Clive Wild

The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive..

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 11:15:00 +0000

I am not talking about the depression , the anxiety or even the mania. Maybe I am talking about the hypomania? I think it is possible to achieve a state that stays below that edgy and jerky feeling of hypomania. It's sometimes productive, but sleep suffers and you are not fully in control.

You may think me delusional but I have honestly not gone that far in any of my manic experiences. I am in a state of happiness, not elation of hypomania, a really nice relaxed place. It is true I have been a bit edgy, my sleep is a bit off, my appetite is higher. I find myself smiling a lot, even at 2-8am in the night. That is the secret life I am talking about. Those night time hours when no one can hear you scream.

All I can say is, "thank goodness for the internet, email, chat rooms and all that". I don't know how I would have coped in the past, even 15 years ago. I am thankful for my IPOD and a good set of headphones. I can keep myself entertained without upsetting the neighbours. This is a good secret life and it it can be nurtured with a little attention to coping skills. I just try to keep my mood from drifting into hypomania. I no longer see mania has a real threat. I have found lots of insight through the school of hard knocks.

I am in a good place. It is unfortunate that it happens mostly in the hours of darkness. I am not sure even my good online friends understand where I am. they might ask "Are you sure your okay?" At least there is little chance of a visit from the men in white coats, the MH police. I hardly exist in the eyes of the MH system. I see my psychiatrist on infrequent occasions and that is worthwhile. I have called the crisis team on rare occasions, most recently on Jan 4th, 2011. My mood picked up on the 5th. No rhyme or reason. I suspect it was the fact that the crisis team offered nothing of note. I just woke up next day as a different person.

I wouldn't go as far as saying I was normal. I am not sure I ever was "normal", whatever that is. if normal is what I was most of my life, I don't ever want it again. I want to to retain my current "happy" state. My sleep pattern is a bit odd right now, but I am sleeping, maybe 4-6 hours. I started getting tired early in the evening and turned in early quite often. This led to early waking (2-3am) and long waking nights. I have blogged about this in the past and I find it the biggest challenge.

In depression or anxiety, you can usually just plod along in a zombie-like state. In full-blown mania you can be away with the fairies. While this is not good, you can be impervious to any problems. My current state, or even hypomania, is a big challenge. I still think pretty clearly and need to keep busy, entertained, fed etc etc. I find that blasting music loudly in the IPOD helps. In depressed or anxious moods, I cannot even play the radio, and sometimes not the TV. I have recently found that I can handle audio books when reading wouldn't be an option.

I hope I am not rambling on. I will stop now in case I do.

Life is good. I found a really supportive chat room that I go to a lot. I have found someone who might be able to produce an audio copy of my first book. I have sent pdf's of the book to several friends and I await their feedback. I have found my focus for the follow up book and I have a working title. I am blogging again and engaging with people.

Thanks for reading this. I hope it is thought provoking? Please comment or send feedback by email, thru facebook or W.H.Y?

I Need Your Contributions

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 11:14:00 +0000

Hello all. Thanks for reading this. I hope you get to read some of my blog posts. I have no angle apart from working for mental health and telling how it really is.

I wrote my biography My Life as a Mood Swinger in 2009. I started writing it almost 2 years ago in a slight hypomanic state. Patience was not top quality and I published by paying Xlibris. The book was published in 2 1/2 months from starting writing. I owe a lot to the on-line support from friends at the time, especially on Twitter.

I wanted to write a second book but the muse never struck me and I have suffered a lot of anxiety which pretty well wrote of 2010. My mood picked up magically on January 5th. I have found my focus at last. My book is provisionally called:

"Thoughts of a Mood Swinger - with a little help from his friends"

It will be a true compilation with contribution from myself, my friends and other mental health survivors. The scope is quite broad, mental health themes with a particular emphasis on coping skills, wellness and recovery. I will try to include a section on what it really means to be seriously ill. There will also be a section with manic anecdotes. I have posted threads in forums and the response has been enthusiastic and they hopefully will lighten the mood of the book.

I am asking for contributions. Stories, poems, W.H.Y ? It will all be anonymous unless you particularly want to be named. I will do any editing with help from friends, but it will be with a light touch, not to change the feeling of the work. Please send any contributions or questions to clivewild@hotmail.com . Please send any ideas, suggestions or offers of help. I would like someone to look after the Facebook page "Mental health Stories". This will be the focal point of the project. Let me know if you want to be a friend on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/CliveWildEdwards .

