Tag: Depressed-Mild

I haven’t posted in my blog in a year. I didn’t realise it had been so long. I neglected it. I lost interest in it. I had other things on my mind.

A lot happens in twelve months. For one, you get older. And hopefully a little wiser. I got to see a bit of the world. I was in New York early in the year and Croatia in the summer. Both were interesting trips but there was a cloud hanging over them.

You see, my mood was low for most of the year. It was at it’s worst in the autumn and I was very low for the month of November. Most of the time it was manageable and I functioned well. I didn’t take time off work but I lost all interest in my usual activities.

I’m getting very little exercise and I haven’t meditated for months. I can’t remember the last time I was out on my bike. Everything feels like an effort.

But it’s not all bad. I had a good Christmas and I feel a bit more optimistic for the new year. I picked up my golf clubs recently after a hiatus of 15 years. I don’t get out to play much but it is an activity, an interest I can cultivate. I will hopefully play more when the weather improves. It will get me out of the house and offer the opportunity to meet new people.

My wife has seen me through it all. Sometimes I think she tires of me and my moods but I know I can count on her. Friends of mine that I have made through Buddhism are a great source of support. I have learned through meeting them that everybody has to deal with problems in life frequently. I’m not the only one by a long way. I’m sure I have mentioned before that one of the more demoralising aspects of depression is the sense of loneliness. The companionship of my wife and friends helps me combat against it.

But I need to get more proactive about supporting myself. In the New Year I need to start exercising more. Not just to get fit or to lose weight, although this would be welcome, but to help my head. I need to start meditating again and making time for classes in the Buddhist Centre. It helped my mood before and I need to try again.

I’ve considered returning to see my therapist but I’m not sure. My psychiatrist has also suggested it. Maybe therein lies the answer. I’ll give it some thought.

But the good news is that I’m still here. It has been difficult but I survived. Of course there were moments when I was happy but unfortunately they were short lived.

In 2019, I didn’t get admitted to hospital. That’s always a cause for celebration. It was a year with little to celebrate. Mostly I would rather forget it. 2020 can only be better.

I haven’t been too bad lately. This time of the year can be difficult for me. The onset of long winter evenings and going to work in the dark can trigger depression. I’ve noticed a tendency to feel a bit low lately but it’s not bad. I can function normally. Only my family would be aware of the dip in my mood. But it’s not bad. I’ve been much worse.

Sometimes I get afraid. I think that any change in my mood heralds a new swing or cycle of bipolar disorder. But that is not the case. These low moods don’t always persist and can be related to the circumstances wherein I find myself. Let me explain.

I work three days a week. I have two days to myself during the week and most of my weekends are free. Recently, I have been in good mood while I’m at work but it is a different story when I’m at home on my own. I can find my days alone very long and difficult.

It’s not that I get bored as I try to fill my spare time with activity. Since October I have been taking flute lessons and I practice a few times a day. I think I’m improving and it gives me something to do to pass the time. I’m involved with the Buddhist Centre regularly and this provides a valuable focus as well as an opportunity to socialise. It the last few weeks I’ve borrowed my son’s playstation and I play games sometimes when I’ve nothing else to do. And of course there is always my favourite pastime, listening to music, sometimes while read a book.

But despite trying to fill my free time I often get maudlin. By the end of a day on my own, my thoughts become quite depressive and even paranoid. I start to think of all manner of catastrophes befalling the members of my family. I become paranoid that my wife is going to leave me. My mind entertains the possibility that getting drunk will help me to feel better. Mind you, it never worked in the past. It can be quite upsetting.

I brought the subject up with my psychotherapist during our last session together. I had given how I was behaving much thought and I suggested to him that I was getting lonely. I suggested that I wasn’t good at managing my own company and asked for his advice. He agreed with me that loneliness seemed to be a major contributor to how I was feeling and we started to examine the origins of the loneliness. It was a very difficult session. Suffice it to say that we revisited childhood traumas to elucidate the root of the problem. I’m glad we made a start on the process but I feel that a lot more work is necessary. My therapy sessions for the next while will be difficult.

I’m no stranger to loneliness. Anybody who suffers with a psychiatric disorder is familiar with the feeling. Indeed many people who are perfectly healthy suffer with it. I invariably get lonely when I am very depressed. Although friends and family can try to reassure me, the depths of depression is a solitary place. But it seems that I get lonely even when my mood is stable and I’m going to try and rectify this. The feeling of loneliness in severe depression has a biological basis and responds to medication. But the loneliness I’m focussing on today is more psychological. There is no pill to cure it. I must first alter my thinking and my habits. The answer lies in psychotherapy.

