To all who celebrate it! While I no longer celebrate the same way I did as a kid (for multiple reasons, both religious and because I’m an adult now), I do still celebrate spiritually with the themes of fertility, spring, renewal, and rebirth.
I also still celebrate secularly by eating massive amounts of candy and going all our for my one sibling who still lives at home, which included a kinder egg easter egg hunt. ( we celebrated early for personal family reasons, so he already has his Easter presents and candy) The only thing I didn’t get to do yet was color Easter eggs, but I may do that in the afternoon or something.
In any case, have a safe and happy Easter. However, you celebrate it. If you don’t celebrate, have a safe and happy non-Easter!
I know peanuts is pretty religious and not everyone’s cup of tea, but I grew up with it.
Today, March 30th, I just became aware at 11:16 pm. as the day is ending, is bipolar awarness day.
Trigger Warning, Content Warning, themes of mental illness like bipolar and scizoaffective disorders and their symptoms, traumas like abuse, malnutrition, addiction, self harm, and suicide are mentioned briefly.
Please do not take anything in this article as a substitution for proper, individualized, and/or professional diagnosis or treatment for any illnesses or disorders.
Please reach out to a trusted person in your support system, your regular health professional, or a hotline like the national suicide hotline, 3 digit number 988 or the crisis text line by texting HOME to 741741.
If in iminent unshakable danger, like inability to separate yourself from means of dying by suicide, call 911 or your local emergency services.
I shared my bipolar diagnosis in an early YouTube video a few years back on the fight4mylife.net YouTube channel because I wanted people to see that while the condition is stigmatized, there is nothing to be ashamed of with having it. (I’ll be the first to admit that everything about the video is cringey right down to the thumbnail).
In honor of today, I’m gonna share a little story about my bipolar diagnosis, how I came to terms with it, and how I manage it now that it has progressed to scizoaffective disorder (a disorder where you have symptoms of both bipolar and schizophrenia but not quite either disorder by themselves)
According to the Mayo Clinic,
Just a little fun image because I sometimes cope with humor.
“Schizoaffective disorder is a mental health disorder that is marked by a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions, and mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania.”
For me personally, I have the Bipolar type of Scizoaffective disorder which means that if I don’t take my meds properly (or at all) I get hallucinations in auditory, visual, and or tactile forms. Auditory involve me hearing a voice telling me to harm myself only, visual include Scary images of attackers or demonic figures or even worst, bugs all over, tactile hallucinations include me feeling bugs on me and crawling in me.
Also if I don’t take my medicine I can’t sleep at night, and that works me into a hypomanic to manic episode which consists of me not needing sleep for several days, but still having energy. This seems like it would be fun, and there is euphoria for a bit of the time with me feeling on top of the world, but being in that state comes with several negative outcomes as well.
In that state, I am more likely to experience grandiose thinking that I am destined to do all kinds of spectacular things, plus my risky behaviors increase like drinking and unsafe dating practices. Then, non manic me has to deal with the consequences.
That used to be my existence all the time before I got diagnosed and put on the right medicines (the effective combination of which changes at times). I would consistently experience these episodes for weeks at a time sometimes. But I did have fewer hallucinations at one time.
How I got diagnosed:
The story of how I got diagnosed is pretty interesting because I have been in therapy since I was 14 and had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (severely depressed but not for as long as dysthymia), then dysthymia (where you are depressed for longer periods of time but it’s not as severe).
No one had ever diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, though until I was trying to get on disability after my break down in 2015 (that’s a whole other story for a different day) and I had to meet with the court’s psychologist to determine if I was able to work or not (that was a whole battle in itself and again is a story for another time).
It stuck out to me because I would have thought that of all the people who would have recognized it, it wouldn’t have been someone whose job it was to prove that I was fine to work (note I am not suggesting that people with bipolar can’t work, far from it. Just for me personally, with all the stuff I have going on in combination with each other, working a meaningful job is not in the cards (though hopefully not forever). I have been going to college to keep myself sharp for when I can work, though.
The diagnosis was not added to my health history at that time, but a later therapist I had saw the same traits and behaviors that doctor saw and made the diagnosis official until just in 2023 when it shifted to scizoaffective disorder.
Coming to terms withthe diagnosis:
I now accept this part of me.
Accepting this diagnosis wasn’t easy. Mental illness runs on both sides of my birth family, and when paired with the traumas I’ve experienced, that leaves open a way for these types of disorders to activate. I learned in college that while it’s not often clear how one gets most mental illnesses, it is generally thought to be a mix of genetic factors combined with environmental factors.
Not environmental in the sense of wilderness, but in the sense of the environment a human being lives in throughout their lives. I foe example was abused for most of my life in one way or another, I was often malnourished, the family I grew up in was dysfunctional and didn’t believe in mental health despite having mental health issues, and I started drinking before my brain was fully developed when addiction also runs in my family.
I was also placed in foster care then my adoptive family separated not too long before my mrntal breakdown started and I was thrown into adulthood without much preparation or idea how to manage college and work full time plus relationship struggles with my birth and adoptive parents.
All of those are environmental issues that most likely, combined with my genetic risk factors to trigger my mental illnesses like my bipolar which became schizoaffective disorder.