Thanks for reading this. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Clive

The Frustration of Feeling Better

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 11:10:00 +0000

The really frustrating thing about battling up mood swings and feeling better. It seems such a change that even your friends and family back off. That's the very thing you don't need and the danger is you isolate more, either isolate or go off the rails. This has never been so clear to me. It is no wonder isolation and loneliness are such big problems for those with Bipolar Disorder. Even doctors back off to some extent. Thanks for listening !

Feeling very good .. is it real?

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 11:06:00 +0000

This is one of the continued frustrations of someone who suffers mood swings. What is normal? Is my mood a function of brain chemistry, be it elation, depression, anxiety or plain old blah-ness. I find myself doubting my moods and I start wondering if it will last. Will it change back as fast as it became that way. This can happen over night for no particular reason. Mood swings, as in Bipolar Disorder, are not about something. This is a common misconception of the layman. They will say "What are you worried about?” or something equally meaningless to the sufferer. I guess friends and family mean well, but they probably won't get it. It is my goal to explain this issue in a way that outsider can understand. It's not like clinical depression. The symptoms are similar but the Bipolar person is rarely depressed about something when suffering a bipolar depression. The things that someone is depressed about may be a trigger of mood swings, but it is just a trigger. The mechanism of the mood swing is down to brain chemistry.

I became so good at controlling upwards mood swings that I was in danger of suppressing natural joy. This might a price that has to be paid but it is not good for the sufferer.

Recently my whole mood and outlook changed over night. I have no clue why it happened except that I had called the crisis team on the day before. I suspect that it made me realise that I was on my own. Subconsciously, I might have processed it over night. I'll never know, but I'll take it with both hands.

Since the epiphany, I have been a bit out of sorts. I have had a lot of the characteristics of hypomania. I dash about from task to task, as if there is no time to lose. I think it is a common characteristic of most manias. At least that is my experience. I have pushed myself hard all day from waking at 2am to 4am. Straight on to the computer, getting coffee, and really buzzing. It is on and on and on, without a break. It was as though it would fall apart if I took a break. I have been chatting in excess of 15 hours a day and I have been awake much longer, 19 hours on one occasion. It is not surprising that I have been getting exhausted by early evening. My appetite has increased significantly. I feel like I need to constantly refuel myself. Thanks to my slimming world experience, I am making mostly good food choices. Monday was a slight blip. I went to the store on a mission to treat myself. I came back loaded with pizzas, bagels, croissants, bread rolls and some deli cooked meats. I went way over the top. I did freeze most of the stuff and I haven't been over indulging. I really enjoyed the half pepperoni pizza for lunch. I couldn't resist eating the rest cold in the evening. It was just one bad day and I drew a line under it.

Yesterday I tried to get ready for slimming world by cutting back on food. I think my need for fuel wasn't met and I crashed prematurely in the late afternoon. I had to cancel my plans to go to group. I laid down for a couple of hours in the early evening. I salvaged the rest of the evening and managed to stay up until about 10:30. I committed in the chat room not to go in next day until 6am. I did this by having a lie in after I woke up. I was a bit restless but I made it. I entered chat at 6:01am.

I have been pacing myself today. The day is going a lot better. If I find myself going fast, I try to rein it back a little. I left the chat room deliberately to take a break from the intensity.

I feel really good. People might say it is delusion. I have suffered from bouts of mania and hypomania. While similar, it is also very different. I am sleeping fairly normally and that doesn't happen in the manias. It feels like I have the good side of a hypomania. I get stuff done. I think clearly. Washing up rarely stays around for more than 5 minutes. I have been cooking at 100 mph. I have been doing most things at 100 mph. Each time I have suffered a mania, I have gained more insight. Each time I have handled it better. This might be the final result of that process. I certainly hope so. I would like to think I can maintain something of this state.

I hope I am not deluding myself. I have 27 years experience of being bipolar and I think that counts for something. I have a very good support system on-line and my friends will tell me off if I seem out of control. It is good that many of my recent friends have only known me like this. Preconceptions are not helpful when supporting a bipolar sufferer. Friends and family need to recognise the vast swings that can happen in personality. They need to go with the flow if possible. I don't claim that it is easy. I sometimes feel that other sufferers are the only ones who truly understand. Even psychiatrists react to the manic persona.

Coping Skills

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:24:00 +0000

I have been meaning to write a piece about coping skills. I have built up a repertoire of skills. The truth is that I am not coping very well at the moment. I have suffered at various times from mood swings, depression, anxiety and hypomania. At the moment I suffer from what I classify as agitated anxiety. I was so focussed on the anxiety that I failed to realize I was suffering from a kind of hypomania.

