i wish i could relate a little better. i am bipolar, but i've only ever had one episode of depression and the rest is mania or hypomania, which is pretty much my baseline at this point. my old shrink dr. t was amazing and he and i had discussed how we had hoped the dsm-v would include a criteria for unipolar mania, since they obviously have a listing for strict depression. but nay, no such luck no matter how often i check on their progress.
i try to medicate though. i can't stand the "zombie" meds, so i refuse to take any of them, and many of them don't work on me anyway. but there are a lot out there, if you ever wish to look into it further, that don't have that effect on people. usually they're in the anti-convulsant class and were initially prescribed for epilepsy. funny how we still have no idea how the brain really works.
i don't retract though, if that makes sense. i like to confront my shit head-on. as i explained to a good friend last night, who battles with severe depression, i often envision myself as a sort of atlas figure, only that rather than holding the weight of the world on my shoulders, i am juggling all of these extremely heavy balls, and each one of these balls is a feeling or a situation or a memory or something that is causing me pain. and every time i share openly with people, more and more people, about one of these problems held in one of these balls, it's like the ball slowly becomes lighter until it is nothing but a phantom or a ghost. i mean, it never fully goes away, but the weight of it is lifted and i can stand up straighter and have fewer balls to juggle. i spread it around. it doesn't even matter so much how i do it, or with whom, but the more i do it, speak about it, write about, give it to new people, they get little bits of it and slowly i have fewer balls to juggle and less weighing me down.
and then all i have are the ghosts that haunt me, and the new issues that continually pop up.
i don't know if that helps at all, but it works for me, and so i thought i might share, just in case.
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i try to medicate though. i can't stand the "zombie" meds, so i refuse to take any of them, and many of them don't work on me anyway. but there are a lot out there, if you ever wish to look into it further, that don't have that effect on people. usually they're in the anti-convulsant class and were initially prescribed for epilepsy. funny how we still have no idea how the brain really works.
i don't retract though, if that makes sense. i like to confront my shit head-on. as i explained to a good friend last night, who battles with severe depression, i often envision myself as a sort of atlas figure, only that rather than holding the weight of the world on my shoulders, i am juggling all of these extremely heavy balls, and each one of these balls is a feeling or a situation or a memory or something that is causing me pain. and every time i share openly with people, more and more people, about one of these problems held in one of these balls, it's like the ball slowly becomes lighter until it is nothing but a phantom or a ghost. i mean, it never fully goes away, but the weight of it is lifted and i can stand up straighter and have fewer balls to juggle. i spread it around. it doesn't even matter so much how i do it, or with whom, but the more i do it, speak about it, write about, give it to new people, they get little bits of it and slowly i have fewer balls to juggle and less weighing me down.
and then all i have are the ghosts that haunt me, and the new issues that continually pop up.
i don't know if that helps at all, but it works for me, and so i thought i might share, just in case.