Maybe There's Something More After All

[Gandolfication]

I have bipolar (type II), which for now simply means I have widely fluctuating moods. I've had several days of events and mood that have been difficult and I have felt very down. My car wouldn't start mid-this morning, so I had to take a therapy appointment virtually from my office. The appointment was fairly good, considering how I'm feeling, which still feels like on an existential knife's edge. Upon getting off the video call, I see 2 emails from an opposing attorney, including one that really had a vertigo-inducing effect, and I instantly went to thoughts of driving to go through with suicide. And then remembered, my car won't start.

By the time I call and get it towed, I'm sure the intensity of thoughts of suicide will have passed, since that's how it goes with this.

A friend I'd reached out to this morning, among other things, had encouraged me to "have some faith" that as I do things, things get better. Having very painfully lost the religious beliefs and practices that immersivly defined all my earlier life, it seems naïve to equate any of this now with some higher power or purpose, but what the hell. I can't disprove it anyway. I do try to believe in something.

[litethatnevergoesout]

I like how you keep posting and being transparent about your circumstances and state of being.

just a small amount of faith. like a test and nourish it and if it’s good it will grow. Despite what seems like terrible outcome from todays email, you HAVE definitely been progressing since I first started following your story.

you sound like you have a truly wonderful friend and supporter, I concur with them and support your ‘what the hell’ attitude it’s great. I care about you man keep up the great work. Bipolar, my father was undiagnosed most of his life with it, after he passed 2 years ago my mother has mentioned to me he was very suicidal. I don’t know if it’s a complication of the condition, but he was a very brilliant unknowable complicated man.

I hope to hear more about your treatment.

[Gandolfication in reply to litethatnevergoesout]

Thank you for that litehatnevergoesout,

Yah, suicidal ideations is a signal feature of bipolar disorder. It can be constant. Over the years, I've put a lot of work into defusion, etc., and now do have the ability most of the time to let go of these thoughts a little easier than I used to, but lately, they've just been bad.

Yesterday, my therapist pushed me to start tracking my moods...which to be candid, I'd always thought was a little silly and patronizing, like I know both when and why I feel like sh*t. But she pointed out that it is a way to gain perspective and remind oneself that the bad times won't last so try to relax a little, and neither will the good, so to enjoy/celebrate them. It supports an adage I've long had which is that by definition, no one can be fully aware of their own blind spots. She reminded me the nature of virtually all depression is first to lie to us and tell us it's always going to be and feel awful, when that's not true.

[litethatnevergoesout in reply to Gandolfication]

you’re welcome Gandolfication, it’s an amazing thing, being anonymous here yet knowing quite a bit about one another in intimate ways you can only find on this forum.

that was a very easy and strong message to read.

it’s so interesting your therapist brought up mood tracking. your response was so similar to my reaction of being challenged to start a mood tracking diary it was uncanny. I do see some benefits in the process and I suppose giving it a shot can’t hurt. when the ‘baseline’ can be as low as possible all the time there doesn’t seem to be much point tracking and reflecting on any mood variations, but it was explained to me that it helps to identify triggers and it becomes a new scale to gauge any shifts or patterns from. it’ll will just have to be something I begin to do and stick with.

[Hidden]

Hi Gandolfication, I also have Bipolar 2. I'm glad I found you here. 😎👍

[Gandolfication in reply to Hidden]

It's good to meet others. I've worked so long and I feel hard and tried so many things, and so much of the time, I still just feel like this effing thing beats me.

I'm always curious how others experience this.

[LoveforAll41]

Hi Gandolfication! Me again. Sorry I am following you and generally respond. I am sorry that you have to deal with so many ups and downs, and I am sorry that you can go so quickly to suicidal thoughts. Our landlord passed away and now we have another hefty lease agreement to read and sign and rent increase. Financial blows really get to me quick.

From my quick search it looks like bipolar ii has the same ups and downs but the baseline is lower so there aren't has high manic times and there are lower depressed times?

As far as believing in a higher power goes, I always think of one leader of emotions anonymous who always gave the example of someone having their higher power be "sally lipstick". It doesn't matter what it is just something bigger than yourself (not sure what their bigger thing was, I think they were mostly opposed to a male God). I am happy with my religion, but praying hard and often in bathroom stalls at college did not help me get through it, I still dropped out. I find that therapy can be a religious experience as I come to more deeply understand some truths, and I find that therapy and self help books are more helpful to me at this time in life than religious texts.

