Thanks for Being Part of the Solution!

Recently I wrote a very long email to my high school peers and included a recounting of what I thought were mental health / addiction challenges affecting someone in that group who died suddenly. After reaching out to high school peers and receiving a full gamut of responses including both positive and negative, I want to say how much I value this on-line “community” at this blog site where people can talk freely about mental health and addiction full-throttle or head-on.

Over the past few years, I have grown accustomed to talking openly here at this blog and at others’ blogs about mental health challenges I experience that include the full gamut of symptoms including mania, depression, mixed states, sometimes crippling anxiety, body image challenges, hallucinations, hospitalizations and others.

I just want to say thank you to those of you who are in this on-line “community” for helping to provide an atmosphere that allows people with mental health and addiction issues to talk freely without a whole lot of push-back or stigma. Ten to fifteen years or so ago, such an online “community” possibly or probably did not exist? Not sure when people started blogging about mental health? For me, following posts and posting posts is an important part of my self-care. I thank you for your contributions even if you are in the “reader” versus “reply/writer” category. Everyone plays a part.

Finally, thank you again for participating in this “community.” I believe that stigma reduction is a crucial by-product of the collective posts here at these blogs about mental health and addiction. Thanks for being part of the solution!

Various Interventions for Stress?

Plans to take my daughter to college next week are leaving me stressed with a capital S. I have scheduled an extra appointment with my therapist for tomorrow. I have gone up a little on my Clozapine. Perhaps not enough…? Everything feels very stressful. Making plans for wisdom teeth removal in December. Making plans to board the dog. Consider changing meds – this will be held off until September. Making sure my daughter is OK during move-in. Friends and family say this stress is normal when sending a child off to college. OK so it’s normal. Why do I feel so un-normal?

I have been taught not to be afraid to ask for what you need….. I am asking now for your understanding and support. The more “yeah it’s normal” s I get the better I think I will feel. Brother can you spare a dime? Or a least a word of support that this too will pass?

I have just discovered

I have just discovered that my blood pressure goes through the roof when I drink caffeine. For 17 years I have limited my coffee intake largely to the morning to wake up from sleepy-time meds. Sometimes I have had an occasional afternoon coffee. But my blood pressure has been giving me problems so I have been taking my levels at home several times a day.

What I am finding is that my blood pressure spikes in the morning after my daily caffeine ritual. I have cut my caffeine in half over the years making coffee with half caf and half decaf. But to be honest it sort of defies the purpose when I have four cups of this mixture a day anyway.

I have posted a message on the patient portal at my primary care physician’s office asking whether I need to curtail caffeine. I am almost sure her answer will be to cut out caffeine completely. I can do this, but it will be a huuuuge adjustment. I use the caffeine each morning to kickstart myself after a long medication induced sleep on clozapine/clauzerile.

I am not looking forward to this change in habits/behavior. But perhaps it will help with the bipolar highs and lows as well.

Anybody else have caffeine challenges? Anybody else asked to go off coffee to help with health conditions? If so, do you have any secrets for how you accomplished it?

Does anyone besides me have symptom exaggeration on vacation?

Vacation is supposed to be the time to relax and rejuvenate and get ready for what comes next. For me though, vacation can be a time of challenge.

Often during vacation we are with 3 to 4 generations of family under one roof. While there is generally no direct mal-behavior toward me from family, I can get overwhelmed with this many people sleeping and eating and playing under one roof. I am often unable to keep my same routine or best perhaps I can modify it – I am definitely a creature of habit.

During this summer’s vacation with 4 generations of family I had a bit of a meltdown. I was being extra-sensitive to the comments of my seventeen-year-old daughter when I should have known better. My Mom chatted with me about it for a while. My sister chatted with me about it for a while. My sister even let me know that when her boys were 17, she went through her husband to communicate to them. She could not get answers to direct questions or to requested behavior change. That made me feel better that my daughter’s shortness of temper with me was more a product of her age rather than that I am not measuring up due to the bipolar.

