Bipolar and Surviving

I have been stable for a while, and my life has been very busy and stressful at the same time.  Focusing on the bare bones aspects of my life has been key to staying stable in spite of this very busy and stressful period of my life.

Negative self-talk can be brought about by many things.  No matter how strong you are, life can get to you and you may think of yourself negatively.  In this episode, I share my recent experiences with this, some coping strategies, and how I'm forgiving myself for not being perfect at handling life's stressors.

Caring for our basic physical needs is the basis for everything else in life.

Lauren Utley shares her story of living with Bipolar 1, the ups, the downs, and the gratitude she feels each day.   Here are some useful links she recommends that you check out:   NAMI Support Groups: https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Support-Groups   DBSA Support Groups: https://www.dbsalliance.org/   The Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/

Self-sabotage is a common theme and practice in my life.  This is a negative but all-too-common practice in our society whether one has mental illness or not.  This episode discusses a few elements of this practice.

Abilify has been a long-time staple of my medication regimen.  However, to help solve my incessant drowsiness, I have begun tapering it with the approval and supervision of my psychiatrist.  Here is a brief explanation of my experience with Abilify.

This is a NEW trailer for the podcast!  I hope this helps explain what this podcast is about, and the topics covered.  Thank you for listening, and keep on surviving. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

Today I talk about a topic that is near and dear to me: meditation.  It is a practice I really enjoy, and that has great side effects in my life. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

I discuss how I really, truly have Bipolar I, PTSD, and likely have sleep apnea.  And how I feel accomplished getting out of bed each day despite those.  To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

There is nothing wrong with you.  Here is how I know this.  This episode is a discussion on guilt and shame, particularly the two types of guilt, and shame.  I encourage you to check out the work of Brene Brown for incredibly insightful research and clear, impactful presentations regarding shame.  To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

Here are 3 things that you can do to improve the world, society, and most importantly, yourself.  These aren't the three most important things, or the only three things, but these are three of the multitude of important things you can do that will make a change in the world, society, and yourself. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

It is important to be honest with yourself, and also to maintain a journal.  This episode dives into honesty, journaling, parenting, and the insights that I have arrived at based on these practices and topics.  The website is also refreshed!  More content to come there.  www.bipolarandsurviving.com To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

Sometimes I wonder if I am even bipolar.  It is natural to have these self-doubts, but even more so, I oftentimes doubt whether my thinking is the "up" or anxious me, or the "down" or depressed me speaking.  So, the doubt is two-fold: Am I even bipolar? and Can I even trust my thoughts when I am thinking this way? To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

I haven't recorded an episode in 1.5 months because of fatigue.  Today I talk about my experience with fatigue caused primarily by a dosage of Abilify that was too strong.  Other topics include self care, basic needs, and routine. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

Depakote is a mood stabilizer that is helping me beat my mania and hypomania which I haven't been able to get rid of for many months.  Depakote is saving my life.  This episode details my experience with it. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

This episode tells the story of me leaving one psychiatrist, and finding a new one.  This involves topics related to medication, psychiatry, therapy, support networks, growth, and hard work.  Primary medications touched on are Depakote, with references to Lamictal and Lithium. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

The podcast is alive and well!  In this episode I discuss the tool I have discovered when reading Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance.  By pausing, I have been able to more skillfully address my mania. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

I share my thoughts on the findings from the study "Road Runners" via Treatment Advocacy Center.  Key findings can be found on: https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/road-runners An average of 10% of law enforcement agencies’ total budgets was spent responding to and transporting persons with mental illness in 2017. The average distance to transport an individual in mental illness crisis to a medical facility was 5 times farther than the distance to transport them to jail.  Nationwide, an estimated $918 million was spent by law enforcement on transporting people with severe mental illness in 2017. The amount of time spent transporting people with mental illness by law enforcement agency survey respondents in 2017 sums to 165,295 hours, or more than 18 years. 21% of total law enforcement staff time was used to respond to and transport individuals with mental illness in 2017. Law enforcement officers waited significantly longer — almost 2.5 hours longer — when dropping a person off at a medical facility than if transporting to a jail. Some officers reported having to wait with the individual for 72 hours or more until a bed becomes available. Survey respondents drove a total of 5,424,212 miles transporting individuals with serious mental illness in 2017 — the equivalent of driving around the Earth’s equator more than 217 times. The report was released in partnership with the National Sheriffs' Association and the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police and funded by the Achelis and Bodman Foundation. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

After a short break from recording episodes, I return to document my experience with mania induced by the COVID quarantine; self worth; self care; getting better; and the Black Lives Matter movement and how it inspired me to not feel sorry for myself. To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving.

