u/Conscious_Parfait659

I’ve had two good conversations about this over the past 24 hours and thought I could maybe just share that positivity here. Last night, at a friend’s birthday party, I was talking to a friend’s wife, who is a therapist, about some of the things I feel super guilty about from times I’ve been manic - ways I’ve hurt people and that sort of stuff.

She disclosed a lot of pretty private stuff about herself to me, and told me about how easy it is for her to tell her clients not to blame/guilt themselves or to not feel like they’re crazy, but how she has a hard time extending that grace to herself. It was a bit of a eureka moment for me. I realized how often we fail to give ourselves the same grace we’d readily give others. It made me realize that the healthiest versions of us are the ones that show ourselves the same love that we show other people.

Additionally, today with my therapist, she told me her biggest concern with me was all the self blame I do. She told me in no uncertain terms that this isn’t a healthy way to look at being unhealthy, and that it only served to hold me back from healing. In fact, it’s often why I struggle to let the past go. This was eye opening as well. Guilt and shame are only useful to us as a way to inspire us to be better. But if we weren’t in control of our actions to begin with, guilt and shame still exist because we are good people. But they aren’t actually serving their evolutionary purpose in this case. So the best we can do is acknowledge those feelings and then let them go.

So, today, forgive yourself for something. Remind yourself that it’s okay to be imperfect. And most of all, show yourself the same love you show others. Much love to all of you 🫶🏼

I've posted here a few times before about my situation, but quick summary. I got laid off from my six figure tech job in late February and it triggered a pretty severe mixed mood episode. In the course of this episode, I broke down and texted my ex a LOT. Some of it was paranoid, but mostly just really sad and depressed shit. She filed for a protective order against me despite the fact that I never threatened her and don't even know where she lives now. She could have just blocked me.

I mention this because I was offered the opportunity to interview for a job doing what I did before. It paid a little less, but the company did things that deeply aligned with my values. Specifically, they work with government services that provide for the less fortunate. It would have been a dream job for me. Well, the background check came back and I failed because for some reason, this is the one non-criminal thing that can be background checked in addition to all the other rights it takes away from me. They said because it was similar to stuff I got in trouble for over a decade ago, it showed I could be a risk of violence for the company so I don't have a job. I've never been violent to anyone in my entire life. This thing stays on my record for two more years, and tells the world I'm someone I am definitively not.

I feel hopeless. I honestly just wanna stop trying. What's the point? I can't get a job and I've clearly ruined my life. How do you deal with trying to get healthy and do the best thing for yourself when your behavior when you weren't you shuts all of your future doors? It just sucks. I just don't see the point in trying anymore.

So I had a really bad mixed episode in February after losing my job that led to me obsessively texting my ex, including about crazy shit I was thinking since I was pretty out of touch with reality at points. She ended up filing for a protective order against me and I ended up getting diagnosed with Bipolar 1. Since then, I've had the mania treated really well. I'm on two mood stabilizers and a small dose of stimulants for my ADHD (dose is small because it has triggered mania for me in the past including this most recent episode).

The issue is that I just feel tired - I mean really tired. I mostly lay in bed all day and I can't even motivate myself to do basic things. Like if I can make three meals at home, that's a huge win, but I usually can't even do that. I'm struggling to shower, take care of myself in any meaningful way, and my brain feels like it's working at like 30% capacity.

For a while, I've been telling myself that it's okay - eventually we'll get the right mix of meds and at least I'm not manic. But I also just feel sad and anxious all the time and it's wearing thin. I haven't left my house in weeks. I've just been alone with my cat. I can't get the motivation to apply for jobs, and even if I did, I have a fresh protective order on my record which labels me a violent abuser, so I don't think I'd have a ton of success without disclosing my diagnosis, which also seems like a really bad idea.

I just feel stuck, lonely and, most of all, sad. Like just deeply, deeply sad. All the time. Every two weeks I see my psychiatrist and it feels like I'm always just waiting for that appointment to hopefully be the one where I get the right mix of drugs that makes me less depressed, but the longer time goes on, the more hopeless I feel. It's always tiny tweaks, but my psychiatrist doesn't really seem to be treating any of this with any urgency and it's pretty clear that this mix of drugs treats the mania, but leaves me useless and depressed. I just want to be better.

This song by Korn has always spoken to me in a profound way. It’s been my favorite song by them for 20 years, or my favorite song by them whenever I’m feeling really low.

Why I love it so much has really been contextualized for me since my diagnosis two months ago. It’s the perfect way to describe the crash and awful depression after mania. That feeling that you’ve destroyed your own life and there’s no reason to go on. So I’m leaving the lyrics here as I personally find this song really soothing when I’m down.

Trigger Warning: Ideation

Lyrics:

Pick me up

Been bleeding too long

Right here, right now

I'll stop it somehow

I will make it go away

Can't be here no more

Seems this is the only way

I will soon be gone

These feelings will be gone

These feelings will be gone

Now I see the times they change

Leaving doesn't seem so strange

I am hoping I can find

Where to leave my hurt behind

All the shit I seem to take

All alone I seem to break

I have lived the best I can

Does this make me not a man?

Shut me off

I'm ready, heart stops

I stand alone

Can't be on my own

I will make it go away

Can't be here no more

Seems this is the only way

I will soon be gone

These feelings will be gone

These feelings will be gone

Now I see the times they change

Leaving doesn't seem so strange

I am hoping I can find

Where to leave my hurt behind

All the shit I seem to take

All alone I seem to break

I have lived the best I can

Does this make me not a man?

Am I going to leave this place?

What is it I'm running from?

Is there nothing more to come?

Is there only black in space?

Am I going to take it's place?

Am I going to win this race?

I guess God's up in this place?

What is it that I've become?

Is there something more to come?

More to come

Now I see the times they change

Leaving doesn't seem so strange

I am hoping I can find

Where to leave my hurt behind

All the shit I seem to take

All alone I seem to break

I have lived the best I can

Does this make me not a man?

Now I see the times they change

Leaving doesn't seem so strange

I am hoping I can find

Where to leave my hurt behind

All the shit I seem to take

All alone I seem to break

I have lived the best I can

Does this make me not a man?

This is probably gonna be a stream of consciousness type of post. For context, my fiancée left me a year ago after I cheated on her during a manic episode (this was quite a bit more complicated than I’m making it sound, but I’ll spare the story for brevity). I spent basically the entire next year in some degree of mixed episode, though the degree varied over time. Additionally, I was only diagnosed Bipolar 1 two months ago and have only begun to feel stable on my meds in the last week.

I’ve begun to realize that I’m processing feelings for the first time that people usually process very shortly after a breakup. And it boggles my mind. Like I spent a year basically not being grounded enough in the real world to process anything. At times I thought my ex was trying to kill me, then I thought she was being mind controlled, I thought she never loved me and had used me for some nefarious purpose, etc. These thoughts basically consumed my views of the breakup and so I never really processed anything real.

But weirdly, being past all the paranoia, this is the first week I’ve really begun to see that I’m better off, something friends and family were trying to get me to see for a year. To be clear, she was a phenomenal person, at least at her highest aspiration. But she had her own demons (if I had to guess, BPD because there was a lot of mountains out of molehills and splitting) and the reality is that those demons caused serious issues for me as I’m sure mine did for her. And I’m processing for the first time how toxic she was for me and vice versa.

It feels very freeing to get to this point, but also, I mourn the fact that this disorder robbed me of this kind of healing for a full year. One of those weird things where I know this is evidence I’m getting to a healthier place but it also emphasizes how much time I spent being deeply unhealthy. Wondering if others have had similar experiences of feeling this disorder stole time from them.