All in all we had very nice vacation times this summer with my husband’s family in June and with my family in July. I am working on letting teen-age behavior just roll off my back. Of note is that now we are back home, my daughter’s behavior is nicer and more respectful than any time since the beginning of the pandemic. I think we all forget how the pandemic has made us live on top of each other and each other’s emotions while in quarantine.

Anybody else have a vacation hiccup this summer to share? Anyone have a vacation where you might have experienced an unexpected meltdown? Were you able to work through the bulk of the meltdown by talking to others and getting more perspective? Is there anything you could name to prevent a similar hiccup in the future?

Summer has gone by quickly

This year in particular summer has gone by quickly. My daughter started her Senior year in high school in-person (full days) yesterday after a summer jam-packed with schoolwork and college essay prep. In some respects it doesn’t seem like we got much of a summer in at all with the looming work of summer assignments and prep for college work. We also spent two weeks looking at 9 potential colleges.

In addition to be noted is that kids are back in the classroom full capacity not just at 50% so there’s bound to be more risk circulating about the school. We will be watching trends closely.

All in all though, I believe we’re off to a good start at Senior Year. My goal is to be more hands off on the whole college thing and work to let my daughter manage most of it. I am sure I may not meet this goal 100% of the time. But it is true next year I will not be able to intervene in the day-to-day business of a college Freshman! Kudos to me if I can learn this early this year!

Anybody else transitioning kids back to in person learning? Or getting ready to be an empty nester?

Are we having fun yet?

I have spent a good bit more than half of my life dealing with a bipolar disorder diagnosis. Thanks to modern science I have been on a drug called clozapine since 2008 which treats treatment-resistant bipolar illness. Since taking the medicine I have been hospitalization free for almost 13 years.

While that is an accomplishment for me, I would like to raise a subject that often alludes me – having fun. It feels like most of my energy is wrapped up in getting things done, handling things in my life and my family’s life and staying symptom-free or almost.

What is completely missing from my life however is the element of having fun. What is fun anyway? Is it laughing aloud with family or friends? Is it listening to music I knew before I was diagnosed at age 22 that feels like letting go? Is it cooking a meal with my daughter — not so much full of laughs but full of good times?

In general, I feel like my illness has made me a doer. As long as I am doing this or that and fulfilling obligations of wife and mother and daughter I give myself a grade of doing OK. But still, it feels like something is missing – that illusive idea of having fun.

Does anybody have a bucket list for laughter that they’d like to share? I will be working on a new list soon – a list that includes things that don’t just need to get done but also includes whether or not I am enjoying myself. I know it’s hard to fathom having fun when you are depressed or even when you are manic since that’s not the fun I am talking about. I am talking about fun that is centered in a centered self.

Does anybody want to help get the having fun list together? I think we all could benefit from reading it and/or trying to help create it?

Safety, Society, Stigma, Stability: the Sound Phenomenon (repost)

Back around 1998, when I wrote the letter to physicist David Bohm in the UK, as mentioned in a prior post, I did not know he was already deceased. The topic of the letter was something I call “the sound phenomenon.” This refers to statements I hear that may be jumbled from reality. This poor hearing may date back to loss of hearing and perhaps brain damage associated with strong prescription medication use in the 1980s. Or it may be a form of ecological or illogical communication.

In any case as an example, someone may utter a statement like “I am going to the restroom.” What I may hear is “There is no restroom….” So either due to damage in my hearing capabilities or due to some form of “hearing voices,” I hear the statement that has been uttered or better said perceived in a non-logical light. I call this event “the sound phenomenon” and also attribute it to ecological versus logical thought.

