In my experience, there are often times when bipolar depression makes it so that I can’t do anything. I’m a lump. A rock. A blob. I literally can’t do anything because of bipolar depression. And because this happens to me, quite frankly, on a not infrequent basis, I’ve learned what to do when bipolar depression makes it so that I can’t do anything.
Desperation is one of the effects of bipolar disorder. In fact, desperation is even one of the effects of bipolar disorder treatment (Bipolar Treatment Fatigue). So many of us with bipolar disorder have felt desperate at one or more points in time; bipolar disorder is even making some of us feel desperate right now.
I cry all the time. Like, all the time. Crying is, in fact, my reaction to virtually everything (Depression and Crying in Public). Music makes me cry, TV shows make me cry, thoughts make me cry and even silence, makes me cry. If I sit here and just honestly think about how I feel in this very moment, I cry. I just always feel like crying. Crying is my reaction to everything. It’s wet, it’s salty and it sucks.
There are different types of suicidal depressions and one type is the passive suicidal depression. It’s the kind of suicidal depression where you want to die, you just don’t want to kill yourself. (As I’ve written about before, here: The Difference Between Being Suicidal and Wanting to Die.) Passive suicidal depression tends to take forms such as the very common one of not wanting to wake up in the morning.
Fear of pain is normal and natural but I think an acute fear of depression’s pain actually makes depression worse; and of course, this is something that none of us want. But how does fear make pain worse? Can you get over fearing depression’s pain?
Bipolar and anger may or may not be linked. It appears they are and many people would assert they are, but as anger is not, technically, a symptom of bipolar disorder as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, it’s hard to say anything definitive about it. Nevertheless, anger and bipolar disorder have been on my mind lately because I do feel very angry. So why are so many people with bipolar disorder so angry?
This Friday, March 30th, 2018 is World Bipolar Day. People like me and Julie A. Fast along with the International Bipolar Foundation are spending this World Bipolar Day educating others about the realities of living with bipolar disorder.
I’m going to be doing a Facebook Live question and answer session from 9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. PT (noon-1:00 p.m. ET) on my page. I’ll be talking about bipolar disorder and answering your questions live. I’ll do my best to answer anything you like.
There are people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder. This is a thing that happens, especially online. People have written to me claiming of a bipolar cure. Companies also claim to cure (or magically treat) bipolar disorder. (One, in fact, threatened to sue me for talking about my experience with their product.)
My opinion is the people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder are dangerous.
I am suffering from severe bipolar-related agitation. Or is it severe medication-related agitation? This is the question. Technically, it’s mostly a question for your doctor, but it’s one I struggle with, too. On one level, it doesn’t much matter what’s causing the agitation as it’s happening and that’s that; and on the other hand, I think it’s important to know what’s driving the agitation – a bipolar symptom or a medication side effect?
If you knew me, you would know that I smile a lot. I fake smile a lot as a bipolar depression coping skill. Even when I’m quite depressed, I smile around others to hide. I would consider this to be pretty normal for people with a mental illness and even people without it. After all, how many people are hiding grief or heartbreak, for example, behind a smile?
But then there’s when I’m alone. I actually smile when I’m alone. When I was walking alone on the street this morning, I smiled at the moon. (I love when it’s out in the morning.) Somehow, seeing the moon created a smile on my face. Why is that? Why is it when I’m depressed I still smile when I’m alone?
I have experienced depression because of bipolar and cried in public more time than I can count. Like, way more. I’ve cried in grocery stores, malls, restaurants and pretty well anywhere else you can name. In fact, I just got off a plane where I was crying. So I’ve had a lot of experience crying in public because of depression and have given it a lot of thought.
Some days, depression actually makes me wake up crying. Sometimes the crying is a few minutes after waking up and sometimes it is mere seconds. I have even woken up in the morning with tears on my face. I don’t know how these things are possible. I don’t know how depression can make me cry when I wake up before thoughts are even produced – I only know that it can.
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter to get the latest from Bipolar Burble, Breaking Bipolar, my vlogs at bpHope, my masterclasses, and other useful tidbits -- plus get a FREE eBook on coping skills.
Recent Comments