The post How to Survive a Crash between Bipolar Disorder and Physical Illness appeared first on Life Conquering Blog.
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The combination of bipolar disorder and physical illnesse stir up a nasty concoction in me every time. For example, depression and coughing collide while mania and fever slam into each other. Or it could be insomnia butting heads with exhaustion. You know the truth. Bipolar or depression and everything in between are not going to take a vacation when you have laryngitis.
The aftermath from the meeting of the two medical giants will generate lots of money shelled out at the pharmacy and a crick in the neck from sleeping on the couch for too long.
Has this ever happened to you? Yes? Well, you are in good company. I am the Queen of bipolar disorder and physical illness clashes. Based on my experiences, I will give you some suggestions on how I survived the unwelcomed meet-up of the mental and the physical sides.
You can be a Survivor
When I come down with something which rubs against my mental illness symptoms in the wrong way, I usually fight hard against sleeping. I lay awake staring at the ceiling. I flip through the pages of a magazine. I read a book I haven’t touched in months. And of course, I play on my phone.
During this entire time, the psychotropic meds sit defiantly untouched while I lay awake all night. Over the years, I discovered two methods that helped me survive the battle between bipolar disorder and physical illness.
Survivor Skill #1 – Get more sleep
When I feel under the weather, like with a cold, I get so tired that I practically collapse into bed from just laying around doing nothing all day. The truth is we all need sleep! However, not everybody gets the right amount of shut-eye. Below is the most up-to-date sleep data for the United States.
- 50% to 80% of the patients in a regular American psychiatric office are sleep deprived;
- Compare this to the 10% to 18% of adults in the general population who experience sleep deprivation
; and finally - Sleep deprivation costs the US $411 billion annually.
Getting the correct amount of sleep for a mentally and physically well human being, each night is crucial. If you throw in a mental illness as well as the flu into the mix, the stakes go up. A sleep-deprived person (with any type of illness) driving a car is as impaired to get behind the wheel and stomp on the gas as a person who is driving drunk. This is serious stuff!
The bottom line here is to create an environment that will promote healthy sleep. This is what we call good sleep hygiene. It’s important to establish this level of health in order to function properly throughout the day.
Appropriate sleep hygiene means the following:
- Winding down before you get into the bed;
- Having an set bedtime;
- No interruptions during the night;
- Getting enough sleep; and
- Waking up so that you feel rested.
I am still attempting to achieve good consistent sleep hygiene. In the end, sleeping all the hours and minutes my body needs will, at the very least, assist me with decisions.
These decisions could be determined by the following questions: “How many hours of sleep do I need to get?”, or “Should I take my prescribed medications while I am sick with a stomach virus?”
Survivor Skill #2 – Take your psychotropic medicine
Some of us have a tendency to skip our meds whether healthy or sick. I do take my medicine when I am well most of the time. Although when I am physically sick, I often go down kicking and screaming because I do not want to take my regular psychiatric tablets.
Here is what happens: My mind believes that my body’s mental health will carry on if I press pause on taking the remedy for my mental illness symptoms. With each passing hour to each passing day, my mental acuity tends to suffer greatly.
Every day, I experience varying levels of the following: short bouts odepression, psychosis, mania and little to no ability to stay focused to name a few.
If you take the above symptoms and mix them up real good, give the potion an electric shock, then you will have my high alert bipolar symptoms while contending with a fever, mucus, muscle aches, congestion and pains. Then if I stop taking any of my psychotropic medicines please add a triple shot to that espresso.
But the thing is, when I take all of my meds, my depression is more easily handled by usual treatments. The psychosis is still there, but it is back to its old pattern where I can better manage the paranoia and hallucinations. The mania is deflated for now and tucked away in a drawer until another day. And I can focus better than I did when I was not medicated.
Conclusion
I fulfilled my promise to you, my reader. In this blog post, I told you that from my experiences, getting enough sleep and taking my daily meds are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. These methods are used in order to ease up the time on the sidelines of life as well as the tough symptoms of bipolar and your sinus infection. When I become physically ill while living with a mental illness, it can be a madhouse.
Call to Action
Do you feel a triple dose of your symptoms happening to you whenever you experience mental illness episodes and physical sickness? Please share how you got through that flu, stomach bug, sinus infection or cold. You can either write a comment in the section below or send an email to me at [email protected].
References
References will be given upon individual requests.