The letter to David Bohm in 1998 asked for the development of a double-blind study in which “the sound phenomenon” would be studied. In the letter, I also described a dream I had involving Einstein in which he and I were arguing about a topic (potentially time) and that I felt very self-assured in my opinion and in challenging him. I also talked in the letter to David Bohm about my thoughts about linear time versus circular time. In my view at the time, linear time is the time of chronological events. Circular time is the time of dreams and of the subconscious. Somehow this differentiation is associated with matter and anti-matter.

Understanding “the sound phenomenon” is something that continues to occupy my thoughts some 20 years later after writing the letter to David Bohm. I continue to try to listen to what is said but not give it too much credence in linear time if it does not “make sense.” I tend to think of utterances in “the sound phenomenon” as similar to a Freudian slip where the world of circular time may be butting into the world of linear time. Yet, I have no real explanation as of yet for whether this is an accurate assessment of “the sound phenomenon.”

I don’t believe “the sound phenomenon” is the same as hearing voices though it might be. I have had that experience early on in my mental health history. In that case, what was or is heard is typically something that is not grounded in reality at all but is discernible to the ear. With “the sound phenomenon” I hear maybe half of the idea communicated directly with the other half miscommunicated or garbled into nonsense and rather not discernible to the ear.

I find that “the sound phenomenon” occurs in any number of places – out in public, in the home, at church, watching TV – which logically might indicate that these occurrences are due to hearing failures on my part due to inadvertently or potentially “over-using” anti-psychotic medications in my twenties. I really do not know the answer and have accepted to date that I really don’t know the explanation for these events. What I have added to my behavior is asking the person who said what I perceive of as an illogical statement to repeat him or herself. Usually that involves clearing up the hearing “mistake” and a repeat of a more logical statement. I find that asking the person talking to repeat him or herself makes me realize that this is either a hearing fault on my part or some sort of temporal miscommunication like a Freudian slip.

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Clothing then and now (reposted)

As a note before this repost, I have successfully maneuvered getting 10 to 13 pounds off (and stayed off) in the last several months. This has largely been due to introducing daily exercise into my day – walking and/or yoga. This is the first time I have been able to stick to such a routine in 17 years. Oddly, my evening snacking has not made the weight gain disappear but it does tell me that I could get another 7 to 10 pounds off if I could just stop the snacking / stress eating in the evening after dinner. The repost is below:

I have continued to have some sort of fixation with clothes and clothing – not only the color in which they appear but also the “privacy” of the label. Sometimes this label is not private and is emblazoned on the back pocket of the jeans as in Calvin Klein jeans from the 1970’s or even the Levi’s name tag on that ever so timeless brand of clothing. I am unsure what this fixation on clothing entails exactly. I do know that it is tied with some body image issues that get complicated because of my need to take regular meds for my bipolar condition.

Throughout high school and college I remained a size 6 to 8 when I perhaps should have been a size ten. After meds were introduced in my life I was almost always a size 8 to 10. After bearing a child and substantially increasing my meds, I have been more a size 12 to 14. My goal at this juncture in life is to be back at that size 12. Perhaps my obsession with clothing is in parallel to my own body image issues, perhaps not.

In any case, the preoccupation with clothing seems to have something also to so with pattern recognition. If four people out of ten wear red to the office that day, I notice it. If black was worn by person A on day one and by persons B, C, D, and E, I notice it. Not that I really ever did anything with the information, it was just a layer of the type of perceptions I would have – extraneous and meaningless maybe or maybe not. Definitely with a focus on color patterns and patterning.

In my teens, I spent hours shopping for the right clothing. Today, I abhor shopping for clothes largely because I am two sizes bigger than I would like to be. The preoccupation with clothes at an early age is probably all wrapped up in image. I have very little to say in that regard today as Ego is largely drained from my daily events. I tend today to wear the same make of clothes all the time and often repeat the same outfit once a week. In fact, I do not care about clothing at all. It is a chore to buy clothes and it is a chore to pick out clothes for any given day.

