The journey of my mental illness has been a long and rough road. There were many things I wish I had known from the start that has taken me years to figure out. My diagnoses are borderline personality disorder with avoidance tendencies, bipolar I disorder, an anxiety disorder, and PTSD. Or as I like to say… emotionally action-packed!
As you can imagine this has been hell and continues to be from time to time. It’s taken a while to see what my tendencies are, how to recognize what phase I am in my emotional cycling, how to deal with all of this, and most importantly: to not be embarrassed about it. I was genetically predisposed to developing bipolar disorder, I developed BPD as a coping mechanism to my upbringing, PTSD from childhood, and then another fresh layer after my domestic violence situation. (Thanks, Clarence)
Though I’m going to write out a list of things I wish I had known when diagnosed, the experiences that gained me the knowledge today can’t be replaced. I could have read this exact list when I was newly diagnosed and I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made. A lot of this comes with time but my hope is that it reaches someone that may need that guidance.
1. Meds Stop Working Randomly: Yup, the meds that are making me feel great right now will likely stop working at some point in time and we will have to go through the process again. The process of falling into a deep depression, waiting to get back into the doctor, waiting for the new meds to kick in, and so on. There’s always a new med tiredness that I battle, which means days of sleeping because my body is adjusting. Until being self-employed & working with an amazing social media agency, I would typically lose my job any time I had a major lapse in mental health. So, there’d be job searching once I was mentally stable enough. Dealing with the financial repercussions of that always leads to feelings of guilt & shame. I’m not saying this is completely normal for everyone to crash as hard, but it’s a cycle I have yet to break. The crashes have become less severe, but they still happen. I am just on the tail end of one as I’m writing this and we had no major issues. That’s beyond a relief based on what used to happen! I have my job and I’m back baby!
2. This Isn’t Going Away: Even though I was well aware that Bipolar & BPD don’t just go away, for the longest time I had hoped if I just took the meds for a while and talked to a counselor, that eventually I’d be able to just be “normal”. I had hoped that I’d stop feeling so empty inside if I did what they wanted for a while. The reality is that I will struggle with these cycles until the day I die. I am writing this coming out of a crash that meant I didn’t work for 2 weeks. I slept non-stop and my wins were getting up, showering, and maybe loading the dishwasher. I work with a wonderful woman, so my livelihood was safe, I have an amazing soon-to-be-husband who helps with the kids & housework, and a great ex-husband who takes the kids extra when I’m down. I don’t know how someone with this severe of mental illness does it without support. The moral of the story, I will always have these cycles. It is up to me to take care of myself to prevent them from happening as often and as deeply. As I continue to grow, things get more manageable.
3. Signs of My Mania & Depression: Now this is one point that had I known exactly what my signs of depression & mania were, I may have done a little less damage on my journey. Over the years I have developed the ability to be extremely self-aware, and I’ve been commended by doctors multiple times. It helps some days, other days it just means I’m aware enough to know what damage I’m doing. My manic stages can be wonderful nowadays but, in the beginning, they were so destructive! My manic stages were full of overestimating my abilities, setting unrealistic expectations (for example I was going to make $90k a month within a year of selling Mary Kay) and I spent large amounts of money I did not have (examples: $10k in MK inventory & non-interest financed $900 in Disney Blu-Rays). I would talk quickly and couldn’t remain on topic, I would clean the entire house, and maybe get 2-3 hours of sleep a night. Mania feels amazing! It sure as hell beats depression, until you take inventory of the damage. The good news is that now I can realize when I am slipping into a certain part of a cycle. It does not mean I am able to stop it, but I am able to prepare. If I’m manic I won’t buy ANYTHING without talking to Mike. If I’m going depressive, I warn Mike, John, and my boss.