Imagine your mind is going a hundred miles an hour as in hypomania. You normally get a lot done, unless you cross the line into mania. Add to this general anxiety and that's where I am. I keep doubting myself. I make more mistakes than usual. I forget to do things unless they are on my to-do list. I spend so much time on my to-do list , That I forget to take breaks and I forget to do other things that were not listed.

I spend most of the morning taking care of my to-do list. Things that would normally take no more than 30-60 minutes. I worry about absolutely everything, even my holiday that is 6 months away. In this state, I really worry actively.

I am not sure that medication will be my salvation. I am anxious for some reason that is not clear. Maybe just that my life sucks? My previous lithium and occasional periods of hypomania made me not care too much. I have to address the root causes. Before I do that, I need to get rid of this pervasive anxiety while staying in touch with my real feelings. I seem to have experienced these kinds of problems since I stopped lithium. Lithium worked like a wet blanket, suppressing a lot of stuff. I don't want to go back there.

I need to add coping skills for agitated anxiety to my box of tricks. It may involve medication in the short term, but not in the long term.

I hope this makes a little sense??

Clive

Where I am now

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:51:00 +0000

My book ended on a positive note. I still feel quite positive but I now realise that I was more hopeful than confident. The truth is that I am still struggling. I need to make a plan for the future and make things happen. They don't seem to happen by themselves.

I have to get a life, whatever that means. I have joked about it online but there is a serious aspect to it. My life was always intrinsically linked to my work. As long as I pursued my career in IT, I had friends and I was quite contented. The problems started when I couldn't work or I couldn't find work. The further I moved from my career, It became impossible to go back. My career had changed and I had become something of a dinosaur. I was fine as long as I was in a job. I could adapt in the job and embrace new technologies. I was no longer qualified for the jobs that were advertised. No one wanted to hire someone and retrain them. They didn't need to because younger people had more relevant skills. There was a major change in IT in the 80's to 90's, a move from Mainframe based systems to more PC based systems. There were still mainframes but they worked more on autopilot and didn't need the fine tuning that was my specialisation. It is somewhat sad that someone with 27 years IT experience became almost unemployable.

I eventually accepted that my IT career was over. What next? I struggled to find something that would utilise my skill set. The answer always seemed to come back to some sort of Admin work. One problem was that most admin jobs had many applicants. Many of these applicants were younger and far more qualified. No amount of tweaking of my CV/Resume could convince employers to interview me. As time went on, my CV/Resume was so fragmented. It would be clear that I had problems, whatever spin I could put on the various gaps. When I was interviewed, the job would go to someone more qualified, that's if they even bothered to let me know. There are rules about discrimination but they didn't need give age or mental illness as a reason. They could simply say someone else was more qualified. The government wants to give more access to jobs for the mentally ill or older person. The only real way I can see is for them (or other public sector concerns) to employ them directly. This would only be a token effort but it might set an example. Another way would be set serious incentives as with the car scrappage scheme. Sort of a people scrappage scheme!

To cut a long and miserable story short, I became increasingly unemployable and stressed out by fruitless job hunting. Everyone cares about people who are laid off from jobs. The government sets up schemes to find them new jobs. Meanwhile, the old and mentally ill are on the scrap heap of life. The government sets up schemes and makes great plans in white papers. They are sure to keep reminding us that there is no money for this innovation. At the same time, they insinuate that people on incapacity benefit are shirkers and unwilling to work. The truth is that there are few jobs and they are not for the disadvantaged.

The benefits that the mentally ill receive are a lifeline. They don't provide the lifestyle enjoyed by some benefits recipients. They are just about kept out of poverty. The government and the opposition want to re-classify those who want to work as unemployed. This further stigmatises and reduces what meagre income is received. Being unemployed makes no difference to a person's ability to get a job. In my experience, the employer is not aware of whether the applicant is on benefits or not.

I seem to have drifted off subject, whatever that was? The conclusion is that finding work (or not) was causing me more stress than was worthwhile. In 2007, I effectively called myself retired. I am not in any of the government's statistics. I am probably one of a very small minority who live on their savings. This is only possible because my mom passed away and left me with some money. I am left to run my own life, including budgeting and financial planning. Not many bipolar folk would be able to do this or even want to. One of the common symptoms of mania is the reckless handling of money. After being ill for so long, I trust myself with money. There is not much of an option. My only help comes from 4 monthly psychiatrist appointments and my GP who keeps me supplied with mind dulling medication.