While being diagnosed with an eating disorder is something I have considered as relevant to my mental health, I feel that my weight gain issues center more on body image issues and medication use. For years, I bought into the fashion magazine mindset that you were not beautiful unless you were a size 6 or size 8. For years throughout high school and college and into my twenties, I ate and exercised in order to maintain a size 6 or a size 8 figure. Often this meant running three to five miles several times a week and counting caloric intake to be about 1000 calories a day. When I became pregnant at age 38 I was about a size ten. After giving birth to my daughter, I have stayed at a size twelve if not a size fourteen. I currently have very little discipline in the food and exercise realm largely in my own view because I feel I am reacting to years of over-exercising and over-dieting.

So it is that my size in clothes has moved from a size 6 in high school to a size 14 in married life and after child-birth. This continues to be a goal of mine to return again to size 12 through a combination of exercise and food monitoring. However, it is something admittedly that until quite recently has fallen off the radar screen. Some of this frustration and back-pedaling about eating and exercise may include the fact that meds are often associated with weight gain. In my mind, I tell myself it is better to have an extra twenty pounds on while taking medicine than it is to be a at a model’s weight with little or no mental stability. This is particularly true when I start to be honest with myself that fasting from breakfast time through lunchtime is associated with mood issues since blood sugar levels are not being addressed.

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Airports Then and Now (reposted)

Follows Fear of Flying post

As you may understand, for years if not decades after this event at the airport (see Fear of Flying post) , I have had an intense fear of flying. Every time I go to the airport I feel the original anxiety of that day in February 1985. The intercom voice announcements seem to echo off the walls and the floors in some surreal fashion. The lack of windows to the outside leaves me feeling claustrophobic always. In the early years, this meant I had to be escorted by family to the runway gate if I were traveling alone. (This was before the days of post 9/11 security checks.) Years later even if I am traveling with family, I tend to be hyper aware of safety issues at all times when I am at an airport. My thoughts become more elevated and I am prone to high anxiety. Strangely (or logically) enough these fears largely take place at the airport itself and seldom revolve around safety issues pre-flight or mid-flight while on the plane. I am not very fearful once I am on the airplane or in flight. The anxiety is almost always associated with being in the airport and feeling unsafe. Gladly, my husband is also not fond of flying, so we tend to make marathon drives for our summer and family vacations.

As a side note on airports and airport travel, I tend to have a very hard time with changing time zones when I am flying. When I am traveling by car or by train this is not so much the case as the time change is gradual. Because of this time zone change difficulty, I largely avoided flying to Europe for almost thirty plus years. Even a flight from Baltimore to San Francisco was difficult in that I would experience a three-hour time change and all the difficulties associated with that, particularly impacts on sleeping. In the last few years, I have progressed through my fears and my sleep issues of changing time zones and have traveled to Europe twice – once was for a conference in Zurich, Switzerland in July 2012 and once was for a wedding and a conference in the United Kingdom in July 2013. Thanks to Melatonin as prescribed by my psycho-pharmacologist, I was able to make these trips with relative ease in the area of jet lag and adjusting sleep cycles.

I am very thankful that my psycho-pharmacologist as an MD was open to prescribing a relatively non-traditional form of medicine for jet lag. This option worked beautifully for me and has given me hope that overseas travel is no longer a huge worry or huge hurdle to overcome. In general, I am very blessed to have care givers for my bipolar illness who bridge traditional medicines and their prescription with alternative medicines such as Melatonin.

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Smelling like a Dog (reposted)

The idea of paranormal thought and healing was referenced in a book suggested to me by a friend from college, also a Medical Doctor, about twenty years ago. The book called The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot [1] suggests that paranormal thought and healing may be more common than we realize. This is a tricky insight, but I think one that is worth exploring.

