Bipolar humour

If you're bipolar and you're taking medication,
this will probably make you smile. It may also
invoke a moment of "been there, done that".

Being bipolar means i am, relative to most people,
living in an altered state. When one takes medication,
one is also living in an altered state- albeit one that 
allows one to function more better, more often.

That's the theory anyway, and for many of us, 
it holds true more often than not.

But from time to time, one can't help but wonder 
"Who am I really?". Who am I when I'm not on drugs?
Does the world still affect me the same way it used to
before the medication? What am I really feeling?

Compliance, for me, is a matter of percentages.
The longer I live with this diagnosis and the longer
I take medication, the more I become aware of how
it's affecting me. There's also a resentment factor that
creeps in along the way... something along the lines
of "fuck this- other people don't have to take drugs
every day just to be who they (sort of) are. Other
people don't have to spend $200 every month just
to be a human being.


Childish, I guess... but nonetheless real (sic).


*


Bipolar Humour 2
(or should that be Bipolar 2 Humour?)

I'm at my shrinks' for my regular appointment
to get my meds renewed and we're running the
checklist of usual questions.
He gets to the one about suicide:

"Any thoughts recently about self-destruction?"

"No more than usual".

There's a pause. We both smile
and move on to the next question.


Another example..

and the beat goes on.
La-de-da-de-dee...



*

Bipolar - what's wrong with this picture?

When you do an image search for "bipolar",

you get a lot of pictures like these...

i know that a broader dialogue and awareness
about bipolar and other such topics is better
than silence and shame and blah, blah...

... and i'm willing to believe that the people
who created these images - and the thousands
of others quite like them - mean well, and are trying
to get people to feel the pain a little, and it's hard
to express something so inexpressible...

... but as somebody ten years down the road
of the diagnosed... with some experience
in the creation of images and communicating
about challenging topics...

i really don't like them.

on a bad day, i frikin' hate them.

why?

for starters, because they are wrong.

they are all about the extremes.

the 'crazy high' and the deepest darkest of the lows.

and that's not how it is. most of la vida bipolar,
in my experience, is lived between these edges.

by portraying the extremes, they misrepresent
the reality of bipolar living.

by going for the drama, they misrepresent that reality
to those who do not know any better.

there is no line running down the middle of my life
or the lives of the bipolar people i know.

it's not on or off.

it's not digital.

it's not that simple.

it's a continuum.

and scary pictures don't help anybody.






<<>

Bipolar versus Normal

Sometimes i wonder what life would
be like if i wasn't bipolar.


What would it be like
to be Normal?

Not like... forever or anything...
but maybe for a day.
An afternoon, perhaps,
or maybe an evening.

How would i react to things i like?

Would i find Beefheart and Dali strange
all of a sudden?

If i was suddenly Normal,
would i find things that usually make me
want to barf suddenly 'cute'?

Would i find myself more at ease in the world,
or just uneasy in another kind of a way?

Would i stop noticing all the sights and sounds
around me that 'distract' me from 'what's going on'?

Would i think fewer 'dark thoughts'
and more wonderful ones?

Would i feel trapped?
Claustrophobic?


Calm?

Would things creep me out less?
Or more?

Or would it all be pretty much the same,
only without the meds?

,

Is It A Bad Attitude? Bipolar? ...or both...?

does everyone who is bipolar
have a "bad attitude"

or is it just me, and everyone i know
who's been diagnosed?

hard to say...

the times in which we live

are such that if one doesn't have a bad attitude


it may well mean you ar....


a) illiterate


b) not paying attention


c) straight up stupid



d) over-medicating

it's an interesting time to have "a mental illness"

implicit in the diagnoses
is the the idea that one exists outside the "sane"..
the normal.

which is - allegedly - to be preferred.

i'm not sure that if i wasn't bipolar
i would still have "issues" with the pervasive
bullshit that the "private sector" and my government
tell me everyday.

but of course, it's one of the things
i can never really know.

*

Modern life causes brain overload

 











One of the interesting things about being bipolar for me
is my reluctance to assume that my experience of any
little thing in the world is widely shared. I know it's possible,
but it's not my my default.

So when I saw this study on line one night, I was more
than curious. I've felt overwhelmed by information most
of my life. I marvel at the way so many people seem able
to move through this world with an ease, a comfort level
that has always eluded me.

My usual response to the feeling of information overload
is usually to withdraw- go offline, unplug the phone,
go for a walk, go to sleep, what-have-you... 

I try to calm down and pull myself back together, and get
to whatever as soon as I can...sometimes an hour later,
sometimes longer later. People react to my reaction with
anything from annoyance to anger to dismissal, and go on
to the next person on their list.

... and despite my resolve not to project my reactions on
to other people, there is a part of me that thinks bipolar
people are sometimes similar to the tunnel canaries, used
by miners in days gone by to detect unhealthy changes
in their environment.

