Sometimes nothing helps my mental illness. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but it’s true. Sometimes no matter the action, no matter the coping skill, no matter the thought pattern, my bipolar just don’t get better. This is difficult for those around me, and it’s especially disheartening for me. But it’s just a fact, sometimes nothing helps my mental illness.
Do What Helps Your Mental Illness
When I’m doing really poorly, sometimes people will ask me what I’m going to do to fix that. They ask me what helps.
I know why people ask this. It’s sweet and kind. They’re trying to focus on the positive. Instead of focusing on the pain of mental illness, they’re trying to focus on what you can do to address it.
I get it.
But sometimes nothing helps my mental illness. Nothing.
People Don’t Believe Nothing Helps Your Mental Illness
When your average person is feeling down or sick in some way, there are things that will make them feel better. Rest, ice cream, a hot bath, visiting with a friend, going for a walk — something helps. In fact, usually, lots of things help. So when you say that nothing will help your mental illness, they pretty much don’t believe you. They think you’re just being negative. Trust me, an accurate assessment of the situation is not “negativity,” it’s reality; my reality is just radically different than your reality. You don’t have bipolar disorder. You just don’t know.
Is It Really True Nothing Helps Your Mental Illness?
I’ve been going through a rough period where my mental illness is intertwined with other physical issues and nothing is helping. Every day is a battle. Every day is an extreme battle. Yes, it’s really true that I’ve tried everything and yes, it’s true that nothing is working.
I wake up in the morning as sick as I was the day before. Over and over and over again. And while I’m used to a certain degree of sickness every day, this level is higher and not workable. Like, literally, I can’t work.
I even gave in and spent two days mostly sleeping, hoping that would be the recovery my body needs. I woke up the day after that as tired as before. But that’s chronic illness for you — it’s chronic.
What’s It Like When Nothing Helps Your Mental Illness?
Man, it’s tough. It feels like life is pointless. It feels like you keep hitting a brick wall. It hurts.
If you weren’t suicidal before this happens, it’s quite realistic that it will lead to suicidality, especially if you have bipolar disorder or depression. (I’m not actively suicidal, to be clear.)
And after the disheartening feelings progress, I start to feel really desperate. I search my brain for new techniques. But there aren’t any. There’s just pain. Everywhere.
I Don’t Know Why Nothing Helps My Mental Illness Sometimes
I don’t know why I get into this state. When I’m here, I try to wrack my brain and figure out why this is happening, but, naturally, that doesn’t work either. This just happens. When you’re really sick, your illness is chronic and you get knocked from your tenuous homeostasis, it can be very difficult to get it back.
When Nothing Helps Your Mental Illness, Remember This
But, here’s the thing that I know that keeps me going: time changes everything. I know that one day I will wake up and write something again. I know that one day I will wake up and have a couple more spoons. I know that one day I will wake up and things will look just a shade different.
Sigh.
I also know that I can’t rush this process. I wish I could. I wish there was something I could do to make this happen faster. But there isn’t. While resting and drinking lots of fluids might help you when you have the flu, it may mean nothing to a person with a chronic, serious mental illness. My bipolar rather laughs at such suggestions.
But if this is you, and you’re in a space right now where nothing is helping your mental illness, know that your level of illness will not be the same forever. The symptomology you experience won’t be the same forever. So stick. Just stick with whatever you have. One day things won’t hurt as much. It’s true for me and it’s true for you. I promise.
Image by brewbooks from near Seattle, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
I read your blogs regularly and am really astounded at the myriad of different subject matters that you think of re: bipolar.
You are my hero in so many ways. I relate to so many of them. Too many!
I can’t always explain of how my bipolar feels exactly –but YOU can and when you spell it out, it’s done exquisitely.
There are other writers on the subject all over the internet, but they’re All just cheap copies compared to you. No one touches the heart of it, quite as well as you do.
When I saw this simple sentence ”when nothing helps your mental illness”… it brought tears to my eyes. That’s me I thought.
Once again, you nailed it Natasha. That sentence goes through my head off and on all day long, even if I’m catching a few hours of break time. I know, -at least I think I do-, that I will have this condition for the rest of my life. Knowing that, it’s just another rock in the overstuffed bag of the bipolar. It’s the ultimate depression. The depression isn’t going away; not for me anyway.
If a pleasant thought or idea comes to mind it’s as if there’s a bipolar emoji that’s in my brain and he manually pushes that thought away with a Popeye like strength and then laughs bc I forgot who’s really in charge here. Him or my chemistry.
