Agitated Despair: Mixed Episodes and Bipolar Disorder

Agitated Despair: Mixed Episodes and Bipolar Disorder

A bipolar mixed episode is a uniquely confusing experience and can result in a state of extreme agitation and despair, but you can prevent this by recognizing early signs of a coming episode.

I sat at dusk, my arms around my knees, at the junction of a turbulent and muddy river and the slow, dark water of an ocean inlet. As I sat at the convergence of two vastly different and yet similar things, my mind, too, found itself at its own convergence. Somehow, two moods-vastly different and yet somehow similar-had merged into something terrifying, feverish, and inexplicably sad.

Hours earlier, when I was overflowing with love and grandiose dreams, I spent several hundred dollars on gourmet cookies and bouquets of roses and lilies to hand out to friends. Later, as day turned into evening, mania and depression blended together into the unique and startling pain of a bipolar mixed episode….

Read more at https://www.bphope.com/blog/agitated-despair-mixed-episodes-and-bipolar-disorder/

Love, Bipolar Disorder, and Being Worth It

Love, Bipolar Disorder, and Being Worth It

My husband could say I am “worth it” despite my bipolar illness, but he does not. Instead, we both say that is a question that should never be asked.

When it is below zero and I am ice fishing on a frozen Alaskan lake, I concentrate all my energy on catching fish. Each time I fish, my husband—who knows I love fishing more than almost anything—immediately goes into support mode.

Read the rest of this article about bipolar disorder and love at https://www.bphope.com/blog/love-bipolar-disorder-and-being-worth-it/.

 

A Chemical Hiccup: Medicated Oblivion and Art

“I want to hold you in a warm Atlantic,
A sea of my own making, a meringue of lapis wine.”

It is bedtime, and I have swallowed my evening cocktail of bipolar drugs: 300 mg of Seroquel, the Lamictal, and, of course, the Clonazepam. The Seroquel silence is seeping in. I have about 20 minutes on this dead-end road. Soon, I will fall asleep, content and comfortable, a pleasant and sleeping “high-functioning bipolar,” but I will not get to think about what happens to that person in the warm waves of the Atlantic or find the rhythm that goes with my lapis wine.

Read the rest of my article at: https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/10/04/a-chemical-hiccup-medicated-oblivion-and-art/

Read my Essay on OC87 Recovery Diaries– Bipolar Disorder: Never Giving Up

On the rivers I used to float upon in western Alaska, I liked to just eat the peanut butter out of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. There was just too much chocolate in the whole thing for me. As I sat on the edge of the big rubber raft in my waders and wading jacket, I would fling each piece of extra chocolate into the ripples below. A velvety gift to whoever fancied it.

Read more at http://oc87recoverydiaries.com/bipolar/

 

I’m Out: See my Blog Article at PsychCentral– Mania: The Side Effect of Genius

I wrote earlier in this blog about struggling to come “out” with my bipolar on the internet. Well, I’m out. On August 10, “Mania: The Side Effect of Genius,” was published on the World of Psychology blog at PsychCentral. See the article here: https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/08/10/mania-the-side-effect-of-genius/

Another article is being published on OC87 Recovery Diaries in late September. I will keep you posted when that is published.