Hello everyone!
I’d like to take a moment to ask you, “Just how much BS are you currently working with in your day?” It’s my opinion that most bipolar folks have any number of piles stacking up at any one time thanks to their out of control symptoms list. I’m talking about stress. There’s plenty to go around. No need to be piggish and accept more than your fair share. (Bulls, pigs - not sure where this barnyard animal motif sprang from.)
But seriously, aren’t you about full up to your ears with the problems spewing out of your ears? If your head is anything like mine was, then you could probably do for a mental haircut. To give your head the break it needs to possibly heal, you need to cut down on all the negative sensory material it now manages. Clip some loose ends. Neaten up your shaggy mane of a bipolar hairdo.
This step of my system TORQUE BACK can be one of the hardest to pull off. It involves the ability to take a tough, honest look at your life in an objective (logical) fashion, not a subjective (emotional) one. You need to admit to yourself that maybe some things, or people, in your life are doing you more harm than good.
The very act of implementing this step can lead to hurt feelings, if it’s people that have to go, and a misguided sense of loss, if it’s things that have to go.
Depending on who knows what, this trimming of the fat can be painful, regardless of what’s getting cut. Or you may be surprised and feel a sense of release or catharsis, as you give yourself permission to let go of something you’ve known all along had to go.
The tricky part can be if your symptoms have really robbed you of enough rational thought to do this correctly. So for the beginning, let’s just aim this at those of us who CLEARLY have a situation that needs changing. Don’t carve everything out of your life in a fit of soul-cleansing. You may toss out more than you should.
For me, when I was my sickest, I had to split from my wife and kids. My illness made me barely able, hell, unable to care for myself and to keep the really ugly side of me from lashing out at all times. I had a beast in me that I hardly could control and it fed ravenously on my symptoms. I was not someone you kept near much of anyone, let alone kids and a wife I couldn’t relate to anymore.
The stress of the looming breakup was crushing both of us right to death but it was driving me insane, and that’s not hyperbole. I could barely contain the rage within me, or the anguish, or the bizarre thoughts, and my family did not need that in their day. The stress of trying to maintain the family was akin to a rabbit trying to balance a dump truck on his head. I was outclassed for the job. So we split, and they left.
I felt relief. Tons! But it only lasted a few days as the understanding of how I had failed my family stomped my heart into the ground. I had failed, true, but that failure HAD to take place for the regrowth to happen. Many times, our losses are really wins. But you can’t see that until the dust settles and your emotions stabilize. That takes time.
So there’s how something like that can play out and the many levels of garbage that lace through it from all sides. They had to go but it involved me losing everything that mattered. But the illness would never be controlled with them present and had they stayed, I’d have done something terrible in some fashion. I hadn’t planned anything, I’m just saying I knew myself. To dump the stress, I would have done something horrendously stupid.
Now that years have passed, I have healed, my wife and I are great friends, and I am a fantastic father to my son. I could never have obtained any of that had they stayed. I needed a chance to regroup.
Another example: I had a very close friend with whom I used to party. He was very dear to me. Still is, actually. But he had to go. As I was trying to get my act together, he was calling me from afar to share with me his ongoing, bizarre tales of party wonderment and scenes from a slow motion train wreck that he called his life. This stuff used to be highly entertaining to me and I usually would match his tales with tales of my own misadventures, equal to his in far-out drug consumption and resulting activities. Now, it just stressed me to no end. He was committing slow suicide and calling it “partying” and I knew he was lost.
I loved him then and still love him now but he had to go. I cut him free during our last phone conversation as he shared with me his latest crushed diet pill snorting/waking up naked in an alley story. I was scared for him and I realized very little separated him from me and I was horrified at my own past behavior. That’s the best I can describe it. I couldn’t believe I used to be this guy and listening to him made me realize how much of my life I had thrown away operating under the exact same mindset that he still had. The stress of this realization actually caused me to go into panic as he spoke. He’s still out there, still doing it all, and I wish him the best but the outlook is bleak. I believe the pain of his unavoidable OD, before it ever happens, was hurting me already. I let him go.
Decisions like these are hard. I shared a small pile of people I loved most in the world, whom I had to shut out in order to get well again. But it was worth it. I more or less got my family back and I made peace within myself about the friend I lost, with whom I had had some of the best times of my life.
You may have to make similar calls. Is there someone in your world who means well, or you think they mean well, but whenever they are involved in your day, bring some amount of chaos or disorder? Maybe not and if so, good for you. You are blessed. But many bipolar people bring in or hang on to people they shouldn’t, for any number of reasons. Usually, friends and family who are not sick, can see how these people are hurting you but you can’t. So all I’m saying is cut free what you may know deep down you should, and try to listen less critically to those who are trying to protect you when they tell you someone in your life must go. Just keep an open mind if you can.
Things that need cutting? Well, that applies across many boards. Your bad habits, which I addressed in earlier posts, need to go, obviously. Anything that you may use to cope with life, instead of fix life, needs to go. Or at least start whittling it down. Are you rotting in front of the computer on video sites or games? Does a PlayStation own your soul? The mere act of engaging in distraction, even a healthy distraction, keeps you in stress because you are not getting busy with the fixing of your problems. You’re ignoring them and renaming it as “healthy activity.” This can apply to reading, movies, weight lifting, running, painting, talking to friends on the phone, any of that. It all is causing you indirect stress if the doing of it is keeping you from the more inportant work at hand. The substandard life level it will keep you at, will stress you more down the road, when you finally wake up to the time that has passed and can’t be retrieved, and the opportunities you squandered.
If you’re very sick, as I was, maybe your pets need to be cared for by someone else until you’re back on your feet. That’s an extreme example, as for many of us, our pets are the only things good in our day. But for the truly sick, you’re just being cruel to the animal if you’re keeping it around but not caring for it. Myabe you’re a pet collector and can’t really keep up with all that maintenance. Or maybe the animal has the run of the house and you pay it no mind due to depression. You can’t be bothered to clean up. Now your health is suffering from what’s building up inside your house.
Maybe you’re hanging on to a job that is killing you out of complacency. You’re in pain but not enough to change jobs. I understand many of us have been or are in jobs we can’t leave due to location, vestment, or what have you. But many DO have options, they just won’t act on them. If you have the chance, cut that bad job out, and do something closer to your heart’s wants. Or start a college course at night until you have tools to leave that job. Something. Just admitting the change needs to happen and keeping your eyes open will help bring the change you need. I’m saying, don’t complain endlessly then do nothing.
I’m trying to hit on a handful of areas just so you get the idea. If something or someone in your life has to change so you can heal, you already know what it is or those that love you most are trying constantly to tell you. Consider these things, then make necessary changes. Change hurts and can be scary. But the result is worth the effort.
As you make these changes, do your best to solidly incorporate into your conscious mind why it is a good thing they changed. Learn from your evolvement and you’ll see even more ways to improve.
Now please. I can foresee a hundred ways someone can attack this post and show why different parts of it can’t be achieved or show me a point I missed. Cripes. Anything I write can have that said of it. I’m only trying to get your mental juices flowing. We’re all different. But the foundational stuff holds true. You know if something needs to go. You already know.
Take care everyone,
Ken
Smart move on Kenny’s part.
getting a lot in. A few grams is great but a truly bipolar or depressed person may need closer to 10 grams a day. The doctor who wrote the book states that the Inuit Eskimos get around 19 grams per day so if you stay below 10, you should be fine. As far as that goes, no adverse reactions to omega-3 supplementation had been noted at the time of the writing and I imagine that still holds true. But, as always, check with your medical doctor to be safe.
