Bipolar disorder comes with highs and lows – mania and depression, for those who still call it manic-depressive illness. Bipolar 2 comes with plenty of depression (trust me on this), but mania that doesn’t reach the heights of regular mania. Hence the term “hypomania” – low mania. Like “hypoglycemia” – low blood sugar. (Actually, low blood sugar can affect the bipolar person’s – or anyone’s – moods, but that’s a story for another time.)

So. Mania. Mania comes with pluses – exuberance, euphoria, ambition, confidence, and other good feelings. It also comes with minuses – risk-taking behaviors that can ruin relationships, careers, finances, lives.

Hypomania, however, is usually not so extreme. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you have hypomania at all, because it comes out sideways, as anxiety. This is what happened to me, and is the reason it took me so long to get the proper diagnosis of bipolar type 2.

Recently I have been exploring the realm of hypomania, and I’m here to report that, similar to regular mania, hypomania has its attractions and its drawbacks. And they are intertwined.

On the plus side, I have more energy – more spoons to spend. I can go longer between naps. I have now gotten out of bed, dressed, and out of the house for three days in a row. I can concentrate longer on the books I’m reading and spend more time with my husband and do some actual paying work.

On the minus side, I pay for that energy. It’s like borrowing spoons – you can’t keep doing it. Sooner or later the spoons have to be replaced. Right before my most recent spurt of energy, I had a need for a nap that turned into a mega-nap – almost six hours. I woke up just in time to get ready for bed. Then I slept at least ten hours more – maybe 12. It’s impossible to schedule these things, but I have left tomorrow open just in case my body and brain decide that’s payback day for the three days of activity.

Another plus is that my creative juices are flowing. I’m working ahead on blog posts because I know at the end of the month I have a huge commitment that will keep me from writing something for that Sunday. I’ve also taken steps to spiff up my posts with visuals. And I’ve been thinking that I ought to write some fiction.

However, there’s a however. The last time I had a creative spurt I almost talked myself into starting two new blogs, for a total of four. I have plenty on my plate already, what with these blogs and paying work and trying to find an agent for my book and getting ready for a writer’s conference. This is no time to start a big new project that could easily devour my time and my ability to do the things I already need and want to do. But I do now have a computer file set aside for notes and ideas that flit through my busy brain. Call that file “Later.”

And let’s not forget anxiety. It’s hard to find the pluses there, except that anxiety, if properly harnessed, helps me prepare. I suppose it sounds better if I call it anticipation instead of anxiety. Anticipating my upcoming dental work spurred me into putting together the financing for it. Anticipating the writers’ workshop allows me to prep for all the details – wardrobe, business cards, directions, strategies to cope with exhaustion – that would make my nerves fray even more at the last minute.

I assume I needn’t discuss the minuses of anxiety. Let’s just say that for me, they include regrettable and appalling physical symptoms that no one wants to hear about.

Any way you look at it, the dental procedures are going to be a low and the workshop a high. I can already predict some of the difficulties that will accompany the workshop boost. It’s harder to think of pluses related to the dental work. Except that I really need it done, and with luck it will (eventually) improve my looks, my breath, my health, my pain level, and my self-esteem. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.

Bipolar disorder is often compared to a seesaw (or teeter-totter, if you prefer) or a swing set or a roller coaster – for some reason, usually as a form of amusement that involves ups and downs. The amusement is debatable and fleeting. But the ups and downs are with us always. Better to learn to ride this beast rather than let it ride us.

Filed under: Mental Health Tagged: anxiety, bipolar disorder, bipolar type 2, blogging, concentration, depression, hypomania, mania, my experiences, Spoon Theory

Bipolar disorder comes with highs and lows – mania and depression, for those who still call it manic-depressive illness. Bipolar 2 comes with plenty of depression (trust me on this), but mania that doesn’t reach the heights of regular mania. Hence the term “hypomania” – low mania. Like “hypoglycemia” – low blood sugar. (Actually, low blood sugar can affect the bipolar person’s – or anyone’s – moods, but that’s a story for another time.)