All that being said, I did develop shame regarding my mental health at first. I didn’t want to end up like my birth parents who were sick but wouldn’t get help for it, I also saw how people with disorders like bipolar are treated by society.
Terms like “crazy” and “psycho” get thrown around as insults towards people struggling with their mental health, and it makes things like dating a nightmare because it’s hard to decide when to share and how much to share with the person you’re dating or trying to date. It also makes getting hired harder because, for me, at least, I never know if I should disclose things like why I have such a long gap in my employment or how I left my last job.
Overcoming the shame:
As you shouldn’t!
After a great deal of counsil from several different therapists, heart to heart talks with the people in my support system, and some self reflection, I started to realize that I shouldn’t let the diagnosis take over my life. As I see it now, I had the disorder long before I got diagnosed, so the only thing that changed is that now I have a treatment plan for it, and it’s so well managed now that I rarely see any symptoms pop up and when they do, they are less severe.
How I deal with things now:
It is a good lesson to learn, though things like self-harm behaviors are different and not healthy by any standards. It is understandable why they are used, there is help avaliable at 988 the new 3 digit number hotline for mental health crises. Or you can text HOME to 741741 if you need a texting crisis line.
The way I handle the disorder now is with coping mechanisms. This includes creating a safety plan with information about what a crisis for me looks like, what steps I can take in a crisis, and emergency contacts, including my therapist, psychiatrist, and primary doctors.
While the safety plan is good for any time, most coping mechanisms mainly work the best for depressive symptoms of the disorder. In a depressive episode, I get severely depressed and get my most suicidal (though that hasn’t happened for a long time). I can’t stop crying, and it’s nearly impossible to get up and out of bed. I also sometimes get physical manifestations like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea (sorry, TMI!).
After treating physical symptoms, I have to rely on my coping skills, like writing loved ones’ names on my arm to avoid self-harm, distraction with comedy until I can get in to see my therapist, calls and visits with people in my support system, snuggles from my new puppies, listening to sad or rock/metal music. surprisingly, it makes me happier in these moments than listening to anything else would.
I have also started adding things like gratitude journals, regular journaling, meditation, and if I am able to get myself out of bed, I go out doors in nature to soak up the vitamin D and all of the natural beauty of my area.
For this specific disorder, I have to rely on things other than coping mechanisms to care for myself when crisis does strike as many times when I am in a manic episode I feel so euphoric and productive that I can’t see the reality of the situation is that im just doing a bunch of stuff very poorly. or when I am hallucinating, everything feels so real that I can’t tell what is or isn’t real.
That is when I lean into my support system to help me until I come out of an episode and get myself care back on the right track. Speaking of self care, It is not 1:20 am where I am, no longer bipolar awareness day, and I need sleep, so that was all of my story, I hope it helped you in some way whether you are personally struggling with any of these disorders, or whether you are jus trying to understand people with these disorders.
Trigger Warning mentions abuse, feeling suffocating sadness,stress, nightmares, and pain and fears with feelings of uselessness.
This poem just came to me, but it all describes how I have been feeling. Looking at it after writing it I recognize that these are feelings that I will be talking to my mental health care provider about, but I want to stress that this isn’t about suicide or feelings of wanting to die. Just general feelings of being sad and afraid
If you or anyone you know are showing signs of feeling suicidal please reach out to a trusted loved one, the new 988 mental health hot line, the crisis text https://www.crisistextline.org/, or if there is imnent danger dial 911 for emergency services.
A message to every one who comes to this page, especially those who reach out to me with more suggestions.
So, somehow, something cool has been happening as far as this blog goes. As I hope all of you who come here know, I have a growing resource page for different things related to mental health and other areas of life. I built that resource page because I want people to get something of value when they come to my page no matter what their needs are.
While I found a fair amount of these resources through my own research I have also started getting emails from educators saying their students found the fight4mylife resource page and found it helpful, both educators who have been reaching out to me also brought to my attention more resources that their students thought would be helpful for others if I added them to the page. After reviewing each additional resource carefully, I then added them to the page.
You can find that page by clicking the menu button at the top of the homepage and by clicking on resources, or you can click the link below, and it will take you right to the page.
This post has been a long time coming, and I just want to stress again how happy I am that people are finding any part of the site useful. I am going to be doing some more work to ensure the rest of the site gets some attention, too. I still have to do my first media review and book review, and I have to keep playing little misfortune on the fight4mylifegames YouTube channel.
I encourage you to watch the videos, give feedback, and subscribe if you feel called to do so if you want to see more videos I make.
Check out my tiktok for mostly dog videos, and all the other socials to stay up to date on what’s going on here at the blog. I do post every now and again when I’m not trying to juggle life obligations.
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
I am actually planning a cross-country trip by using the amtrak rail pass system and staying in and exploring the places we stop in.
That’s why I chose train, but in reality, it was a misdirect because my #1 preferred method for going cross country is by car. I have done it a couple of times by car, and I love it because there are more things to explore if you so chose.
You could stop in any city or town along the way for as long as you want, and there are always cool roadside attractions. Plus, snacks are much cheaper at gas stations than they are on the train.
Mental Health Blog | Fight4mylife | United States 