Thoughts, Thoughts, Thoughts…

So I’ve not been sleeping well the last couple of days. A nasty cold combined with racing and distressing thoughts is tiring me out. I was wide awake last night for hours and hours and no matter how much I tried I didn’t seem to be able to switch off. Eventually my cold must have defeated me and I got a couple of hours of broken sleep, only to wake up to the sound of our dog whimpering and a continuation of the thoughts.

My mind had been fairly still and quiet over the past couple of weeks. My mood was that of low rumbling depression, hidden under a façade of festive cheer. My thoughts have been dark, but calm and slow. It made a change to the agitated depression that had been the main feature of 2009.

It seems though with this cold, my thoughts have quickened. I feel as if I’m in a quiet turmoil, with ever-racing thoughts bubbling under the surface. I start on one thing and it gives me a hundred leads to follow, all in turn leading to more. The thoughts circle and spiral out of control. I can’t get a hold on them.

I store my thoughts up for the night-time, trying to maintain a semblance of normality during the day. Being ill with this cold though has allowed me to stay in bed and I can drop the pretence of normality a little.

I need to untangle everything and write it all down so I can try and make sense of it all, but it would take me hours, days even. I could probably write 10,000 words and still barely scratch the surface. I suspect my bloke may be justified in his complaints if I tried to blog all of that. I’d like the chance to blog some of it though.

I feel so alone with these thoughts though. I don’t know who I would share all this with. I can’t work it all out, let alone express it to others. Some of these thoughts are thoughts I can’t bear to share. Some of these thoughts I desperately want to share, but I am unsure if it is wise. Some of these thoughts are too confusing to know what to do with. I alternate between wanting to share them and thinking it is a very bad idea. Instead they all go round and round in my head and I’m too scared to let them out.

I did actually try and share a few things with Dr N on Thursday, but that has only amplified my confusion. By sharing my thoughts, I have made them real and that has only made them stronger. This just makes it harder for me to tackle the rest.

I don’t really know what to do.

This argument is still rumbling on and I don’t feel strong enough to resist right now. I need time to write, but I feel too guilty for it. The pressure is on for me to get off my laptop and “go and do something useful”, yet I can’t summon the energy for that either. I wish I could hibernate and wait for this to blow over.

Stuck at the bottom…

I seem to have stopped yo-yoing and am now stuck at the bottom. You know when you’ve failed to keep the yo-yo going and it just sits at the bottom dangling? My mood is like that.

My week has been one of low mood, but less agitation. I just feel flat,  and demotivated. I just want to hide away and never have to go out and face the world. I just want to hibernate and never wake up. I just want to be dead.

I saw Dr G yesterday with my bloke. It was difficult for me to speak, as usual when he is around, but we talked about activity scheduling and planning. This is something that I am often told to do, but I find it really difficult. I hate the idea of planning what I am going to do in advance rather than just doing things when you want to. I know it is meant to help my motivation but instead it just feels like a chain around my neck. I find it hard to stick to the plan. So far I am doing just a day or two ahead and have been trying to stick to it but I don’t like it.

My partner keeps moaning that I should show more enthusiasm and do exactly as my psychiatrist says, but I have done activity planning in the past and only found it a chore. He keeps saying that I am not helping myself and doing everything I can to get better. I find it so demoralising because I am trying and doing my best. It feels like no one can see how much effort I am putting in. I find just existing hard enough. I am constantly battling the thoughts and doing everything I can to keep myself safe even though I don’t want to, or at least the thoughts tell me I don’t want to. It’s exhausting and bloody hard work. I am fed up of fighting. Why should I have to work so bloody hard to get better? I have done so many of the self-help and self-soothing things that I am fed up of them all. I monitor my thoughts, mood and activity. I try to do all the things that are meant to help my sleep. I try to eat well and maintain a routine. I try distraction. I still don’t feel any better though. Right now I feel as bad as ever. I don’t want to be safe.

I am feeling really demoralised right now. Everyone else seems to be getting better. Most people I know at The Priory are well on the way to recovery. Quite a few have finished or are finishing day care. I feel left behind. I know I finish day care in a few weeks but that’s not out of choice or because I’m better; it’s because my funding runs out. I’m no where near better. Although I know I’ve made progress and am now able to communicate with doctors how I’m feeling, that’s the only real improvement. My mood is still on the floor and I’m still struggling with agitation and mood swings. I’m still so very ill. My medication is still being played with and I stop seeing Dr G in a couple of weeks. I’m terrified of being stuck in limbo whilst I am passed from The Priory to the NHS.

I did eventually hear from the CMHT yesterday. My worker called me and wanted to arrange to come and see me. I’m away for some of next week so she can’t see me until 1st July. It seems like a while to wait. Especially considering my funding runs out the week after that. I want to know that I am actually going to have some support in the NHS. I want to know that I have a consultant to carry on adjusting my medication. I’m worried. I know that in the NHS you will not see the psychiatrist weekly. I know I’ll be lucky to see them every couple of months. I don’t know if I can last a month between medication changes. The thought of being stuck with no hope of any improvement of change for months on end is incredibly depressing and enough to make me give up. I’ve got used to the care offered at The Priory. I’ve got used to seeing Dr G every week and her making little changes where necessary, even in between appointments on occasion. I really don’t want to be dumped in the NHS. I am worried I’ll be left to rot.