So. Mania. Mania comes with pluses – exuberance, euphoria, ambition, confidence, and other good feelings. It also comes with minuses – risk-taking behaviors that can ruin relationships, careers, finances, lives.

Hypomania, however, is usually not so extreme. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you have hypomania at all, because it comes out sideways, as anxiety. This is what happened to me, and is the reason it took me so long to get the proper diagnosis of bipolar type 2.

Recently I have been exploring the realm of hypomania, and I’m here to report that, similar to regular mania, hypomania has its attractions and its drawbacks. And they are intertwined.

On the plus side, I have more energy – more spoons to spend. I can go longer between naps. I have now gotten out of bed, dressed, and out of the house for three days in a row. I can concentrate longer on the books I’m reading and spend more time with my husband and do some actual paying work.

On the minus side, I pay for that energy. It’s like borrowing spoons – you can’t keep doing it. Sooner or later the spoons have to be replaced. Right before my most recent spurt of energy, I had a need for a nap that turned into a mega-nap – almost six hours. I woke up just in time to get ready for bed. Then I slept at least ten hours more – maybe 12. It’s impossible to schedule these things, but I have left tomorrow open just in case my body and brain decide that’s payback day for the three days of activity.

Another plus is that my creative juices are flowing. I’m working ahead on blog posts because I know at the end of the month I have a huge commitment that will keep me from writing something for that Sunday. I’ve also taken steps to spiff up my posts with visuals. And I’ve been thinking that I ought to write some fiction.

However, there’s a however. The last time I had a creative spurt I almost talked myself into starting two new blogs, for a total of four. I have plenty on my plate already, what with these blogs and paying work and trying to find an agent for my book and getting ready for a writer’s conference. This is no time to start a big new project that could easily devour my time and my ability to do the things I already need and want to do. But I do now have a computer file set aside for notes and ideas that flit through my busy brain. Call that file “Later.”

And let’s not forget anxiety. It’s hard to find the pluses there, except that anxiety, if properly harnessed, helps me prepare. I suppose it sounds better if I call it anticipation instead of anxiety. Anticipating my upcoming dental work spurred me into putting together the financing for it. Anticipating the writers’ workshop allows me to prep for all the details – wardrobe, business cards, directions, strategies to cope with exhaustion – that would make my nerves fray even more at the last minute.

I assume I needn’t discuss the minuses of anxiety. Let’s just say that for me, they include regrettable and appalling physical symptoms that no one wants to hear about.

Any way you look at it, the dental procedures are going to be a low and the workshop a high. I can already predict some of the difficulties that will accompany the workshop boost. It’s harder to think of pluses related to the dental work. Except that I really need it done, and with luck it will (eventually) improve my looks, my breath, my health, my pain level, and my self-esteem. At least that’s what I’m telling myself now.

Bipolar disorder is often compared to a seesaw (or teeter-totter, if you prefer) or a swing set or a roller coaster – for some reason, usually as a form of amusement that involves ups and downs. The amusement is debatable and fleeting. But the ups and downs are with us always. Better to learn to ride this beast rather than let it ride us.

Filed under: Mental Health Tagged: anxiety, bipolar disorder, bipolar type 2, blogging, concentration, depression, hypomania, mania, my experiences, Spoon Theory

Many people who have a mental illness or have a family member or loved one with a mental illness know that the mental system needs a lot of work.

In order for the mental health system to change, we need to start at the top. In order to fight for your loved one, changes are going to be needed.  In order for changes to be made, there is not much we, as the mentally ill and their families, can do but to go to our legislators and ask for them to listen to our concerns, give us a chance to ask questions, and be patient while we offer solutions.

Many people like to complain about how their loved one is being mistreated or how awful it is that they can’t get help.  They often feel hopeless because it just seems like nothing is ever going to change.