I’m feeling okay today. I was upset after my therapy session but the discomfort has lifted. It’s mild outside and I must do something useful with the day. Sometimes the best solution is right under my nose. I always feel better when I spend a little time with my wife. That’s just what I’m going to do.

 

It’s been a tough few weeks. Things are going slowly. I find it very difficult to show interest in anything, to hold a conversation, to relax. My days are devoid of enjoyment, enthusiasm. Life seems devoid of fun.

I’ve been reading back on recent posts and I realise that I was doing really well in hospital before my discharge and for a short time later. I talked optimistically about being balanced and euthymic. But I definitely don’t feel like that now.

However, I could have predicted this low mood. In hospital, I showed evidence of a mixed state, a hypomanic episode with symptoms of depression. After every hypomanic episode I have experienced, I have suffered an episode of depression. After every high comes a low. It is the cyclical nature of my bipolar disorder.

The good news is that it doesn’t last forever. I will wake up one morning and the weight will have lifted. It can be that sudden. I will have energy again. I will feel alive.

In the meantime I try to be as active as I can. I still wash and shave every day. I try to make myself presentable. I do a little exercise, listen to music and play the guitar. I meet my psychotherapist and my psychiatrist. I take my medication. I try to do the right things. And I wait patiently for my wife to return from work and the hug she will give me. I draw strength from her and recharge my soul. I couldn’t survive without her.

This week I returned to work. It wasn’t easy. I was filled with trepidation. I usually take a while to find the right gear when I return to work after a two week holiday. Imagine what it was like after eight weeks leave of absence. But I survived it. The anxiety subsided once I got started and like all jobs, it soon became like riding a bicycle. I could do it in my sleep. That’s reassuring and made me question the need for the sleepless night before going back.

Two things were apparent to me when I went back to work.

Firstly, when I was busy and concentrating on my patients, I had no time to think about myself. I had no time to think about my mood, no time to feel depressed. I think this illustrates that my depression is pretty mild compared to that suffered by many and it also shows the power of distraction. If my mind is occupied I don’t feel the effects of depression so severely. But, as soon as I finish the days work, I slump. The adrenaline has all been used up and I arrive home spent. It does give hope for the future though. Hopefully, as I get back to a regular routine at work, my mood should improve. I’ll let you know how that theory pans out.

The second thing I noticed was that I lied to everybody I met about why I had been absent from work so long. Many people welcomed me back but remarked that I had been missing for some time. To every one of them I had the same reply – I took some time off, I needed a break, I felt tired. I didn’t tell the full truth to a single person. There was no mention of bipolar disorder or depression. There was to mention of admission to hospital.

I believe in being prudent with my personal information but this form of denial of self just demonstrates the level of stigma attached to mental illness. I can write publicly about my illness from the safety of my computer but I can’t be honest with the people I work with every day. It’s hypocritical.

Having said that, depression is common and I have never heard one other member of staff, at the hospital I work in, admit to suffering from it.

Some day, admitting to depression will be the same as admitting to suffering a chest infection.

Some day, there will be no shame.

 

Today, I feel depressed. I’ve been struggling with depression for the last while but thought it was lifting. The past week was reasonably good but I awoke this morning feeling miserable. I haven’t been released just yet.

My wife wanted me to accompany her on a walk with the dogs but I didn’t feel in the mood. She insisted, gently, and not so much agreeing to it as being cajoled, I finally joined her.

The benefits of exercise in improving and controlling the symptoms of mental illness, particularly depression, are well described. It has been argued that regular exercise can compete with antidepressants in relieving depressive episodes. I can only describe what it does for me.

I discovered exercise comparatively late in life. I started smoking at fifteen and continued for twenty five years. Undoubtedly, I have significantly damaged my lungs and when smoking I was unable to run for a bus. In fact, I wouldn’t have had the breath to run, much less, the inclination. Now, I use an electronic cigarette. It is not ideal but is definitely the lesser of two evils.

A few years ago, my wife suggested I try cycling. She had started herself and thought, maybe, we could take a spin together. It wasn’t an immediate success, but I quickly came to appreciate a regular jaunt on my bike. I prefer it when I have company but have learned also, to enjoy cycling alone. I don’t overdo it. Typically, I cycle along the coast, stop for a coffee and return home. A distance of twenty five to thirty kilometres takes approximately an hour and a half. It is time well spent.

The improvement in mood is most noticeable during times of depression. I find it very difficult to motivate myself when feeling down but I always feel relief once I get on the road. The fresh air, the sun and the sight of other people living their lives picks me up. The release of endorphins, nature’s feel-good chemicals, with moderate exercise, is proven to rejuvenate. The main obstacle to these rewards is the difficulty in getting started when you really don’t want to move. But if you can make a start, not only will you begin to feel better, you will also have a sense of achievement. The feeling that you didn’t succumb. At least today, you beat the beast.