I am increasingly thinking that a lot of manic problems are caused by an underused mind. In many cases, drugs like lithium are just wet blankets that dull everything. A chemical straight jacket of sorts. I am glad to say I have been off lithium for 5 months (with the help of my doctor). Apart from a recent adjustment to my other meds, the dropping of lithium has been a successful experience.

That's where I am now. Watch this space and I will try to look forward. Maybe I will get a life or something approximating one.

The transient nature of moods

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:58:00 +0000

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Just been thinking about mood swings and how they are not based in reality. Here are my thoughts.

Unfortunately, I don?t seem to inspire myself. I give the impression of being ?together? and quite motivated. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe it is my Bipolar Disorder but I can get false moods, both positive and negative. Moods based on mood swings can be very fragile, in my experience. I am very good at over thinking and killing a good mood. Equally I can think myself into a good mood but this is somewhat more rare.

I am not happy with my situation in reality. If my mood starts to dip, I start to dwell more on reality and this reinforces my down mood and brings in anxiety. I wish my moods were more in tune with the reality of my life. It is sometimes nice to feel good for no real reason but it can be very wearing. Feeling bad for no reason is much more destructive. Despite being largely stable, I think I live with these ongoing effects of Bipolar Disorder.

It makes it very hard to stay in touch with reality. I need to make changes in my life or maybe I need to get a life. When I feel irrationally happy, I don?t feel like I need to do anything. I just float through life. If I feel irrationally down, I am too busy worrying to do anything about my life. I don?t seem to have any middle ground which might be considered ?normal?. I think the concept of normality is alien to Bipolar sufferers. I don?t know how other sufferers feel about this. I am just thinking out loud.

I am convinced that this inability to be ?normal? makes counselling very difficult, at least in my experience. It also affects my dealings with doctors. If I feel good, I lose touch with my issues. If I feel down, I just can?t be bothered.

UK Family History - An offer of help

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:26:00 +0000

I have done a lot of work on my family tree over the last few years. I have got back to the early 1800's for many legs of my family. I have built up a lot of tools and some extra knowledge as I have gone along. I am happy to help anyone with their UK family history. I can get you started on building up a tree. All I would need are details of relatives who were alive in 1911 or better those alive in 1901. Full names and birth dates or birth years and birthplaces where you know them. The more you know the better. I am available to work back through the census data as far as the earliest in 1841. Please email me at clivewild@hotmail.com with Family History in the Subject. I am particularly thinking of UK people but I might be able to work on UK history of non-UK residents. I can't offer a full research service but I can get you started on your family history.

Clive

My favorite lyrics

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:18:00 +0000

Tell me the writer of these lyrics is not bipolar. They ring so true to me whenever I hear them.

All day staring at the ceiling

Making friends with shadows on my wall

All night hearing voices telling me

That I should get some sleep

Because tomorrow might be good for something

Hold on

Feeling like I'm heading for a breakdown

And I don't know why

But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell

I know, right now you can't tell

But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see

A different side of me

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired

I know, right now you don't care

But soon enough you're gonna think of me

And how I used to be...me

I'm talking to myself in public

Dodging glances on the train

And I know, I know they've all been talking 'bout me

I can hear them whisper

And it makes me think there must be something wrong with me

Out of all the hours thinking

Somehow I've lost my mind

But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell

I know, right now you can't tell

But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see

A different side of me

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired

I know, right now you don't care

But soon enough you're gonna think of me

And how I used to be

I've been talking in my sleep

Pretty soon they'll come to get me

Yeah, they're taking me away

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell

I know, right now you can't tell

But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see

A different side of me

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired

I know, right now you don't care

But soon enough you're gonna think of me

And how I used to be

Yeah, how I used to be

How I used to be

Well, I'm just a little unwell

How I used to be

The Ultimate

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:41:00 +0000

If you find this list annoying, you may be Bipolar.

If you are a homicidal maniac, you may be Bipolar.

If you found it hard to sleep last night, you may be Bipolar.

If someone really made you angry today, you may be Bipolar.

If you are breathing, you may be Bipolar.

If you are left-handed, you may be Bipolar.

If you act a bit odd sometimes, you may be Bipolar.

If you are not always yourself, you may be Bipolar.

If you are a famous celebrity, you are almost certainly Bipolar.

If you think this list is going on too long, you are probably right.

If you think this is amusing, there is some hope for you, Bipolar or not.