bipolar disorder – Page 4 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Tag: bipolar disorder (page 4 of 8)

Asking The Right Questions

Am I a good man?

It’s a question I’m asking myself on a daily basis. Months after so many people made up their minds that the answer was a resounding ‘NO’, I’m still asking it. I lose sleep over it. I wake up with my guts in knots thinking about it. I find myself disengaged from the world around me, trying my best to lose myself in work, and distracting myself with media and gaming to avoid the question. But I keep coming back to it.

I want to believe that I am. I want to believe that just by asking the question, seriously pondering it, at least shows a glimmer of hope that it might be true. It’s a spark, the embryo of a flame, and if I can hold on to it, nurture it, stoke it with the right questions and breathe life into it gently, it will grow, and maybe shine a light that will show my true Self, even to those who made up their minds.

People can be wrong. I have been wrong. I’m trying to make it right, as much as I can, without imposing myself or pushing for unwanted direct contact or making people uncomfortable. I’m trading my discomfort for the comfort of others. The way I’ve always tried to do, even if it’s proven unhealthy for me. My brain’s wired for that behavior, and rewiring it has proven very, very difficult.

How could I ever put myself over others?

That’s the question this line of thought brings to mind. In moments of weakness, of hypomania, of knee-jerk reactions, I know I can behave rashly, even put what I want or feel above what others want or feel. But how can that be, when the other 99% of my life is spent worrying myself literally sick over what others think and feel? How is that I can, and have, lost my grip on my empathy? Is there a way for me to prioritize myself, my health, my well-being, in such a way that such an awful thing never, ever happens again?

I’m scared. I’m scared of a lot of things. Running out of time, losing what little I have left, failing and falling again to the point I don’t see a way out, with no strength left to save myself.

I’m scared I’ll never fully recover.

I’m scared I’ll lose my way again, in spite of the progress I’ve already made in the Work.

I’m scared that, in trying to prioritize myself, in convincing myself that yes, I am in fact a good man, I’ll get too caught up in my positivity and hype, to the point that my privilege and intelligence and empathy become things I exploit; I’m scared I will truly, thoroughly become something I loathe, that I would never, ever choose to be.

I know people exist who feel no guilt or remorse for the choices they make. The people who twist the facts to fit their own narratives. The people who never check their perceptions against a sequence of events or the proven nature of the people around them. The people who are so wrapped up in themselves they give nary a thought to the feelings or well-being of others. Their only goal is self-advancement; their primary concern is how far they can propel themselves above others. They leave reputations, relationships, communities, even bodies burning in their wake, and they are so myopically focused on their own goals they do not smell the rancid smoke for which they are responsible. And I’m scared of becoming one of them, rather than merely being accused of being one of them.

I’m scared that no matter how ‘better’ I get, it won’t be ‘good enough’. It won’t be proof enough that I’m not who they have said I am, who they may still believe me to be.

Why do the opinions of others matter?

Being honest about my role in the discomfort of others has been taken as implicit confession of guilt towards simplistic accusations. Maintaining distance and holding space has been seen as ‘ghosting’ or disposing of people I still consider important to me. Expounding upon my moments of crisis have been called ‘manipulation’ and ‘attention-seeking’. Asking for help is seen as weakness, and an excuse to scapegoat me, gaslight me, and kick me while I’m down. Openly seeking discussion about my thought processes and unresolved guilt, and fighting the stigma of my bipolar disorder, are categorized as trying to weasel out of taking responsibility for my actions. Why do I care about what people like that think?

Anybody who knows me, who has taken the time to engage with my Self, knows all of that is bullshit. Some who have made efforts in the past to forge a friendship with me that goes beyond public perception have fallen in with the toxic thinking that fueled the ways I’ve been used and abused. Even as some write me off, I struggle to understand them, to imagine them complexly, to comprehend their motivations. Some said what they said to further their own agendas, some reacted out of triggered disgust, and others merely disengaged to avoid dwelling on painful or problematic subjects. Why do I still hold space for them?

It’s been asked of me by people who have shown they truly care about me. True empathy has been expressed by those still connected with me who’ve seen the evidence of the Work but have also been privy to me asking these questions, struggling with these concerns, ruminating over these opinions. Why do I devote any firing of synapses to people who have shown me how little I actually matter? Why do these phantoms take up any space in my head or my heart? Why can’t I just write them off, let them go, move on with my life?