Cycling helps me through hypomania too. It burns up excess energy and gives me focus. It appeals to the obsessive trait that emerges when I’m elated. I don’t go any further on my bike, I simply go more frequently.

There is another advantage to regular exercise. It helps control your weight. Weight gain is an unfortunate side-effect of so many psychoactive medications and the result can be so demoralising. I’m not saying I’ll ever be as thin again as I was at twenty, but exercise keeps the flab from taking over.

I need to exercise a few times a week. During the winter, when weather conditions are unsuitable for cycling, I go to the gym. I like Spin Classes and can spend a little time on the treadmill. I look forward to a softer climate and the chance to use my bike once more.

At other times, like today, when energy is low, a simple walk with the dogs will suffice. My wife dragged me out today and I’m glad she did. A little exercise later and I feel more human.

Bipolar Disorder is very difficult to explain to anybody who doesn’t suffer from it. There are excellent descriptions on the websites of the Irish support organisation Aware and the British mental health charity Mind. I’m not a psychiatrist and everybody experiences mental illness differently. I can only tell you what it means to me.

I think Bipolar Disorder is typified by exaggerated mood swings. Everybody feels changes in their mood with the passage of time and changes in circumstance. But when you have Bipolar Disorder the severity of these moods can be extreme and the duration prolonged. Sometimes the change in mood can be so severe that it becomes difficult to function. Occasionally, normal function become impossible.

I have experienced and survived many varied moods. The main ones are depression, elation or hypomania, mixed state or dysphoria, mania and balanced or euthymic.

When I get depressed everything slows down. The simplest of tasks become Herculean labours. I eat little and sleep poorly often waking early and struggling through the long day that follows. Loneliness best describes what I feel. I am filled with fear and anxiety. Often I become quite paranoid and convinced  that something awful will happen. I withdraw from social contact and sit dark and desolate for hours at a time. Work is hard and it is difficult to remember a time when I didn’t feel so terrible and impossible to envisage that the nightmare will ever end. Suicidal thoughts come and go. But I’m fortunate. Depression, for me, only lasts for a month or two and then it lifts. I believe depression represents a state where my soul is low on energy. I just need to try and remember the ways I can recharge it.

I find the early stages of elation or hypomania can be exhilarating. I have immense energy, periods of increased productivity and little need for sleep. I tend to toy with computers when I’m high, sometimes having two or three booted up simultaneously. It’s also a time I might decide to buy a new car and hence I rarely own a car for longer than a year. But the pleasure doesn’t last and I soon become drained. This often leads to a mixed state.

Mixed state or dysphoria is the mood state that I dread the most. It is a mixture of the energy of hypomania and the darkness and misery of depression. I become irritable and severely uncomfortable often rocking in my chair to find release. It is the time when I become angry and I am most likely to hurt and offend the ones I love. I carry great guilt for things I have said and done while dysphoric. For me, depression is more debilitating but dysphoria is the hardest with which to live.

I’ve only been truly manic once and it was the worst experience of my life. I think things just got so bad that my mind took a holiday and I lost touch with reality. I had crippling paranoid delusions and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for the first time. I’ll tell you more another time.

So that’s my opinion of Bipolar disorder and how it affects me. It’s not going away, I have this for life. The key is learning how to understand it, how to cope with it. How to survive.

Hi there.

As you’ve guessed by now, I live with Bipolar Disorder. I’m recovering from an episode of depression and I’m getting better every day. It takes time, you can’t rush it.

I’ve decided to start this blog primarily for myself. It might give me an opportunity to make some sense of my life. And just maybe somebody will read it and find it supportive. They might relate to some of my experiences and it might give them a different perspective. Maybe it will help. That’s enough for me.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar thirteen years ago but I was first hospitalised when I was twenty four. I’ve had quite a few admissions since then and it hasn’t been easy. But I’m still here.

Not only that but I have a wonderful wife, whom I love deeply, and three beautiful sons. I have been able to maintain a professional career as an Anaesthetist despite needing to take time off occasionally. And over the years I have better learned to cope with my illness.

I guess what I’m saying is that I have been lucky. I have managed to survive a debilitating illness and prosper. I needed a lot of help and guidance along the way. Sometimes I was simply carried. But it can be done.

Up to now, I have been very private about my Bipolar Disorder. Very few knew about it except for my family, a few close friends and a few colleagues at work. The silence that surrounds mental illness is lifting and I see it as a change for the better. I’m not going to be so silent anymore.

Over the next while I will share my experience and thoughts with anyone who cares to listen. Bear with me, I’m new to this.