Consider thought as if it were on a continuum from normal logical thought on one extreme to paranoid thought on the other extreme. Where would we place the thoughts of autistic people who are on the spectrum and able to compute incredible math equations or know any date in time without any degree of difficulty? What if every person with bipolar illness or a behavioral health disorder has or had an autistic or quasi-autistic child within? What might be needed to give room to this quasi-autistic child within to develop and gain confidence to move forward in life with the accompanying adult? What if the adult with bipolar illness or a behavioral health challenge could regain health by honoring this quasi-autistic child and his/her inherent fragility? Perhaps if the quasi-autistic child within had an audience who listened to these fragile thoughts, communication exchange might be able to occur before thoughts reach the other end of the spectrum at paranoia? Perhaps if the child within is acknowledged for having some extra set of insights, care givers might recognize those abilities and acknowledge them, perhaps stopping the paranoid thought process before it occurs. This is a hugely large question and one that requires behavioral health scientists to review and explore and evaluate.

I talk about this “paranormal thought” in terms of a dog’s abilities to smell or to hear because we readily accept that a dog can smell and hear things that we don’t smell and hear. However, it is much more difficult for us to believe that some of us humans may see or hear things beyond that of a “regular” person or differently from a “regular” person much like a blind person may have a corresponding enhanced musical ability. For every disability might there be a corresponding ability? The paranormal thought process may also be linked to the age of my inner child who for these purposes may be about six years old – more discussion on that later.

Shortly after reading The Holographic Universe, I wrote a letter to physicist David Bohm requesting that a study be performed that looked at human perceptions of time, including circular time (the world of dreams) and linear time (the world of events). I had no idea that David Bohm was deceased when I wrote that letter to him in the mid-1990s but have felt and continue to feel over the years that work in quantum physics and work in paranormal thought are somehow intrinsically linked. Matter and anti-matter may correlate loosely to real time and to dream time.

Recently in the past few years I have come to understand my six-year-old child within through these lenses. I feel that I must learn to listen to what this child has to say or what she is feeling. I feel that by listening to this child I may be able to connect to the child and the vulnerability before my thoughts have migrated to full-blown paranoia. This is an extremely important but difficult path. There is a huge amount of research out there about honoring the child within. However, there is not a lot of research out there about how honoring extra-sensory perceptions or thought patterns may help quell or disperse or render neutral paranoid thoughts and paranoid perceptions. In addition to dispersing paranoid thought before it begins, this approach may potentially shed light on some insights that are down the scale from logical thought but not at the other end of paranoid thought either.

During the past few years as I have been locating and holding up that six-year-old child, I have felt extraordinarily vulnerable, prone to having extreme bouts of tears as past fears have come unglued. During this time of elevating this child of six, I have sought more frequent meetings with my therapist in terms of translating this new dynamic of an elevated inner child to everyday realities of a job search, getting a healthy dinner on the table, taking and managing meds, getting an exercise regime established and managing moods in general.

Quite late in my own emotional development, I have concluded that this six-year-old child may have certain insights beyond normal sensory perception. The challenge now is to find the means and wherewithal to listen to that child within rather than minimize that child’s “doglike” abilities. The impetus in this world is to discount any sort of extra sensory perceptions we may have (that that child may have) in preference for logic and all things explainable through reason in this world. So far, it is clear that as a society we value perceptions that are logical and shun perceptions that may arise through intuition or some alternate form of perception not related to logic.

I call this type of intuition or perception “unknowledge” or “illogical communication” or “ecological communication.” We don’t expect nature or feelings to follow the linear laws of logic. We expect nature to follow cycles and courses of development that are multi-dimensional and cyclical. It follows that some of us, perhaps those with a bipolar or other mood disorder diagnoses, have trains of thought that are ecologically informed rather than logically informed. Perhaps a lack of reason may not necessarily be a bad thing if we can tease out the dangerous components that are correlated with paranoia before they can even exist or present. Perhaps if we catch illogical and ecological thought at the onset before connections to paranoid perceptions, this illogical and ecological thought can provide insights and awareness that the logical mind cannot perceive.