“I know it’s easier said than done” tends to follow those questions, and I know how true that is. Anybody acquainted with the grief that comes with the loss of a close family member or friend knows that it’s not a once-and-done obstacle that you just ‘get over’ and you’re finished, congrats, here’s a medal. It’s cyclical. It comes and it goes. You miss people, you miss them every day, sometimes just in the back of your mind, sometimes like a vice grip on your heart leaving you unable to move. January is particularly hard for me because of grief like that. For me, for a couple of people, the grief is worse because I know they’re still alive. They’re still out in the world. I know they’re hurting. I know they’re dealing with pain, loss, and questions that I understand, that I experience myself, that I might, just maybe, be able to help with.

But I don’t know if I can. I err on the side of caution. And it breaks my heart all over again.

Even if I felt I could, would I? Or would I keep my distance because I’m too scared of fucking it up again and causing more pain and who knows if they’d be open to that sort of interaction anyway?

Should I even be writing this here?

Even now I’m questioning my motivation for putting this out into view of the public. All of this is rooted in my struggle (and occasional inability) to cope with everything that’s atypical of my neurological system. Bipolar disorder, PTSD, social anxiety, the massive guilt complex — it’s no more ‘normal’ than the political situation in our world today. I’m on medication; I’m in touch with professionals; I’m studying meditation, neurological solutions, psychology and everything else that makes up the Work. Writing is a part of it — it’s a part of me — and a contribution I can make towards both my well-being and awareness that helps the well-being of others is to fight the stigma by talking about it.

I know that a lot of this stuff can or would make people uncomfortable if they bothered to read it. Hell, writing it makes me uncomfortable to the point I’ve put off writing it, even longhand in a journal, to say nothing of on this silly blog. Causing discomfort in people in general, especially people I care about — even those who might have stopped caring about me some time ago — falls squarely in the category of ‘shit I don’t want to do.’ For all I know, all of this claptrap about the Work and how I feel and what I’m dealing with may get extrapolated and twisted around into ‘yet another bid for attention’ and thrown into the mental garbage along with the person so many people decided I was, without bringing things directly to me or imagining me complexly. This might challenge those perceptions, which will make people uncomfortable, and much like I do with my guts in asking these questions, they’ll twist themselves around to avoid that discomfort and maintain the illusion that they know exactly what happened and exactly who this or that person was and exactly what the facts are despite not having all of them.

But I also know that without discomfort, there is no growth. And as much as I want to, as deep as I have looked within myself, I have struggled and failed to find the answers for the questions I’m asking. And I have to keep asking questions, deep ones, uncomfortable ones, if I ever want to untangle those knots, heal these wounds, kindle that beacon, progress in this Work. Which brings me to the last one.

Am I asking the right questions?

Right or wrong, for better and for worse, I’m going to be struggling to find the answers for a long, long time.

Tuesdays are for telling my story.

A World Without Leia

December 28, 2016 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

So much loss has happened since the last time we celebrated a new year. So many luminaries have left us behind. But if we’re personifying the year of 2016, we can envision it holding back at least one more devastating punch to the emotional gut. And this one… this one hurts. It hurts a lot.

Carrie Fisher has died.

Putting my thoughts on this tragedy together is proving difficult. Star Wars has had a profound impact on my life. It is one of the first science fiction universes to which I was introduced, and many of its elements did and do resonate with me on a fundamental level. Princess Leia was a huge part of that from the very start. Back when the episode subtitled “A New Hope” was merely called “Star Wars,” the tall, white-robed, cinnabun-haired diplomat was a strong, defiant, patient, and even deadly character. She was, in a word, iconic.

Time did not dilute this image. While many may point to her character being forced into a position that could potentially be disempowering and humiliating, Leia rose up against her would-be master, and (bolding for emphasis here) strangled the lecherous slug to death with the very chain he was using to keep her prisoner. I cheered, as a child, when I saw this. And while, yes, as I grew there was physical appeal in the salacious nature of the outfit, I still felt more engaged and delighted by what she did while wearing it than simply seeing it on her. Leia was never an object. She was a person. And she remains so today.

Carrie Fisher managed to finish filming Leia’s scenes for Episode VIII before she left us, so we’ll be seeing her again later next year. But I am not going to let people forget that Leia is not her only legacy. Princess Leia fought Imperial forces bent on subjugating the galaxy.

Carrie Fisher fought forces within her own mind bent on controlling who she was and who she could be.

