Category: depression

Passive Suicidal Depression – I Wish I Didn’t Wake Up

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.

Read More

Severe Agitation – Bipolar Symptom or Medication Side Effect?

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?

Read More

Depression and Fake, Coping Skill Smiles vs Real Smiles

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?

Read More

Depression and Crying in Public

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.

Read More

Depression – How Hard It Is to Wake Up Crying

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.

Read More

I Can’t Do Anything Because of Depression – Or Can I?

I so often feel like I can’t do anything because of depression. Look at the top photo. That is my life. I have had that objet cluttered and dusty for maybe years. It’s just one of the things in my apartment that I look at and see as failure. I see that I can’t do anything. I see that I can’t even clean up a small amount of clutter – clutter that can be found in so many corners of my apartment and life. Depression makes it so that I can’t do anything. However, while I feel this quite strongly, it may not, in fact, be entirely true.

Read More

Bipolar Depression: Anhedonia, Lack of Pleasure and Motivation

I suffer from anhedonia in bipolar depression and this leads to a lack of motivation. And when I say “suffer” I mean freaking suffer. I mean it’s horrible. I mean it’s probably the worst part about my bipolar depressions. Anhedonia is the inability to experience pleasure. Most people cannot conceptualize of this, but believe me, anhedonia in depression is a real thing and a real problem.

Read More

I Know I’m Hypomanic, Depressed or Mixed but I Can’t Help It

Many of us have the insight to know when we are manic, hypomanic or depressed or in another bipolar mood state but, unfortunately, even though I might know I’m hypomanic, depressed or mixed, I can’t necessarily help it. I wish I could. I wish that knowing what my bipolar disorder was doing would somehow alter it, but it typically doesn’t. I just can’t help it when I’m hypomanic, depressed or in a mixed mood – even when it’s clear to me.

Read More

Subscribe to the Burble via Email

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).

Archives

Subscribe for a FREE EBook!

Subscribe for a FREE EBook!

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.

Thank you for subscribing. Look for an email to complete your subscription.