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The post How to Survive a Crash between Bipolar Disorder and Physical Illness appeared first on Life Conquering Blog.
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The post Twelve bipolar GIF’s appeared first on Life Conquering Blog.
]]>Step out when you are ready to encourage others with your story. Reach out to safe places such as the local chapter of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance in your hometown or state. There you can share your journey with mental illness.
12 Bipolar GIF’s
- My moods cannot be controlled as if scheduling them on a calendar.
Oh, how I wish I could control my moods that way! I will never be depressed in the morning or the afternoon or evening. Or when it is raining. Or when my husband goes to work. My racing thoughts would shut up when I go to bed, get a massage or get a shower or bubble bath. I will have just the right amount of mania to help me tackle the cleaning. Or to have it when I am at the grocery store so I can get out of there fast.
You get what you get. Manic, hypomanic or depressed.
Bipolar is a brain disorder, too. I am incapable of stopping or starting the bipolar roller coaster that is going on inside my head. The chemicals in my brain fire or do not fire due to bipolar. I take medicine to help push or pull my brain in the right direction so I can function.
2. This is a pretty good illustration of my bipolar moods every day. 
It is rare that I would go a day without my moods shifting in any direction. As you see in the cell phone GIF, this represents just how quickly my moods can change.
Just recently, I spoke with a woman who has bipolar, too. She was explaining how long she goes between episodes. “Wow! Good for her!” I thought. For me,I have ultradian cycling most of the day or mixed episodes. This basically means my moods change a bunch.
3. This is what it looks like in my mind during a manic episode. I am 
constantly thinking and talking to myself. The ideas are coming in like a meteor shower. I feel alive. Excited. I can climb Mt. Everest by myself. I am signing up for all kinds of opportunities without any time to dedicate to them. Buying all kinds of shoes and purses. And talking to people who I have been avoiding for months.
4. Sometimes, I act out at the grocery store when I am manic-y with rage. It does’t take much. I may be standing in a mile-long line, the person in front of me is not going fast enough, the item I want to purchase is not available or the aisle I want to enter has a shopping cart jam. Sometimes words actually come out. In the state of mood I am in, I do not care it I am heard. And sometimes they are all trapped in my mind, unable to scream out due to prayer. Yes! Prayer. Needless to say, I do a lot of praying while at the grocery. .
5. This is me when my thoughts flow easily and are also coherent and organized when I am writing. They basically make sense, I am creative with boundless energy. I can stay up all night writing. I feel young again. I am a writing scholar. Dreams and delusions flood my mind about the present and the future. 
6. This describes the sum of the various parts of my mind and body when I am in an ultradian cycle. I tend to flip-flop between each pole. The frequency of which the moods change could happen in months, years, weeks, days or hours. I have managed to switch from depression to mania in mere seconds multiple times. Tears falling from my eyes,staining my cheeks. At the same time, I am laughing like I’m mad. It scared the shit out of my husband. Now that says a lot, because he is a real tough guy.
7. This is when I cannot write PERIOD. I cannot form sentences, paragraphs – not to mention thoughts or ideas! This is happening a great deal lately. I started drafts of about six or more blog posts from the beginning of February up until now. NONE of the drafts have been completed and published. Today, I was depressed most of the day and it has taken me all day long to work on a post. It still will not be finished in time to publish. The depression always stunts the growth of the creativity. 
8. When I have a bipolar road rage moment, I sound my horn, loudly and proudly. That is really as far as it goes in the real world. Now I might drive more aggressively to my destination, let the incident stew in my head and even tell my husband with grandeur what happened once he gets home from work. I’m so glad brains are private and horns are loud. 
9. This is me when I am in a mixed episode. During a mixed episode, you experience both mania and depression at the same time. Whenever I am mixed, I cannot make up my mind what I want to do because both poles are tugging at me What I usually do in a mixed state is just sit there and stare into nothing. 
10. This is my psychotic brain everyday. Hallucinations in all five senses. 
Delusions that never go away. Paranoid in my own house and outside my house. I do not like going to bed for fear of what will be done to me. And I had a psychotic break.
11. GIF’s of people who have bipolar. They look just like all the other people around them. They are moms, dads, brothers, sisters, painters, teachers, doctors, chefs, actresses, pastors, secretaries, judges, counselors, you name it.