Bipolar disorder is an absolutely insidious and terrifying disease. The emotional swings and disruption to life that go along with them are devastating. It can lead to incongruous behavior. Outside observers can even attribute other disorders and explanations to what they witness during serious manic or hypomanic episodes, or disregard major depressive episodes as a form of manipulative overacting. And, in general, a huge stigma exists regarding even discussing a condition like bipolar disorder, and securing effective and proven treatment is incredibly difficult.

When she wasn’t struggling against her inner conflict, she was offering help and hope to those fighting their own. Many people see what occurs during mixed states, rapid cycles, and the extremes of the moods involved as a battleground. And navigating the trenches of said battleground is something that many people find intimidating, if not impossible. But someone who has been in those trenches, trying to navigate a minefield of awful moments and terrible choices and digging foxholes to try and escape the horrors of it all, can relate to the struggle. And Carrie Fisher did her best to do what she could for others. Just before she died, she wrote this letter to a fellow victim of the disorder.

“We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges,” she wrote. “Think of it as an opportunity to be heroic – not “I survived living in Mosul during an attack” heroic, but an emotional survival. An opportunity to be a good example to others who might share our disorder. That’s why it’s important to find a community — however small — of other bipolar people to share experiences and find comfort in the similarities.”

In light of her death, the way she closes the letter will give you chills: “Move through those feelings and meet me on the other side. As your bipolar sister, I’ll be watching.”

I feel that, for those of us left and still dealing with these challenges, our duty is to take up that vigil. And, for my part, we may not always be on the stable side of things. But we can always make it back there. It’s a hard road. A long one. And it’s often fraught with obstacles that we inadvertently placed in our own way. Human beings are very good at creating problems for themselves to overcome. We generate conflict on flimsy pretenses to justify our own agendas. We demonize those we see as ‘other’ in order to lionize ourselves and make ourselves the heroes in some sort of dichotomous, simplistic narrative. We’ve all done it. Some of us might even do it again.

We owe Carrie Fisher better than that.

I for one choose to keep talking about what happens in my head and my heart. I for one choose to keep telling my story, even the parts that people don’t want to hear. I for one will stand up for those too weak or scared or confused to stand on their own, and tell them — and you — that we are not alone. I for one choose to believe that light can prevail over darkness, and that whatever it is, the Force is strong with us.

We’ll miss you, Carrie. Your fight is over.

We’ll take it from here.

As Princess Leia put it, “somebody has to save our skins!”

Wednesdays are for discussing the whys and wherefores of our world.

500 Words on Getting Better

December 16, 2016 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

Getting to a point where I can post here on even a semi-regular basis has been a very long road. Even before my most recent traumas, just a few months ago, I was climbing my way back to a place of relative stability from the rock bottom I’d hit last year. My focus has been sporadic, my productivity inconsistent, my motivation coming and going along with the swings of my mood. I’ve questioned my actions, doubted my sanity, and struggled to hold onto things like joy and hope.

But I’m getting better.

“That’s all everyone wants for you,” someone told me a few months ago. “We want you to get better.” I feel that they’re one of the few people who meant it. A bunch of folks paid lip service to the idea of Josh getting better; in retrospect, more than a few of them saying “We want you to get better” really meant “we want you to get lost.” Especially if the anonymous, threatening messages I got were any indication.

For a while, I was incredibly concerned about how I was being perceived and, moreover, why individuals I continued to try and imagine complexly refused to extend me the same courtesy. Instead of holding space for me and trying to understand me, I was demonized and made out to be, if not as bad as, worse than Donald Trump. “A broken stair,” said one individual. “A monster,” said an anonymous message. These aren’t people who want me to get better. These aren’t people who care about me. This was a feeding frenzy of drama. This was a mob of perverts for failure. This was gaslighting, plain and simple.

So I’m getting better.

While it was unnecessary for me to get raked over the coals in this abusive manner, the aftermath of this brutal annihilation of my Persona, as well as my social life, meant I had all the more bandwidth and capacity to step up my game in what I have come to embrace as “the Work.” Like all of us, I am a work in progress. In retrospect, a good portion of that work leading up to the gaslighting was half-done or, like the accusations of the mob, built on sand. So, I scrapped it. I started over, diving into new areas of research and growth, to get better.

In doing so, I’ve realized three things.