Here comes winter. I hate winter so much I’m ready to scream. To see it’s ugly freezing-ness surround me and my home, depresses me even more. And then the holidays, she said as she screams even louder. This month I’ve been looking at a pile of things I need to put away, but every time I have the time– I can’t. I could put a chair in front of the pile and look at it all day, but never put one thing where it belongs. Bc I can’t. I’m sick. I’m trying. I’m sharing my feelings w you tonight.
My chronically depressed, daily shitty, and negative feelings.
Thank you for your blogs, and your untiring efforts of helping others. xxxxxxxxxx
I want to say “thinking of you”.
People, professional or not (my experience), focus a little to heavily on acceptance, read CBT. To me acceptance equals admitting defeat, surrendering, a loss of control of self, of the moment, of life. It renders me powerless, and sets up a vicious cycle of self analysis and loathing. Acceptance is a word I loathe.
Rather, “sometimes nothing helps with mental illness” conveys to me a fight best left when I have had some recovery time. Theres no time limit, and no one seems to get that. It’s not just an overnight sleep, some downtime, company, change of circumstances or anything specific. It is what it is, a gutwrenching, mindbending, soul-crushing enemy of both mind and body.
I wish I could say something wise, something that would help. Rather, I’ll say someone read your post and is thinking of you Stevie.
Xx
Hi Stevie,
You’re so kind; thank you for all your words here. I want to touch people and it’s so gratifying when I find out I actually do.
I’m sorry you’re in that spot. I know exactly what you’re saying and exactly how it feels. I’m sick too. I’m trying too. After a while, though, those words start to lose meaning it seems. However, that doesn’t make it any less true, it just makes us feel bad. It compounds the badness.
So try to give yourself a break. I know it’s hard, but try to give yourself the empathy you would give someone else.
And thank you for sharing your feelings. You can always do that here.
– Natasha Tracy
Hi Natasha,
I have read your latest book.. and loved it. You wrote an lovely message inside the cover that I refer too most days.
My question is..my new roommate is a 43 year old female who is Schizophrenic. She takes high doses of Depakote.
I have bipolar disorder 1. I’m retired. Treated with meds since I diagnosed 12 years ago. My roommate has the room next to mine and we share a bathroom. She’s had 2 meltdowns in 6 months. I walk on eggshells a round her. I isolate in my room to keep from being near her. She doesn’t work so from morning to evening she sits in a recliner watching my every room around the house. She is my trigger. I’ve talked to the landlord but she’s a family friend so she’s not going anywhere. Due to financial reasons I can’t move at this time.
How do I protect myself from her? I try to ignore her, I don’t acknowledge her, be polite that’s it.
How can a Bipolar and Schizophrenic live together? There are days just looking at her I feel anger plus depression that I’m in this situation.
Do you have any tips beside moving out that can help me function living with her?
Thank you for all you do I never miss your blog.
Regards,
Karin
Hi Natasha,
Your observations are always SO to the point and this is one more time when that is the case. I have an additional observation on this topic, though: when nothing works, the temptation to self-medicate, or to take more than usual, maybe even more than the prescribed amount, of one’s medications, is strong. This is a time when the risk of substance abuse increases–I suspect, dramatically increases. I would love it if you would write about this aspect of what it feels like when nothing is working. I just lost someone I love very much to this disorder–and we’re not sure what happened, but in one way or another, the root cause of whatever happened next was that for him, nothing was working, he was at that place where nothing works. We don’t know yet if self-medicating was part of what happened to him, but it sure looks like it was, and whether it was or not, I know that when he was in that nothing works place, he generally was very prone to self-medication.
And I think this is such a sticky topic to talk about, because when substance abuse comes up, people judge. They judge without knowing what it feels like to be in a place where nothing works, and they judge without understanding any of the day to day details and stresses that the person in question was dealing with. Often people who self-medicate think they know better what works for them than the doctors do–and in fairness to them, that is entirely possible. My loved one was very hard to understand and doctors only saw him when he felt well enough to go to the doctor. Was his self-knowledge more accurate than their knowledge of him? Well, in some ways, probably. And honestly, if doctors more commonly acknowledged to their patients: “hey, we don’t understand you very well yet, you’re a quite complicated person,” maybe patients would be more likely to confide in them when they become desperate. The stigma attached to bipolar and the stigma attached to substance abuse does no one any good, because it results in all the information being treated as this super secret private thing–but when ALL the information is shrouded in the deepest secrecy, how can anyone, doctor, patient, or loving family member or friend, ever figure out what to do?