Anyway, getting back to that study, here are a couple
of things that gave me pause:

People are bombarded with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes
of information a day. Through email, the internet, television
and other media, people are deluged with around 100,000
words a day – equivalent to 23 words per second,
researchers claim.

“They are so busy processing information
from all directions they are losing the
tendency to think and to feel.

"Much of what they are exposed to is superficial.
People are sacrificing depth and feeling and becoming
cut off and disconnected from other people.”

Part of why it struck me, I think, is because this really
reflects my own experience of people in our digital age.

Something to think about...

 

or not.



I guess.

-30-

.

Depression - the dark, dirty secret

Is curiosity an inherent part of living bipolar?

One person is not much of a statistical sample, but it's
certainly part of my bipolar experience, Ever since I was
diagnosed, I have read a lot about "my condition".

Sometimes I learn useful things. Sometimes it makes
me laugh. Sometimes all it does is make it clear how
much of my bipolar life is not studied/discussed/etc...

Case in point: depression.

It's not that depression is not studied/discussed/etc-
if anything, it seems to be the primary focus of most
studies and discussions but from my perspective, there's
one key element of depression that never seems
to come out.

How fucking boring it is...

Being depressed is central to the bipolar experience,
to the point where unfortunately it virtually defines it.
By comparison, "mania" or as I call it "the fear of mania"
is a very distant second place.

Depending on whether you are BP1 or BP2, and just how
BP1 or BP2 you are, you may well spend over 60% of your
life being depressed. When one factors in the time spent
transiting into or out of depression, the odds are you will
spend most of your life being slightly to seriously depressed.

Often, this is a fact of life that is largely out of one's
personal control. Medication and/or various "lifestyle"
choices (nutrition, exercise, etc) can mitigate or even
minimize the impact of one's personal dark tide, but it
will always be a part of life.

And anyone who doesn't think that that this gets really
boring after a while (a) has never been there, (b) is living
in a very active state of denial or (c) is suffering from an
almost total failure of the imagination.

The darkest of the dark sides of depression is called "suicide
ideation". That's jargon-speak for "suicidal thoughts". Again,
depending on whether you are BP1 or BP2, and just how BP1
or 2 you are, this is probably a significant part of your
bipolar experience.

When these thoughts first start coming on, they can be very
frightening. Then, as time goes on they may even become
(and here's another dirty little secret of depression for you)strangely comforting.

That may sound very strange to some, but when most of
one's waking hours are spent in varying states of depression,
when all one can think about is what a worthless sack of
shit one really is, it is not really as strange as all that to
know that to find some slight comfort in the fact that
there is a way to never feel like that anymore.

But again, in my limited experience, once one was actually
explored the possibility of taking that step, and done some
research, and perhaps even decided on which way one
would do the deed, it gets really old, really fast.

To have the same thought recur, over and over, against
one's will is a great big goddamn bore. At some point, it can
even become as big a problem as the original feeling of
depression that brought one to thinking about suicide in the
first- ie- it is so, so, so boring to continually find ones' self
thinking about it (again, against one's will) that one can
start to crave release from how boring it is...














It's not a bad thing to confront life's most fundamental
question - to be or not be - once in a while. It's not a bad
thing to pause on occasion and look at one's life to see
if one has or has not been the kind of person one aspires
to be.

In fact, I don't think it's something that "normal" people
seem to do enough, frankly.

But as a full-time thing?

It's worse than useless. It's destructive. It takes the time
and energy one would like to like to put into doing useful
things in the universe, liken trying to change the
government or doing the laundry.

And when it is a state of mind that one has little or no
control over, it is almost a meta-state of depression
wherein one gets depressed about being depressed
all the time.

And when it goes on for days, and then weeks,
and then sometimes for months, 24/7?

It gets boring. Really, really, really boring.






.

Bipolar as Mood Disorder

There is an old cliche in Christian culture that the devil's
greatest trick is convincing us that he doesn't exist.
Sometimes I wonder if the inverse is just as true - ie -
the church's greatest trick is convincing us that god does.

I don't know if either one is true, and it couldn't matter
less, because (a) in the absence of such Absolute knowledge,
I just try to live in ways that help - or at least don't hurt -
other people and (b) even if I did know The Truth,
nobody would believe me anyway.

And anyway, I think there is another trickster among
us whose impact is just as profound who attracts much
less attention... words.

Words are really tricky.

They are tricky because we each and all assume we know
what they mean. On a personal level, this is probably
inevitable and maybe even benign.

Where it gets tricky, to the point of dangerous, is when
we assume that what a word means to us is what it
means to the person we're talking to...


***

A simple example would be "blue".

When I say "blue", I think of a dark shade called Navy Blue
that was probably imprinted by a set of Laurentien pencil
crayons when I was very young.