Change won’t happen until we, the people who care about the mentally ill, start taking action.

I am not a political person.  I just want things to change. Sitting around complaining about the system and listening to others complain about the system is not going to change anything.  Being supportive of someone with a mental illness is important, but think how yours and their lives would be different if more research was done and their mental illness had a cure and/or there was more of a support system for them.

The only way I can think of to change things is to contact our legislators and politicians. I don’t think that is political. I think that is advocacy and caring about the mentally ill, many who can’t help themselves. Advocacy is just publicly supporting something.

Yes, contacting the President, the current candidates, senators and congressmen is contacting political figures. However, I don’t think that makes me a politician. That makes me someone who cares.

Please help me in making a difference in the lives of the mentally ill.  

It will take ONE MINUTE.  Copy/Paste or type out the words “PLEASE TALK ABOUT HOW YOU WOULD SOLVE THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS” Then, write on a candidate’s wall, your own wall, or simply tweet it.  You could also spend the minute to ask others to do the same.  

If we can get the candidates to talk about the mental health crisis and what they would do to solve it, that would be a great step in changing the system.  It does not make me a politician to want to make the lives better for the mentally ill. It makes me a compassionate, caring person who wants things better for the people who are struggling with a mental illness and can’t get help, are being stigmatized, and are mistreated and discriminated against.

I consider myself an advocate.  An advocate is someone who publicly recommends or supports. It is not someone who wants to be a politician. I don’t even want to talk to politicians. I just know that without doing so, nothing will change and the mentally ill will keep having to struggle.

  
Would you erase traumatic and bad memories, phobias, panic attacks and disorders such as PTSD if you could? Well now with Propranolol you can!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minding-memory/201603/spotless-mind-good-or-bad?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPostAntonio Guillem/Shutterstock

Source: Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to delete a painful memory—just obliterate it?

Maybe you saw the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (link is external)(2004), one of the wackier products of writer Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. Its premise was that people could erase selective memories to eliminate the distress they incur. 
I loved the film. I found it funny, absurd, and profoundly moving. What its protagonists (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) perceive is that not only do they cling to their most difficult memories but they also tend to repeat their past mistakes, even as they forget the life lessons they believe to have learned from them. It’s like Groundhog Day (link is external)(1993) with a realistic twist.
But guess what? Scientists have discovered a drug that can potentially efface memories of profoundly painful, even traumatic events. As Richard A. Friedman wrote in the New York Times: “Who among us hasn’t wanted to let go of anxiety or forget about fear? Phobias, panic attacks and disorders like post-traumatic stress are extremely common: 29 percent of American adults will suffer from anxiety at some point in their lives.” 

