -
I pushed people away from me. I was very edgey and clingy. I was/am so starved for affection and attention that I would fixate on something or someone and then burn it out without ever coming close to satiation. I was moody and difficult to be around. I had a very negative attitude for most of my life since my life was negative. I had an angry, bitter, hostile, asshole attitude. I have seen that I swear more when I am depressed and so it is. As my attitude gets worse, my vocabulary shrinks.
Due to my problems emotionally at home, I got into the habit of "buying" into my performjance of work, and because of it, would often spend more time at work than I needed to. I thought that if I wan't in at least an hour early, then I would be seen as a fraud, not pullin my weight and people would not think highly of me as I felt they rightly should.
I got defensive over the least things. I always thought that if I got a compliment, I was being lied to. No one could ever think that I could do a good job because I knew how screwed up and ineffective I really was. I could be up one minute and down the next with depression being the most visible aspect of my behavior. People always told me I was too hard on myself. I thought I used self-deprecating comments to make people more comfortable around me. I knew I was smart and I had a problem with arrogance. What I actually did was put myself down so far that people thought it was okay for them to put me down. Which I only saw as a put down and didn't understand why they did it. Plus, I felt I was not appreciated for may true competency.
I would attempt to do very large things while manic, and then when I had crashed into a depression and couldn't deliver (as if I ever could), my customers would only see that I had promised the world and not even delivered a dirt parking lot. It sucked and made me feel even worse.
I kept up a facade that all was well. I minized how I felt, I lied about being ill when I wasn't (to hide the fact I was just out cause I couldn't come in or get out of bed), I acted like things were okay. I bought things to try and make myself feel better. I learned this from my mother. I used to call it "Cathartic Shopping" but it was really trying to fill up the black hole that was my life.
How I Got Well -
Around mid-November, I realized that I was going downhill really badly and that I wanted to die. I called a shrink I found in the yellow pages and made and appt to see him. He prescribed Zoloft. It worked for a week or two but the dosage kept going up and I couldn't stay alert so by Christmas break I was down again and ready to die.
He put me into Overlake Hospital's Psychiatric Ward. I spent a week there and then was discharged. I was out a week and then checked into a step-down facility for a week. After that, I was in a day hospital program and then I was committed by the state over a weekend. The last thing was the hardest because just as it was happening, I realized that I was not going to kill myself and that I had better get it together and start managing my illness rather than let it kill me. The key to my recovery was realizing that I wasn't going to die and that there was no easy way to deal with my illness. In fact, the key was dealing with my illness. Not expecting it to go away or to be cured with no effort. I had to stop running away from it and face it and get more help, and invest more time and effort than I had thought I would have to.
I had, before this time, been at 350mg of Effexor. One weekend I cut my dosage in half to 150mg because I couldn't feel anything. This ultimately turned out to be the right thing to do. I realized that I react to psycho-active drugs at a lower level than most. I am what is known as a "low-responder". My Effexor levels were controlling the depression but were not controlling me. Shrinko did not like it that I had screwed around with my meds but could not argue with the result. He also prescribed Depekote for mood stabilization which has helped keep me from rapid cycling.
It was then a job of going back to the therapist I had started with and fired and getting onto the Cognitive/Behavioral train. We have been working on past memories of: How I was treated, How that has shaped how I look for support, How I react to authority figures, How I shape relationships to avoid being hurt, How I learned how not to trust anyone. All of these things have to be identified and acknowledged so that I can recognize situations that might trigger them and have in place other, more adaptive behaviors that are the result of clear decisions making and not the result of a child being hurt 30 years ago.
I got well (or at least to this plateau) by managing my meds. This means taking them on time and at the prescribed levels; by managing my sleep schedule so that I get enough of it at regular intervals; by managing my food intake so that I stay well nourished and eat at regular times; by managing my emotional state by therapy and self-examination of motives and actions. That I admit that I am the way I am and stop blaming myself or others for it and start dealing with the fact that there are things I will have to deal with my whole life.
It is a life-long process that will keep me alive the rest of my life.
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Anyway, that's it. So far.