Carrie Fisher
Bradley Cooper
Delonte West
Ernest Hemmingway
Amy Winehouse
Catherine Zeta-Jones
References
https://giphy.com/explore/bipolar-happiness
https://giphy.com/search/bipolar-road-rage
https://giphy.com/search/bipolar-laptop-rage
https://giphy.com/search/bipolar-psychotic
https://giphy.com/explore/carrie-fisher
https://giphy.com/search/bipolar
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The post Bipolar 1 Episode causes a Mental Health Blogger to go Missing in Action appeared first on Life Conquering Blog.
]]>I want to first apologize to my readers and guests since I have been silent these past two weeks. Whenever I go silent, I am experiencing a bipolar 1 episode. I have a friend who is a bipolar blogger, too. She always encourages me to write something everyday even when the bipolar 1 episode leaves me feeling like I have been hit by a semi. So, I am going to try to be better at staying connected to my readers.
What Happens During a Bipolar 1 Episode?
I have bipolar 1 with psychotic features as well as rapid cycling and mixed episodes. I need to put out this disclaimer that everyone’s experience is unique to them. What I share with you here may be different to someone else who has bipolar 1.
First of all, there are two different types of bipolar: 1 and 2. They are both awful to to have. A bipolar 2 episode may look a lot like a biplar 1 episode. However, bipolar 1 is often described as way more intense than bipolar 2. The jury is still out on some symptoms being only experienced in bipolar 1. This meaning that for instance a manic episode can only take place in someone with bipolar 1.
Experiencing psychotic features in my bipolar 1 episode means I have delusions and hallucinations. One of my delusions is I believe there are Russian spies living in my bedroom closet. They are ready with pistols drawn to shoot me dead. This makes me not want to go to bed when my mind and body need me to. Bipolars desperately need to monitor their sleep hygiene and keep a daily sleep schedule.
I have had hallucinations in all the senses which is rare but obviously can happen. One night I was lying on the couch when all of a sudden, I felt someone grab my right foot with a firm grip. I shot straight up and asked my husband if he touched my foot. With a straight face he said I did not grab your foot. This is called a tactile hallucination. For about a week to 10 days I had a gustatory hallucination, which is a peculiar taste or feeling in my mouth. I felt as if there were toasted bread crumbs in the back of my throat. I never eat toast, but that is what it felt like. I tried brushing my teeth and gargling with mouth wash. Nothing could make it stop. The one hallucination that I experience the most is auditory – voices, music, music or voices sounding as if they are coming from a radio, my name being called, my husband making a noise with his voice when he wasn’t even in the house.
Rapid Cycling in Bipolar 1
Rapid cycling is where I cycle from a manic state to a depressed state over and over again at short intervals. My mood can change every few minutes, or it could take several hours to change. I used to get depressed and stay depressed for several days or months. The same way with mania, I would get manic in the spring and summer and depressed in the fall and winter. Now it can be as often as every other minute throughout the year. One minute I will be restless with a bunch of pent up energy, and then I turn around and I’m staring out the window, paralyzed with depression.
Mixed Episodes in Bipolar 1
I loathe mixed episodes. It is one of the worst bipolar episodes in my opinion. With a mixed episode, I will experience both manic and depression AT THE SAME TIME. It paralyzes me. Here is an example of a mixed episode: I will get this rush of energy when I feel like I want to do everything at the same time – shop with no spending limits, clean the entire house, talk on the phone (which I rarely do when I feel good), stay up all night and watch movies and write. Occurring right beside it in the same minute or hour, I will feel depressed and unable to get off the couch. I will want to sit on the couch and stare out the window or TV without seeing anything. Or I will want to sleep the night away. It is exhausting.
Why am I MIA?
What I just described to you, I experience every month to 6 weeks. And then it comes back around again and again and again. My experience is unique to me. Other people could experience the same moods but it comes in a different package. Then if you add on top of that my period, the rage train comes barreling into town. Sometimes the moods hit me really hard and I am unable to write or even function. Other times, I am holding onto my Rock (Psalm 18:2) and it doesn’t feel as bad. I have learned to never hold onto my moods because they are fleeting, I cannot control them and I always eventually get back to feeling normal if for only a little while.
Email Me
Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me about your experience with a mental illness.
Going Further
http://biblehub.com/psalms/18-2.htm
Life Conquering Ministries Debuts at Southeast Christian Church Southwest Campus
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