Well, there may be a cure for that. And its name is propranolol. 
Studies show that if someone who has a phobia—let’s say spiders—takes this drug at the moment they are exposed to that fear, it vanishes. Friedman (link is external)explains the process:
“Propranolol blocks the effects of norepinephrine in the brain. This chemical, which is similar to adrenaline, enhances learning, so blocking it disrupts the way a memory is put back in storage after it is retrieved—a process called reconsolidation.” 
Things get a lot trickier in Spotless Mind, in which both protagonists undergo an all-night brain treatment to erase the memory of their failed relationship. The problem is that the treatment works. Both come to regret their decision to erase the memories of each other and scramble to recover them. Despite the painfulness of their parting, neither wants to let go of the bittersweet memory of their intimate involvement. Call it love.  
Fear of spiders seems relatively minor in relation to human heartbreak. But think also about the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder in recent years—not only among veterans returning from war but also among those (many of them women) who have suffered sexual and/or domestic abuse on the homefront.
We are hyper-sensitized to stories of trauma and their disabling effects. We hear that survivors are subject to recurring nightmares, panic attacks resulting from “triggers,” social isolation, depression and suicidal impulses. 
I do not doubt any of these findings. Rather, I think that these stories may help to deepen our understanding and appreciation of the complex (and barely understood) processes of memory.
Contemporary neuroscience tells us that every time we retrieve and relive a personal memory, we revise it in terms of the context of its retrieval. Say you hear a song that reminds you of a moment of special significance in your past. The instant in which you recall this memory intermingles with the circumstance that evoked it. As a result, the reminiscence that will now be re-stored in your long-term memory will bear traces of what is happening here and now. The present, as a result, continues to revise the past. This is not a matter of personal choice or self-determination. It’s a brain function that happens regardless of what we consciously wish or desire.
I wonder if the success of exposure therapy (an offshoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) may work in part like this. I’ve never tried this technique. But I can imagine how reliving a traumatic experience (such as a rape) in a controlled environment, where you can summon a response other than helplessness and terror, might help form new associations about what happened. It may mute the primary memory’s traumatic effects. I can also see how this therapy might not be enough. Friedman reports that it works in only about half of the PTSD patients who try it. Some may even experience the re-living of the past as an excruciating replay of the original trauma. 
I’m torn about these new findings. Would I want to erase the most painful memories of my past—nearly all of which have to do with close relationships? Like the lovers in Spotless Mind, the memories that most torment me concern the major emotional losses of my life. Would I want to erase these? 
I do not mind the prospect of taking a federally-approved drug to enhance my health, longevity, or emotional well-being (e.g., high blood pressure, migraine, anxiety or depression). But I don’t like the idea of losing my personal memory, as one does because of Alzheimers or dementia. For me, the most difficult memories are also the ones that have propelled me into the future. Experiencing disappointment or failure, even in personal relationships, has caused me to develop a more complex understanding of myself and others. It has allowed me to discover greater inner resources.    
For example: When I once lost a job, I got so mad that I demanded to meet with the president of the college. This didn’t save my job, but it did teach me to be more assertive. I treasure this memory as much as I value the ones that revealed to me how I “messed up” with spouses, lovers, and friends. How else would I learn what matters?
I don’t seek the solace of a spotless mind—that is to say, one in which I may forget the most challenging, but also most life-changing, events of my life.     
What about you? Would you take such a drug? For what reasons?

Sort of tired of talking about the past, and reading about how to resolve it, and thinking about it, and even talking about it sometimes. I need to come back to the present, plant my feet firmly in the soil of now. But maybe one last foray into my history or maybe I should call it herstory.

My brother                           Me, 16                            My grandmother’s home

_______________________________________________________

My grandfather                 My son and I                             My mother

_______________________________________________________

My father                                       Me , about 1                                             Me, 17

_______________________________________________________________

My husband and me

This might be a funny thing to say but I married my mother… my husband has many of the characteristics that my mother had, perfectionism, OCD, not very complimentary, not showing love very well outwardly, but dependable to the millionth degree, and physically present and to be relied upon everyday of my life. I may have chosen my husband because subconsciously he reminded me of my mother, (and no abuse of any kind from my husband!) And even though I knew she had abused me, I also knew she had never abandoned me, so I knew I could rely on her to take care of me, when she wasn’t pummeling me that is… haha… and that stopped when I was 14. So I chose someone who reminded me of my mother, personality wise, because I knew I wouldn’t be abandoned. Hmmm, pretty smart of my psyche.