Coletee and I went out in the sun today and it was glorious. We went to the park and then to an overlook over the Sound and then to a great seafood restaurant that looked out over the water. Fantastic. Then down to another pier for a walk along the marina. Then got home and had a message from a friend of hers and then went to meet her at a local bar. Had a $3 beer after a $5 cover charge. That really sucked. Anyway, Colette did (after I made the original suggestion which could have been a real "stick foot in mouth" moment) confirm that she wanted her to be her Maid of Honor at our wedding. I also suggested her daughter could be the flower girl. News to anyone out there in radioland??? The thing is scheduled for around Fall or early Winter. Assuming things continue to progress well. And neither of us turns into a complete asshole.
Colette's friend always goes on about the Turbo Toilet we have in this apartment. It flushes fairly hard and fast and could suck down an unsuspecting user. I swear it, this toilet is so powerful it could provide booster power for the shuttle. Forget O Rings, just reverse the flow on my toilet. Forever more, she'll always equate me with the toilet from NASA.
So, tommorow we're going to another park near here for a picnic with her friend. Only her friend doesn't know when the picnic is nor where the park is. This ought to be real fun.
I tell ya, I am really digging Visual Page. It ain't the most complete solution you might be able to buy but it really cooks at what it does do. And that is saying a lot for programs these days. Plus, it isn't overcome by app bloat. Like a bloated stoat. Uh oh. Alliteration. Bad sign.
Be Corp is having their big Developer Conference this weekend and releasing DR9. I can't wait until the real release of 1.0 comes out and all the new apps for the OS are announced. Talk about taking off with booster power! Then I can start planning and saving for a screeching box to run the thing on. Computer lust. Such tawdry things going on here in these pages.
The weirdest thing. Colette and I moved the furniture around the apartment when she moved in cause of the things she brought and tyring to keep things organized. Anyway, I moved the bed across the room near the deck sliding doors and put my dresser (really one of those wire organizers with sliding trays) near the window so it would be unobtrusive and cause the TV needs to go along the other side of the bed cause that is where the space is. Anyway, that put me on the other side of the bed. Now, I've always slept on the right side of the bed. And, Colette had always slept on the left side of the bed. Is this a male/female thing? For all you couples that read this diary (yeah...right!) do you have the same side sleeping arrangements? Anyway, it feels pretty odd on that side, not to mention that the hump in the futon is closer to that side than the right. I asked Colette about this and she said she is getting used to being on that side and doesn't want to move. So, I'll have to wait until we get a real bed so I can slicky in on the right side again. Unless she beats me to it. Or beats me up trying.
The night is clear tonight. The signs on the car dealerships out side our apartment are so close it's like you could reach out and touch them. Watching the car salesmen has been a fun thing to do. When a couple comes on the lot, the man goes over to the car and starts looking in. This isn't to check it out; it's to not be there when the salesshark comes over, leaving the wife to handle the initial shock of creepiness. Anyway, the man finally comes out of hiding and goes over to converse with the person he really wants to be friends with so he can get a better deal. He thinks. Anyway, the man initially starts out next to his wife but the distance gradually increases as he begins to identify with the shark more and more. The shark meanwhile is directing all his attention to the wife cause we all know she has to agree to this or the man's life will be a living hell for a LONG time. Eventually, the man goes back to examing the car (read: hiding in the car) while the wife is left to fend for herself. A little later, the man comes back but this time a crucial event occurs, he takes up position a little more closer to the shark than to his wife. At this point, BOTH men begin to sell the wife on the car thus ganging up on her. At this point, either they go inside to continue brow beating the female or they dismiss the shark to more fertile hunting grounds and go off. This is true folks. I have been watching this for over seven months now and it's as true as it gets. And besides, any woman who has gone car shopping with a man can testify to the truth of these observations. I should have Marlin Perkins job. Step aside Jane Goodall, I'm studying humans at close range.
Well, this Ozzie CD is about to give up the ghost and I need to cuddle awhile so I'll close up now.
Been a pleasure operating on your mind.
Be Joyous!
Drew
<A Marlboro Light, a Bud and Colette watching the Tele....the television, not my '83 Fender beauty!!!!>
"She's not chosen this path, but she watches who it crosses"
Copyright ©1996, 1997 A.T.Green. All Rights Reserved.