1. The perception of others is secondary to my perception of my Self.

2. Representing my Self as authentically as possible is the best foundation for my Persona.

3. The more I try to unearth my honest Self, the more the insecure and false will rail against me.

Even now, writing this out, part of me worries that it comes across as pretentious; you, reading this, may think I have my head up my ass. But I have worked very hard to be introspective without putting my head up my ass to look within. And I won’t stop now.

Because I am getting fucking better.

On Fridays I write 500 words.

Ruins

May 13, 2016 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

When something comes up that causes involuntary reactions, that triggers us, we need to be able to step back from the incident and determine why it occurred. More often than not, something in our past imposes itself upon the present, and pushes us to act in defense of a perceived threat.

I mentioned in a previous journal entry that I tried to start dating again too soon. I’ve been trying to determine what it is I actually want in order to feel like I’m moving in a positive direction towards the future. I’ve had some conversations that have lent themselves to considering second dates, future encounters, and even the possibility of a match, a coupling, a relationship.

That’s when I get fucking terrified. That’s when I get triggered.

The very thought of something approaching a partnership or relationship with someone has triggered many involuntary reactions. I tense up. I feel my jaw tighten. A particular email from months ago shows up in my head, almost word for word, whispered into my ear without my consent. My instincts tell me that I’m going to cause another disaster, that I am setting myself up to fail. I get scared. Outwardly, I either push away and shut down, or I start running off at the mouth about my reactions and their causes, which is selfish and unfair to whomever happens to be speaking with me at the time. Those conversations tend to end badly for everyone involved. That, in turn, leaves me feeling broken and alone all over again.

Especially when most of your self-care and theraputic training has been in CBT (cognative behavioral therapy), you can spend a great deal of time, as I’ve put it, chasing the rabbits in your head – my head weasels, as I’ve called them. For me, a lot of them disappear down into the warrens where I keep my past, my secrets, my pain, my failures. The last few months have seen me ruminating on what went wrong before. I took the admonishments against me to heart, tried to read between the lines when information ceased or was no longer available, and looked deeply for things within myself to correct. Aware of the fact that I’ve been cast out by many, villified by others, and left to my own devices regarding my wounds, I’ve disappeared down those weasel holes under the ruins many times.

I can still see and smell the smoke from all of the burned bridges of my recent past. The water hoses near my feet lay leaking and ineffective. It’s so easy for me to fall into patterns of thought like that, and visualize what happened in such maudlin terms. I’ve spent so much time in my past all but destroying myself over my mistakes. I’ve made a ruin of many situations simply because I have been so aggressive in punishing myself. While I have worked hard to be more forgiving of myself and imagine myself complexly, at times I still fall into the unfortunate habit of seeing myself not as an individual of merit who simply has flaws, but rather as a violator of some code of conduct where punishments begin at public flogging in the square and escalate to summary execution.

After all, that’s what I did to Josh-that-was.

I’m trying to push myself through this. I’m on the right medication for my bipolar, and I’m trying to work with therapists on my borderline. I’ve had some give me recommendations of books to read and basic exercises to follow. But this in and of itself is fraught with obstacles. Group DBT therapy is prohibitively expensive and, as far as I’ve discovered, not covered by most insurances. The path to establishing one-on-one work with the right therapist is labyrinthine and tangled in red tape to a degree that would make a shibari enthusiast blush. And as patient as I can be, I tend to have more impatience with myself and my emotional progress. This leads to frustration, which in turn can lead to irrational anger, itself part and parcel of borderline personality disorder.

At least CBT allows me to recognize those things.

The thing I am trying to keep in mind is that we are as defined by our failures as we are by success. In fact, we learn more when we lose than when we win. As Bastille says, we need our flaws “to be who we are, without them we’d be doomed”. What isn’t letting me fully embrace that concept and move forward into a future that I feel can be a happy one for me is the fact that my flaws are rooted in so many failures in my past. I want to make sure I do not repeat my mistakes, hurt anyone else I care about, or put myself in a worse position than the one I already occupy (which is difficult to imagine at times). To do that, I need to study the past. I feel I need to step away from good things I’m trying to cultivate and foster, and turn towards the ruins, covering my hands in cold ash rather than warm topsoil.

I don’t want to romanticize any of this. I’m not plunging into forgotten tombs in a weather-beaten fedora cracking a bullwhip. I’m not deciphering hidden messages that were left behind as some sort of treasure map. I’m not putting together something shared between myself and another individual in the hopes it’ll be like it was before.