I did not choose someone like my father. My father was incredibly handsome, incredibly! He had these beautiful mesmerizing, light colored eyes. He was very intelligent and charming, and talked about anything and everything! But a good father he was not. He did not know how to relate to people of the female gender in any other way than flirting. And this included me. I remember him being flirtatious, and also mean.(He had affairs, came home drunk and did not have a job, my mother supported all of us with her salary as an OB/GYN resident. He was at least verbally abusive to my mother and physically abused me on occasion.) Once when I was about 5 years old, I’d swallowed an orange seed. He started telling me, in a horrified voice, that now trees are going to grow out of my ears and nose and mouth. Of course, believing him, I was horrified, and started crying. He just kept up with this story, laughing all the time at my distress. My mother was there also, and I remember she was giving him dirty looks, but he didn’t stop. Another memory I have of him is my brother and I, I was 5 years old and my brother was less than 1 years old, standing in a courtroom with my mother, at their divorce proceedings. He was looking at me and winking and smiling and my mother was throwing all the jewelry his mother had given me and her on a table. He had demanded my mother give him all the jewelry that his mother had given her, and for that my mother could keep us children. So he basically sold my brother and me to my mother for all the gold (quite a bit) that his mother had given to my mom and to me. And while he was smiling and winking at me, he wasn’t thinking of the effect it would have on me of him walking out of the courtroom and out of my life. Yes, that was the last time I saw him until I was 40, a total of 35 years, and then it was I who looked him up and went to meet him in Karachi. And yes, it isn’t lost on me that if I hadn’t looked him up, he would never have made the effort. I met him and one of his sons from his second marriage and his second wife.They were both very nice people, and I keep in touch with my half brother a little, I used to when I lived in Buffalo.

He seemed to be very loving to me and my son (who came with me) but even then when I saw him after 35 years, he told me this story: His wife was pregnant with their 4th child. They had had 3 boys. So he went down on his knees and prayed and prayed to god to let him have a daughter. Ouch diss! There I was, his first daughter, that he had so completely abandoned that he didn’t even think I was his daughter anymore. Well he got his wish, he had his daughter. And he failed to think of me and my brother ever. His wife and son told me that after my mother left with us children, he went into a severe depression. I marveled at the fact that they actually wanted me to feel sorry for him. And I actually did. I felt sorry for all of us, the humongous mess that both my parents had made of our lives.

My father was the scion of a very wealthy family from Bhopal, related to the Nawab (Duke) of Bhopal. He was the youngest child and was basically raised by his eldest sister and spoiled rotten beyond belief.

My mother was the most beautiful daughter of a very wealthy family in Sheikhupur, in northern India. They owned 1000’s of acres of land and were extremely wealthy landowners. She was her father’s favorite, and therefore, also extremely spoiled. My grandfather was the first person in his family to go to college, he became a lawyer, then a Magistrate, and then the Deputy Tax Collector in Queen Victoria’s government. He also had very liberal views and believed in educating his daughters as well as his sons. So he sent my mother to Medical School in Bhopal. Which is where my father was trolling the girls’ dormitories for pretty girls. He saw my mother and apparently it was love at first sight. They sang together in competitions, they were in plays together, etc. etc. Eventually they got married and I was born. My grandmother, my aunts and uncles took me to Pakistan with them in August 1960, I was 2 months old. They kept me for the first two years of my life, while my mother finished her medical school. Then my parents came to Pakistan and took me back and the fireworks began. My brother was born in 1964.

What started out with attraction and, seemingly, love, how did it go so horribly wrong? And so I sit here, trying to unravel the mess that my parents made 55 years ago.

So anyway, I didn’t choose someone like my father to marry, at least that was sort of smart on my part. I did not choose gorgeous light colored eyes, charming, smiling, outgoing, amazingly intelligent. That was what I had been abandoned by, why would I choose that? I’ve met people like that, and my subconscious somehow picks up on their traits, or at least thinks it does and sometimes I feel I have issues to resolve with them, but it is not with these particular people that I have issues, the issues are those I had with my father.

I have really forgiven my mother, now I must work on forgiving my father for abandoning me. It’s difficult to accept that all you ever were was just collateral damage from your parents wars and problems. I seem never to have had any importance for my own sake and being.

I wonder sometimes, what I would have been like if I’d grown up in a relatively normal family.

But now I have to stop. I have to go on with my life. Forgive, forget. Move forward. Do something, get a job, get a PhD, do something to stay busy. That’s my advice to my self. And of course keep writing my Blog. I love doing it and sometimes, it is very therapeutic!