The other thing that’s sticky to me about this topic is: what if sometimes nothing really will help? What if even if the doctors had the fullest possible information, what if there were still going to be nothing they could do? My loved one’s family and friends are very stuck on the question of how we could have gotten him to go in-patient, get better care, etc. But what if that would not have helped? What if he knew that? He had years of experience with this disorder and knew what it was like and we did not know what it was like. The fact is that he knew things that we did not know, about this.
What I’m saying is, people in desperate situations make desperate choices, and then we all judge, but what if we didn’t judge them, and instead just basically offered them our respect for the fact that they did the best they could with a really hard situation in which literally no one really knows for sure what will help. What if we just all took a breath, and said, hey, this person was suffering in ways the rest of us cannot imagine, this person fell down and got up again and tried again about a gazillion times, this person tried a shit ton of other stuff besides substances (yoga, happy lights, etc.), this person was smart and analytical and had researched his disease carefully and thought it through carefully, and maybe, just maybe, we should have some respect for that. Maybe we should respect the choices made by people suffering from this disorder even when we for whatever reason disapprove of those choices. You know?
I’m sorry if I’m not making sense. I’m pretty heartbroken as I’m writing this. I just wanted to say, that it is true that sometimes nothing works–because I suspect some people are going to reply to you and say “surely something will work” and no, sometimes nothing does; that this is a very high risk time when it comes to substances; and, that people who are at the “nothing is working” place still deserve their dignity and they deserve our respect.
I’m currently going through a phase similar to yours where it feels my meds just “pooped out” completely. One minute they were working and the next minute it’s like I’ve never taken them before.
It’s incredibly frustrating bc it took me almost 4 years to get stable and now I’m not sure whether to start over or just ride out this crappy wave and see what happens.
It seems now I’m more rapid cycling whereas before it wasn’t like that. This is much harder to deal with bc I never know how each day will be.
I see my nurse practitioner soon and she’s good at trying new things.
Any suggestions based on your past experiences?
Thanks!
I know you aren’t a Dr. L
Hi Nick,
Obviously, I don’t know you or your situation so I can’t make any specific recommendations. That said, it’s important to know that antidepressants can increase the likelihood of cycling, so if you’re doing that already, you’ll want to watch that. You may need to restablize yourself without antidepressants before making any other moves.
Good luck.
– Natasha Tracy
Thia is very good post Natasha! Faith in yourself, time and change, the only true constant, can be the only option sometimes. I hope you’re ok. Sounds like you have a lot of medical concerns right now. I would say that I hope your issues aren’t really that serious, but BP is serious and amplifies other issues and concerns. You’re not at all alone. You’re discipline, work ethic, and honest descriptions of your struggles are admirable. Your tenacity is amazing to watch and read over all these years. It shows many of us the reality of BP and what may be possible. Some issues are chronic and constant but they may be surmountable with and over Time. Great post!
And after decades of this experience you’re willing to try anything. One thing that you should not get roped into: ECT. Please do not try this. It should be outlawed. Maybe if we can all just find a way tosupport each other…
When you take away all external variables, its ‘you’ vs ‘bipolar’. Thats reality. Life stinks for everyone at some stage, some never see the darkness quite like we do. I keep asking the same question over and over.
Why? Why keep trying.
See, i dont get this saying “suicide is a permanant fix to a temporary situation.” My bipolar is not temporary. So lets use logic vs emotional ‘wise mind’. Cold Logic says it will ger better then bad. Then good, wait, then bad. Emotional hot says its not worth 10 000 tears for one smile.
Does wise mind make a decision based on those two diametrically opposed opinions?
Or does it come down to youre alive because it’ll hurt someone else. You’re alive out of guilt and others expectations.
Because i am.
I guess it’s hard for anyone to really understand what we are going through, no matter how hard we explain, without experiencing it themselves. Being able themselves, they can’t imagine waking up and just not being able? It sucks but I have learnt to just ignore people sometimes.
This flat mood that seems absent of emotion is exactly what my spouse finds frustrating, especially because she is a “fixer.” She wants to help me take action. But you’re right that there are times that NOTHING works.
Yes, I know these bad periods don’t last forever but a) you have to survive them while they last with no end in sight and b) the one thing you can be sure of, as night follows day, is that the bad times always return eventually.