I’m sifting through these ruins to understand why everything was destroyed, and why everyone is dead.

My only real hope is that the dead have something to teach the living.

I’m once again being forced to move and that’s brought along with it a whole lot of tension and fear and doubt and bad memories. It’s really fucked with me. Add a computer crash to that and you have a recipe for a wonderful environment for nothing creative to happen.

I hope to start writing and vlogging regularly again soon. Thank you all for your patience.

The New Diagnosis

April 22, 2016 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

First things first: the vlog returns next week. Balthazar is back up and running, things are smooth there, and I have plenty of spoons to illustrate the Spoon Theory for folks who are unfamiliar. So, stay tuned for that.

At the expense of being blunt: I trigger people.

People’s feelings are not invalid. Nor are their triggers. Bad experiences take all forms, be they an early childhood trauma or an extended period of abuse or neglect. And if a triggering incident happens, regardless of its intent or motivation, you have every right to speak up about it. No one can or should blame you for it.

And if they do, they’re an asshole. Period.

Being told I triggered a friend is how I discovered my borderline personality disorder.

The two biggest red flags are pretty severe abandonment issues and, tied to that, flashes of irrational rage.

Now, thankfully, training and experience (especially over the last few months) have helped me see that rage as irrational, pull back from it to reclaim space for myself and my own health, and analyze its source from an objective standpoint. I have, for the most part, curbed my knee-jerk reactions of pushing people entirely out of my life when they trigger these things (because I have triggers too). I may back away, but cutting things off entirely has never been my style in the first place. The people I care about deserve to have their space, as well. And I hold some for them on my end. Because they deserve that, too.

There are other lovely elements of garnish BPD has sprinkled on my bipolar that I’m now aware of: extreme emotional connections & reactions, self-torture (previously self-hatred), and periods of intense mood on either end of a cycle. I’ve also gotten geared for self-harm or become suicidal when bad news or a low point of a cycle hits, and in hypomanic states I am reckless and impulsive.

You know how I’m doing better? My last hypomanic period was pretty fucking baller, and I made zero horrible decisions.

Now, like bipolar, BPD has no cure. And it’s also one of the most stigmatized disorders in the entire world. It leads directly to places of self-harm and suicide, and coupling it with bipolar aggravates both of those things. Left unaddressed and untreated, it is a death sentence.

It’s hard not to feel like a monster when you become aware of this aspect and realize people see you, perhaps solely, through that lens. That you cease to be a person worth caring about, and become simply a disease to be eradicated.

I try to forestall those feelings. To imagine others complexly. To realize that their perspective is neither willful nor their fault; that this part of me, nor any other part of me, makes me a monster, or unworthy of affection, or bereft of recourse in terms of recovery or mitigation.

Note the word “try” in that previous paragraph. I do not always succeed.

In the past, when I’ve fucked up, I’ve asked for, and in some cases anticipated, forgiveness from friends and loved ones. I ask that the courtesy of understanding be extended to me. It’s very helpful to me when it is, as I do my utmost to expound upon the motivations behind my behavior, the role played by my head weasels, and what my intentions might have been.

Not having the courtesy extended to me has, in the past, hurt me deeply.

And there are times when I have not extended that courtesy to others. Which is unfair and extremely selfish.

I’m meandering away from my point.

The point is that as much as I do my utmost to put myself in another person’s shoes, there are times when others cannot or refuse to do that for me. And that is okay. That is what they need to do. I do not blame them, nor do I hold onto the anger that wells up from the irrational and instinctive portions of my Shadow. Those emotions are there to protect me from hurting. That is their root. Hot feelings of anger cauterize wounds, stop the bleeding, shove away sources of pain.

Their result, however, is something that is neither constructive, nor helps me build or rebuild healthy relationships.

I’d rather live with the hurt.

This is something else I should file under “shit I should have known a year ago.”

But. Life goes on. The world won’t stop turning. Nothing gold can stay.

Best I can do is go on in attempting to do things with kindness, take care of myself, and internalize whatever it is I learn every day, by myself, for myself. That’s how I keep from swimming in my own bullshit. From returning to the status of being a garbage human. From utterly failing those I love, even if they’ve had to let me go.

Tag: bipolar disorder (page 4 of 8)

Asking The Right Questions

A World Without Leia

500 Words on Getting Better

Ruins

The New Diagnosis

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