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alaska, bipolar, circadian rhythms, hypomania, mania, medication, mental illness, mixed episode, nature, paranoia, rapid cycling, sleep, suicide, Uncategorized

Agitated Despair: Mixed Episodes and Bipolar Disorder

March 17, 2018March 17, 2018by Carin MeyerLeave a Comment

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….

alaska, bipolar, hypomania, mania, mental illness, nature, Uncategorized

Bipolar Mania, Hypomania and the Desire to Escape

Featuredby Carin MeyerLeave a Comment

Knowing the early signs of mania, such as a desire to escape, can help to avoid it spiraling into planning elaborate getaways.The hallmark symptom of my coming mania is an overwhelming urge to escape.

For me, the lure of mania has often brought with it the lure of escape. At the beginning, when my mind first starts to quicken with the electric thrill of hypomania, I do not talk of escape. But, as my energy intensifies and a segment of my mind separates itself from the structure, logic, and rules of everyday existence, my plans for escape begin. As I lose the rhythm that usually governs a human life, sleep becomes unimportant, eating becomes unnecessary, and—my ultimate warning sign of an upcoming mania—the idea of escape takes over.

When I was first struggling with my bipolar diagnosis, the manic desire to escape often meant that I would try to go to France. I wanted to rock-climb the giant boulders of Fontainebleau. I wanted touch the gilded walls of Versailles. I wanted to sit under the Eiffel Tower in the moonlight. But, for many years now, escaping from reality usually means that I will try to find a way to run away into the wilderness.

bipolar, circadian rhythms, mental illness, nature, season change, sleep, spring, Uncategorized

Setting the Rules for Your ‘Bipolar Calendar’ as the Seasons Change

March 1, 2018August 12, 2018by Carin MeyerLeave a Comment

Every year, the returning sunlight marks the coming of my most dangerous season, and so begins my preparation for another bipolar spring.

I have my very own bipolar calendar. And it is nearly always the same. Every spring, like clockwork, the sun returns to southern Alaska with an unnecessary force, and with it comes the manic eruptions that signal the end of the comforting darkness of winter.

memory, mental illness, nature, suicide

The River I Flee to When My Mind Tries to Kill Me

February 1, 2018March 14, 2018by Carin MeyerLeave a Comment

During my depressive bipolar cycles, a river is what remains in my mind. Always. The sea, now that you can forget — the way the wind ruffles the surface or falls calm like a lake — but a river is what remains after my memory of it has seemingly passed, even after my imagination stops adorning it with riffles and dark wet holes and oxbow lakes. It lingers.

I am an Alaskan woman in love with a river. I love the muskeg along the banks of that river, the crooked black spruce that struggle for the sky but always fail, their bark wet with the effort, their limbs broken from the start by their own soggy roots. In Alaska, muskeg means a river is nearby. In the case of my very own river, the Delta Clearwater, it means it is flowing, slow and cold and spring-fed, somewhere beneath the tundra at my feet, and somewhere beneath where my grandparents built my family’s rickety old cabin….

A previous blog post of mine has been published on The Mighty. You can read more of it here: https://themighty.com/2018/01/suicidal-delta-clearwater-river-helps-me/

bipolar, love, memory, mental illness, nature, remorse, Uncategorized

Self-Tracking: Moving Forward After a Bipolar Episode

January 6, 2018March 1, 2018by Carin Meyer1 Comment

Remorse after a bipolar episode can cause tremendous pain, but when everybody else says “don’t look back,” I say: “look.”

I once read a book about tracking animals, and when I lived for several months on the edge of the enormous Chugach State Park in Alaska, I tracked a snowshoe hare in the alder thickets along the side of a popular hiking trail.

Read more of my blog article at bphope.com https://www.bphope.com/blog/self-tracking-moving-forward-after-a-bipolar-episode/

bipolar, diagnosis, love, medication, memory, mental illness, nature, suicide, Uncategorized

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

September 27, 2017January 20, 2018by Carin MeyerLeave a Comment

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.