Anyway, what I am trying to get at is that perhaps you can place this belief in something outside yourself in some values or ideals. Every human (every thing) has inherent worth. Everyone deserves the chance to feel happy, or if not happy than at least at peace and not hopeless. I would not wish depression/hopelessness on my worst enemy. Wishing you peace ☮️

[litethatnevergoesout in reply to LoveforAll41]

that was very thoughtful, loveforall41. depression and hopelessness are very real with very deep roots right into the heart and soul of a lot of us, there doesn’t seem to exist a way to uproot it. happiness becomes fantasy and peace is like an unattainable ideal that even if it were within our grasp a thing that’s fleeting and unsustainable.

whether you call it sally or it’s a positive affirmation on repeat, there is light, for me I have to walk one step at a time toward it, no matter how cold dark or scary and foreign my surroundings are around me rather than freeze and shield my eyes from it.

[Gandolfication in reply to litethatnevergoesout]

This feels familiar right now. Hang in there. We're here for each other here.

[litethatnevergoesout in reply to Gandolfication]

That is very true. I really appreciate that, I’m very glad to be a support for one another. it really makes a difference and helps.

[Gandolfication in reply to LoveforAll41]

LoveforAll41,

Thanks, and your experience is poignant and sounds harrowing. Yes, what you're saying about BP II is true, it is like type I, except I don't really ever get full blown mania and think I'm Jesus or something (not being snarky, that's a reality for some). As bad as I often feel my up and down experience has been for 20-some years, when I hear from someone like you, I am also reminded that I was (am) lucky this didn't start for me really until after college. And college and law school were relatively tranquil environments for me.

Re: " I am happy with my religion, but praying hard and often in bathroom stalls at college did not help me get through it, I still dropped out. " That's heavy, I'm sorry. I can relate to the description of praying in secluded places, and...if I'm paraphrasing this fairly...the conundrum of wanting so badly to feel and experience the "peace that passes all understanding" again, but not feeling it.

I found it to be a truly terrifying and awful experience losing this. I used to write about it a lot; I have kind of tried to let it fade into background more in recent years. I don't have a wholistic answer, but I can say that as I decided and discovered, I became more a humanist, believing and experiencing that there is love, beauty, and maybe even if not exactly the type of transcendence I wanted in a personal deity, at least a form of imminence, divine spark in us all, as I think you've alluded to. It is that human connection that is meaning, to me, and it is why I come here. It saves me, when nothing else will. Thanks for being here and connecting.

[MaggieSylvie]

Hello again Gandolfication, It's good to see you, as I haven't seen you for some weeks. I have to saythat it seems to me that you seem to have taken a few quite large steps in your life. I am very down, myself but I just wanted to say Hi.

[Gandolfication in reply to MaggieSylvie]

Thanks MaggieSylvie,

Greatly appreciated.

Because that is true... I really have continued to take one important step after another, and mostly show up and stay in the fray...and keep growing, etc. which counts for a lot.

Especially when for the past couple weeks I have just felt like I wanted to leave everything and die.

I feel frozen in place with anxiety, and can't seem to get myself going into a good routine again, and this morning my idiot ex just triggered the hell out of me with a bunch of dumb distorted texts about the past, and about our daughter whom she's abandoned and blamed it on me.

Hence my mood is

😡😡

I needed to get this out somewhere.

Thx

[MaggieSylvie in reply to Gandolfication]

Oh, I'm so sorry - after all your achievements, you've had this set-back. You've been triggered into the anxiety zone by your ex, who may herself have been triggered by something else. I hope you can find just the one short thing to say to her or do for her and your daughter, and then relax. You can be sure, as you know, that this too will pass. I feel that things happen quickly in your life, so who knows what next week will bring. I hope you can do something a bit fun this weekend.

[MaggieSylvie in reply to MaggieSylvie]

Actually, triggered while already in the anxiety zone. A pile-up of work and "stuff" can certainly make you feel like throwing your hands up, but do what you need to do and take one step. i'm in court on 18th April and I can't even get advice without knowing all the new "facts" that have appeared. My partner's blood sugar is too high (he is now in hospital) and it's been impossible to engage him in conversation recently. If I could just get him to remember things and make the odd phone call, it would be a great help but it's a struggle. Sometimes we are blocked by other peoples' "stuckness".