You may have thought of the colour of the sky,
or the sea, or a pair of pants or a berry on a bush.







You might even think of that same pencil crayon,
but the odds are you didn't...
yet that's what I meant.


***

Who cares.

Most of the time, none of us- including me. It's so obvious,
we're so busy, so use an adjective or two, blah, blah blah...


The only reason it's on my mind right now is because I was
reading up on some aspect or other of "bipolar"and once
again saw it described as a "Mood Disorder".


I had one of those strange moments where it was like
I was seeing this term for the first time, and it made me
go "Hmmmm....".

It reminded me of this graphic that I did recently:








Everyone has moods. Good moods, bad moods...
you don't have to be polarity-gifted to be in one mood
or another, or even to be called "moody".

The difference, when you are bipolar, is profound.

You don't have a mood- the mood has you.

You can't just think a happy thought or eat a Snickers bar
or have a coffee and move on.

That feeling of depression is not something you can
just shake off, or think your way out of. Even if you can
convince yourself to pull up your socks, it's not going to
change a damn thing*.


If you've experienced this, you know what I mean.

If you haven't experienced it, (a) you are soooo lucky
and (b) "depression", like "blue" is something we don't
share an understanding of, and we never really will.





*yes, there are things you can do that may alleviate
or even dispel that "mood" for a day or a week or whatever,
but it's always out there...

.

Normal-or-whatever 2

normal.


what the hell is up with that?


this question has haunted me most of my life. as a child,
and as an adult, i never quite "got it" and since i was diagnosed
as bipolar some years back, my "issues" with "normal"
seem to be growing.

to me, "normal" is a word people use way too freely.

am i the only one who finds this word loaded?
loaded like a gun?

some aspects of "normal" i get.

i understand that it is good, for example, to have "a normal
white blood cell count". i appreciate that one wants to look
at ones' feces and urine and feel like "hey, that's normal".

when it comes to things are objective, in the sense of
the physical world, "normal" can often be a good thing,
making ones' life and the world at large more understandable
and perhaps a safer place.


but when it comes to attitudes, to perceptions,
to behaviours... "normal" gets "weird".

normal stools

normal  (adjective)
Definition: common, usual

Synonyms: accustomed, acknowledged, average, commonplace, conventional, customary, general, habitual, mean, median, methodical, natural, orderly, ordinary, popular, prevalent,
regular, routine, run-of-the-mill, standard, traditional, typic, typical, unexceptional

Antonyms: abnormal, irregular, odd, strange, uncommon, unconventional, unusual

normal appendix

What is the Definition of Normal?

Normal is the state of being mentally and physically healthy
or conforming to a standard that is regarded as customary,
typical or expected.
It may also refer to a line that intersects a surface
at a right angle.

normal normal
normal

What is a Normal Person

The word normal typically is defined as a behavior
conforming with or constituting a norm or standard
or level or type or social norm.

So by this definition a normal person would be considered
an individual who conforms to societal norms and standards.

So typically a society will decide if a person is normal
by whether or not they follow the rules that that given
society uses to determine what is appropriate and
inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

For example when a person decides to enter a sport
that is not traditionally competed in by his or her sex,
they are viewed as abnormal. Each society will set
their own definition for what is a normal person.

the normal model

normal

2a : according with, constituting, or not deviating
from a norm, rule, or principle
2b : conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern
3 : occurring naturally
4a : of, relating to, or characterized by average intelligence
or development
4b : free from mental disorder : sane

Examples of NORMAL
    He had a normal childhood.
    These little setbacks are a normal part of life.
    a potato twice as big as normal size
    Despite her illness, she was able to lead a normal life.
    They had a normal, healthy baby.
    Normal people don't react that way.

Related to NORMAL
Synonyms: average, common, commonplace, cut-and-dried,
everyday, garden-variety, ordinary, prosaic, routine, run-of-the-mill, standard, standard-issue, unexceptional, unremarkable, usual, workaday

Antonyms: abnormal, exceptional, extraordinary, odd,
out-of-the-way, strange, unusual

normal urine

so to be "normal" then is to be....

average
conventional
ordinary
regular,
conforming
not deviating
unremarkable

is that how YOU see yourself?
is that how you WANT to see yourself?

is that who YOU want to be?

the normal curve

not me. not when i was a kid. not now.

not ever.

normal tongues

but above and beyond my visceral personal reaction
to these (also loaded) words, with their dreary,
suffocating and - to me at least - political implications...


is ordinary, conventional thinking what our society needs
to deal with the challenges that face us all- locally?
nationally?
globally?


don't the challenges we face, from climate change to poverty
to disease to racism, need to be looked at in new ways?
isn't it possible that any steps towards dealing with them might require require unconventional or even exceptional thinking?


haven't a lot of these challenges arisen from,
or been made much, much worse
by conventional thinking?


just sayin'...



to be continued...

!