Anxiety is a bully

I have been journaling since March 2021 about strides I am making in practicing yoga or walking on a regular basis. A week or two ago, I decided to include journaling about my anxiety in the same log. Once I started writing about my anxiety, it was as if I could not stop.

I called my anxiety a bully in that it instills pain wherever it goes. I called my anxiety cancerous in that the anxiety causes good health to go bad. I wrote and wrote and wrote about anxiety not being a friend but being a bully and how there was no room in my home for a bully. I do not allow bullying to occur in the neighborhood or at school, so why would I accept bullying at home?

I know I don’t always have control over my emotions and that is why I have a diagnosis of bipolar, but it is soooo helpful to be able to call out anxiety as a bully and think of it as something that is pervading my home rather than a feature of the bipolar I just have to accept. It is true I cannot control the anxiety when it occurs, I can only control how I respond to it when it does occur. But calling it a bully somehow helps me to think of the anxiety as “other than” and not me. I am not my anxiety. I am not my diagnosis. I am not my bipolar. My anxiety exists as a bully as part of my illness. I can call it out for what it is and I can tell it off and I can tell it it is not welcome in my person, in my home, or in my relationships with family and friends.

Does anybody else have coping mechanisms for anxiety that seem to help by differentiating the anxiety from the person experiencing it? Is it helpful to you too to think of anxiety as a bully to be kept at bay?

Anybody Experiencing Memory Loss (revisited)?

This original blog post on memory loss and mental illness posted almost 2 weeks ago has had the most traffic of any of my posts: https://wordpress .com/block-editor/post/mental -health-is-health.com/473

For that reason I am revisiting it. With this update, I am trying to understand when people experience memory loss, what kind of memory loss it is and how long it lasts.

Are your memory issues associated with certain episodes of mental illness, meaning they just occur when you are in a depressive state or manic state or the equivalent for you?
Do these memory issues linger after the episode is complete?
In other words is your memory loss temporary during the episode or does the memory loss remain after the episode is complete?
Are you more likely to experience short-term memory impacts or longer term memory impacts?
What coping mechanisms like writing notes, leaving reminders on your phone have you adopted to help manage the memory loss?
Do these mechanisms help you manage the memory loss?
Would you say the memory loss is mild, moderate or significant?
Have you talked this through with your care team / doctor / therapist?
Do you believe the memory loss is a function of the mental illness or the medication or both?
Do you feel covid-19 is a factor in your memory loss?

My memory loss issues are largely short-term — where did I put the car keys or the phone? I also might forget going to a certain restaurant a month or two ago. My memory issues tend to exist during and after episodes and are not episode-specific. The memory loss is there whether I am showing signs of bipolar break-through symptoms or not but are worse for example when my anxiety is high. So far, I have not taken this up with my therapist and my doctor since the problem has been on the mild side. But since the memory issues may be getting more prominent I will likely share with my therapist and my doctor at my next appointments. I am not sure whether the memory loss is medication-specific or illness-specific. I use notes and to-do lists all the time to help manage as well as a few reminders on my phone. I use a hand-written calendar to track appointments and dates. I also use my online calendar to manage appointments as well. I have a bulletin board set up in the kitchen as well to post things that need my attention in the short-term or mostly in the long term. I would say covid-19 is a huge impact since all the days do run together one to the next.

Thanks for sharing your insights on memory loss as you are able.

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Life before Anxiety

I have limited or very limited memories of what life was like for me as a child and/or a teen before bipolar illness hit me in my twenties as a college student. This is particularly true of my early childhood years before middle school. These memories before middle school are largely blank. They are not bad memories, per say, they are just not memories at all. Like a blank screen on a TV set — all images gone with little sound either. I am seeking to explore the lack of early memories as time moves forward and as my therapy progresses.

In high school, I was a typical over-achiever and straight A student. I graduated at the top of my high school class and was voted by high school peers to be “the most likely to succeed.” I had a steady high school boyfriend for my Junior and Senior years in high school. My study peers were the Advanced Placement teens while my social peers were “the in-crowd.” Somehow it was important for me to feel that I was part of “the in-crowd” rather than just being satisfied with my academic peer group. Most of my memories of high school are very strong as I was able to hold onto this vision of myself as “successful.” These memories are much more vigorous than memories from the years before middle school.

Most of my memory absence appears to be before middle school years. When I was in sixth grade, my parents divorced. I tended to manage what I now recognize as what may have been anxiety and feelings of depression by becoming a great student and high achiever. I felt somehow if I could be a straight A student, there was no wrong happening in my life and all was right with the world.

My Dad remarried a short time after I transferred in sixth grade to a private school. When I was a Sophomore in high school, my Mom also remarried. With both parents happily remarried, I continued to live life relatively anxiety-free or so it seemed. I was a super student and a valued member of the cheerleading squad, the track team and the student council. I was the top student in my Senior class and voted in as “the May Queen” by my Senior class peers.

It was not until I arrived at Ivy College that I first experienced anxiety that I was aware of. Suddenly everybody was as smart as I was. Suddenly my coping mechanisms for stress – being the top in my class – seemed very very far away. I took to studying all the time to keep my grade point average in the “A” zone rather than adopting an acceptance for “B” work. This preponderance for “A” work I think was a factor in my inability to distance myself from the come-on’s and other subpar behaviors of my college thesis professor– Professor Flannigan — during my Senior year. The coping mechanisms I had adopted in my middle school and upper school years were inadequate for coping with the challenges in college days, particularly those challenges of my late Junior and early Senior year days. Perhaps unlike many college students, in college I did not appear to grow out of or beyond coping mechanisms that were helpful in my younger years in middle and high school.

In addition, it may have been that Professor Flannigan, untrained therapist that he was, was somehow trespassing dangerously into the “safe world” of that six-year-old child while that six-year-old child was striving desperately to stay on course. Once again, Flannigan’s assuming to be a trained therapist or acting like one was likely very, very dangerous for me particularly if sexual or other abuse was present for me as a young child.

What has changed since college days? There is still a blank screen there where there should be early memories, but at least now I am in a place to work through those voids with a trained therapist rather than an emotionally immature egotist.

Here’s Something to Consider

I was just wondering this morning what we all would have done if there had been no internet invented before the onset of covid-19. How would we keep up our blogging? How would we research best practices for covid-19 symptoms? How could we have virtual meetings with doctors? How could we keep up to date with loved ones, family and friends without facetime? How would the kids be doing their remote learning in grade schools, high schools and colleges? How would we keep up with workplace meetings on Zoom? Just imagine how much more isolated we would be feeling without any of these coping mechanisms. Perhaps we need a shout-out to the internet to give thanks for our ability to connect (however limited) to each other in these uncertain times.