To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving. Any mental health blog will tell you that having a creative outlet is good for the mind.  Whether they are trying to sell you a gratitude journal in their store, or want you to fit their model of how someone should live their life, there is still truth in their words: having a creative outlet is great for mental health.  But, having a creative outlet isn’t the focus of today’s episode.   Today’s episode focuses on refuge.  In my case, my creative outlet happens to be my refuge.  But you can find fulfillment and joy in anything that captures your attention.  For some people it is hiking.  For others, it is fixing cars.  For others, it is programming computer games.   Why is it important to have a refuge?  It is important to have a safe haven for your mind to allow yourself a place to regroup in times of trouble.  In this case, since this blog focuses on real stories of hope and survival, I will use music as an example of the lifeline that kept me hanging on when the delusions of my mania overcame me as an adolescent.   As a child, I was heavily involved in music.  I suppose you could call it musical training, but really music was, and still is, just another part of me, like another arm that can pull me in different directions and grasp things that are intangible.  I didn’t really train in becoming a musician; rather, music reached out to me and raised me as its own.   I’m not saying I’m super talented; I just have an instinct in music that makes me realize that music and I are one.  And so, when my mania started attacking me and deluding my mind in high school, and when my depression made me suicidal in college, the one consistent thing in my life outside of my family was music.  And that was the only refuge I had that I could retreat to that was inside of myself.  When everything else in my head was either a huge mess or completely obliterated by mood swings and medication adjustments, I knew I always had music to pull me through.   And that’s what I mean by a refuge.  You will always hear music at the beginning and ends of these episodes, I imagine sometimes for a little too long for some listeners’ tastes.  While I cannot please everyone’s musical preferences at the same time, this music is composed and produced by me entirely, and it is one form of the essence of who I am.  And, since this is such a personally-oriented podcast, where I discuss personal struggles that we all go through and invite guests who experience deep, powerful illness, it is important to me that music--my one constant source of strength throughout my entire life--be at the beginning and end of each show.   So, music is not filler material. It is rather the fabric of my universe.  It is not my passion; I am a part of it and I cannot begin to call it something other than  who I am, and therefore it cannot be a passion I hold, because I cannot really hold myself.   But I think I’m getting a bit too metaphysical with this.  The point of this is that you can find your refuge.  Whether it is cooking, working with animals, or spending time with your elders, you can find a refuge that allows you peace and comfort.  In my case it is a bit extreme, where I am not separate from my refuge.  And maybe that can be the same for you, and maybe not.     A refuge is oftentimes a passion, even though it doesn’t have to be.  As a note on passions, we are taught that if we find our passion, we can invest ourselves in it fully, become a master at it, and make a living off of it.  I urge you to not do that.  Instead, once you find your passion, invest yourself fully into it, but not to become a master or to make a living off of it.  The thing about passions and refuges are that you will do them because you love them.  In Buddhism, we use the phrase “the path is the goal”.  In other words, walking towards a destination is the same thing as arriving at the destination.  Pursuing your passion is the same thing as realizing your ultimate potential in your passion.  They are one in the same.  So, a refuge can be a passion.  And for the purposes of the episode at hand, I have focused on passions because my refuge is my passion.   But, a refuge can be something as simple as a cup of coffee each morning.  It can be a daily walk to the mailbox.  And in the case of some, it can be the reassurance that “this is temporary” in times of trouble.  Because in the end, despite my rambling episode of this podcast, “this is temporary” is the story of everyone’s life.  And having a refuge like my passion for music allows me to get from point A to point B, knowing that I can find refuge in music until things pass from point A and move to point B.   Let your refuge help you weather times of trouble, doubt, despair, and suffering.  Remember that this is temporary--and everything is.  Find your refuge and make yourself a part of it.  Find shelter in it.  And enjoy life in the good times too, with the help of your refuge.  Whether you have bipolar or not, this is a universal truth.   I hope you were able to get something out of this.  I can’t fully express many things, but I hope I got to the gist of my message in a way that most listeners can digest. If you like these episodes, please share them with others.  I am grateful that more and more people keep listening, and I look forward to any feedback you may have.  Please email me at bipolarandsurviving@gmail.com if you ever have any questions, concerns, or feedback.  As always, keep on surviving.