Year: 2014

Pressure and the Limited Time, Resources of One with Bipolar

My bipolar is making me feel like hell. But then, there are so few days that I don’t. And now it’s particularly bad because my body won’t seem to regulate its sleep properly. I’m having trouble getting to sleep and then I’m waking up too late. (Yes, an alarm would fix the too late part but then I’d be even more tired than I already am.)

Did I ever mention that I hate bipolar disorder?

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Holiday Advice for People with Bipolar – a Roundup

As you might have realized, it’s two days until Christmas. Because of that, I’m up against deadlines and and trying to get oodles done before I take a couple of days off.

Long story short, I don’t have time to write an original article this week. But, don’t worry, all is not lost. I have written quite a bit about bipolar and the holidays over the years and I thought I’d pull it all together for you here:

What I Want for Chistmas

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My Bipolar Makes Me Hate Everything and Everyone

I hate you.

Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say my bipolar hates you. Or my bipolar makes me hate you. Or something.

I feel this pervasive negative, black, dark, inky hatred spread atop my “Natashaness” that seems to affect how I feel about everything. Theoretically, philosophically, intellectually, I know that I don’t hate everything. In fact, I know that I don’t really hate anything. But I sure feel as if I hate everything.

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Bipolar – I’m Beyond Help

Someone recently reached out to me for some recommendations of mental illness resources as she was concerned for her sister. Unfortunately, the feedback I received from her afterwards was that her sister felt, she was “beyond help” for bipolar disorder.

I understand the feeling of being beyond help. I have felt that way so many times. I had so many goes at medication roulette and I had two doctors give up on me completely so I absolutely felt (and was pretty much told) that I, and my bipolar disorder, was beyond help.

Here’s the thing – those doctors were wrong and so was I.

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Exaggerated Physical Pain Because of Bipolar Depression

I have mentioned several times that bipolar depression isn’t just mental, depression involves physical pain too. And when I talk about the physical pain of depression, I mean idiopathic pain (pain that appears “without reason” (with the reason, of course, being bipolar depression)). But there’s another part of pain that is a part of depression and that’s real, physical pain that has been exaggerated by the depression.

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Support for Bipolar Disorder – Will You Be Okay Tonight?

Yesterday I got the news that I’m losing one of my best friends of 16 years. He’s someone I’ve known pretty much since birth. He’s giving and loving and very furry. He’s my cat.

And while I can understand that not everyone will fully comprehend the bond between a human and animal, you will just have to take my word for it that the news put me into shock and I am now grieving what will very soon become a physical loss.

And, of course, a trauma like this (yes, it is a trauma) will make my bipolar disorder blow up. Bipolar makes grief worse and grief makes bipolar disorder worse.

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Being a Mental Health Advocate True Champion for HealthiNation

A couple of weeks ago, Brendan Anderer, Vice President of Programming and Executive Producer at HealthiNation, contacted me. HealthiNation has created a series on their site (an overall health video site) for who they call “True Champions.” These are people who are extraordinary advocates for an illness and live with the illness themselves. Brendan said he wanted to film me and make me a part of their series.

Now, in all honesty, I didn’t take it overly seriously. I get a lot of offers for a variety of things and, often, once people are told that I’m all the way on the West Coast of Canada, they are no longer interested.

But, surprisingly, HealthiNation still was.

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Calming the Cycle of Anxiety and Bipolar Depression

The Bipolar Burble is extremely honoured to introduce today’s guest author: Ross Szabo. Ross and I met when he introduced me when I won the Erasing the Stigma Leadership award earlier this year. Ross is a past recipient and an inspiring mental health speaker and, well, human being. Read below how he has learned to calm his bipolar depression by recognizing anxiety.

I was an anxious person before my diagnosis of bipolar disorder with anger control problems and psychotic features. Needless to say after my diagnosis, my anxiety did not improve. It took a lot of years of extreme alcohol abuse, broken knuckles, sleeplessness, hallucination-filled nights and dangerous behaviors until I was able to find ways to balance my disorder.

Anxiety seems to be at the root, or heavily tied to, every mood I have with bipolar disorder. One of the most dangerous cycles I have gone through is when anxiety swings in to contribute to constant thoughts of death and suicide. Overwhelming anxiety or crippling depression are hard enough to face separately. When they combine the results can be tragic.

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Additional Writings

Check out my Amazon Author Page.

I write a three-time Web Health Award winning column for HealthyPlace called Breaking Bipolar.

Also, find my writings on The Huffington Post and my work for BPHope (BP Magazine).

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