4. My Toxic Thoughts: I wish I had understood what toxic self-talk was sooner because then maybe it wouldn’t have done as much damage. It’s something I’m still struggling with today & causes a good number of issues in my life. My biggest negative thought process is that everyone is out to get me. When I think everyone is always talking about me, it’s not in a narcissistic sense, I’m convinced half the time that even my best friends don’t like me. I am terribly mean to myself. People have yelled “quit thinking everyone is out to get you!” and they have no idea how much I wish I could. I also have the thought process that if I buy 10 different planners I will somehow get my life together. (Yes, this is a joke)
5. Counseling Will Fix Me: Over the years my thoughts about counseling have changed dramatically. For the longest time, I thought counseling was going to fix me. That one day I was going to have this dramatic breakthrough, leaving crying because something in my brain clicked and I was “normal” now. Nope. Well at the very least it helped me at my loneliest point in life. I had someone to talk to. However, as soon as I started building relationships, I realized I was getting nothing from them that I was getting from my friends over drinks. Half the time I left madder because they told me what I wanted to hear, not what I needed to hear. My counselors were great people, but they weren’t what I needed. It would take something very dramatic to get me back to counseling. My suggestion, GO at first but stay aware. Be aware of what they tell you, and monitor how you feel when leaving. Determine if you’re angry because they are telling you you’re right to be mad at everyone or mad because they aren’t agreeing with you. I would have given anything for a counselor to not agree with me, and tell me I was being dramatic!
6. Knowing How to Take a Breather: I say this point like it’s something I have already mastered, but I have most definitely not. I am very reactive and impulsive. My go-to move when someone has upset me. I block them on Facebook. I block them so hard. I block them like I just blocked them off planet earth. My knee-jerk reactions are typically to remove myself from the situation to prevent any more hurt. Early on a lot of the hurt could be “they didn’t reply”. Now I am trash at replying to people and I thank God they don’t act like that. My reactions are out of fear. Fear of getting hurt. Even if the action didn’t hurt me, I’m convinced it’s going to lead to me being hurt, therefore I need to remove myself from the situation. I need to make sure they can’t contact me, so they can’t hurt me. (Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of beaches I’ve blocked because they deserved it, but there are also a lot that don’t.)
7. It Doesn’t Make You Weak: I used to be embarrassed by my mental illness, that’s the world we are raised in. We were raised that mental illness was a dirty thing to be embarrassed by. Then, I got to understand my mental illness. I realized I was genetically predisposed to have bipolar disorder. I developed borderline personality disorder because of my childhood…. so, it wasn’t my fault. Why should I be embarrassed over a medical condition? Do we tell breast cancer patients to be embarrassed? How about diabetes patients? Of course not! So why should I?! It’s a medical condition I had no control over developing. Now I do have to control my reactions, but those close to me understand my quarks, understand my messages of “We okay, right?” My diagnosis is not an excuse for me to have horrible behavior and treat others like trash, but it should buy me a bit of grace when I’m struggling. Just like we’d understand when a diabetic doesn’t feel well enough to come out, I need the same understanding when I cancel plans because I can’t handle leaving home.
8. This Affects Every Part of Your Life: I don’t think I understood how this was going to affect every aspect of my life and I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge that. I wanted to believe I was just going to struggle at home when no one was looking but that wasn’t the case (obviously). It explained my inability to hold a job down a job beyond 2 years, my dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, my rapid emotional cycling that scared people away, pushing people away so I wouldn’t get hurt, and overall just chaos that came with knowing me. Understanding how my mental illness affects different parts of my life helps me keep things in check. Thinking it affected nothing else in my life added extra, unneeded chaos.
Knowing these points ahead of time would not have made everything easy, but it may have helped me know what direction to go. Most of these are learned the hard way and I’m not sure you can learn them any other way. My hope is this reaches someone and they only have to learn that hard lesson once, not 5 times over.
These lessons meant tons of debt, lost friendships, missed opportunities, and a lot of pain. I am happier now than I’ve ever been and that’s the inspirational part of this post. It can and will get better if you don’t give up. I’ve done a ton of work on myself; I’ve learned to control my urges when I get scared. I’m more aware than most of my mental state. I’ve become a great mom, and I found the love of my life. I can’t imagine a better life. Well, I mean if we win the lottery that would be cool, but otherwise it's great. My advice? Don’t give up. I don’t have some magical advice that makes you understand these right now. I don’t have a way to make it so you can learn things the easy way, most people like us don’t. We have to learn things the hard way 3 or 4 times, maybe 5 times just to make sure.
We feel more pain than most people can imagine BUT….
We see the sunrise in brighter colors than anyone else.
We feel joy more intensely than anyone else can fathom.
We love deeper than anyone can understand.
It’s okay to be us.
Much Love,
M
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