Yo-yo…

I’ve been up and down like a yo-yo this week. Since the crash back down last weekend I was up again Sunday night and quite hypomanic, giggling unnecessarily and unable to sleep. Monday was a slightly more even day before a complete meltdown on Tuesday. I was highly emotional, stressed out, suicidal, angry, hyper and generally out of control. I couldn’t control the agitation or my emotions and ended up crying and laughing hysterically. It was almost as if I just couldn’t cope with the tension that was mounting inside me and I didn’t know what to do, so my mind and body went totally crazy. I was all over the place, felt really out of control and generally not in a good way.

My meltdown on Tuesday also saw me telling my other half that I wanted to break up and couldn’t cope with our relationship. I just want things to change and at the time it felt like the easiest thing to change would be for us to break up. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight (breaking up would be far from easy!), but it does scare me that when I get like that I want to push him away so much. I really was hysterical and I wonder if my out of control emotions are trying to tell me something. I don’t really know if I can cope with this relationship much longer, or rather I don’t know if this relationship can cope with this illness much longer. I suspect my doubts are just another sign of me wanting to isolate myself so it’s easier to do the deed, but I don’t know.

I find myself wanting to be on my own for many reasons. Yes, it would be the loss of another “protective factor” and would make it easier to kill myself, but I know that our relationship didn’t stop me trying in the past and when I’m in that state of mind it wouldn’t stop me again. I do want to be on my own though and not have to worry about how my behaviour affects my partner. I wouldn’t have a battle every time I want to stay in bed a bit longer because the illness is holding me there. I wouldn’t be feeling like I was a child under his control because I’d be able to go out whenever I wanted without having to ask permission. I could learn to cope with things on my own and I think that would help me to re-engage with life again. At the moment I don’t feel that I can.

There are of course many reasons to stay together and for balance I guess I should mention those too. We’ve been together a long time and been through a lot and there is no reason why we can’t get through this too. I do love him very much and although I struggle with that love a lot of the time it is still there. There are practical things like we live together, have joint bank accounts etc that make division difficult – we can’t just stop seeing each other. Generally, splitting up would not be easy even though sometimes it feels like the easy option.

Seaneen once wrote that her illness, or rather the possibility that she might kill herself, is like a lodger within her relationship and I know what she means. There’s this third person that gets in the way all the time and makes things more complicated. This illness, especially the risk of suicide, is something that intrudes on every aspect of your relationship and makes it very difficult for things to be okay. There is always going to be that fear and this means there’s an imbalance of power. For us at the moment, it feels like it’s the illness in control and the illness with all the power. I feel like the lodger is getting in the way all the time and I don’t know if we can learn to live with it. My partner just wants everything to go back to how things were before, but that just isn’t going to happen. I don’t know. I hope we can get through this in one piece, but I’m not sure it’s guaranteed.

Anyway, Wednesday was a really low day. I was getting fed up of the turbulent nature of my moods and just wished that things would sort themselves out. I had no motivation and just wanted to hide from the world. Hibernation would have been nice. Suicide would have been nicer. I just had no desire to live. I still don’t most of the time. I wonder when that is going to change.

Thursday was a day of medical appointments with me seeing Dr G and Dr N. Dr G’s appointment was fairly uneventful. She didn’t want to increase my lamotrigine again so soon as it has to be titrated up very slowly. She did however add an extra 1mg PRN to the haloperidol so I’m taking 2mg regularly now and the additional 1mg if I get agitated.

We did talk about a few practical things though. It seems I do need to notify the DVLA about my condition and it is likely my license will be taken off me. When I last asked her about it a long while ago, prior to the suicide attempt in February and my Bipolar diagnosis she told me I didn’t have to, but things have changed. I guess my condition is taken more seriously these days.

We also talked about Disability Living Allowance. Dr G says I should be receiving it. It seems I should have applied a while ago but I didn’t know. It’s a shame that it cannot be backdated either. I spent Thursday night trying to put together my application. The form is a complete bitch and took me hours and I still don’t know if I’ve told them enough to convince them that I am deserving and ill enough. It doesn’t seem very geared up for people with mental illness. Lots of questions about personal care and mobility and little opportunity to explain just how much of a bitch living with mental illness is. I just hope that Dr G and Dr N can convince them for me. I’m dreading a medical assessment as I just don’t know if I can be honest with a new doctor. I suspect I would come across as too high functioning or maybe I’ll just be so anxious I can’t speak.

My trip to Dr N was disappointingly brief, but I had little to say really. Not much has changed. He just looks at me with pitying eyes these days whilst administering the necessary prescriptions. I only realised afterwards that the haloperidol supply he’s given me only covers 5 days if I use all the PRN. I haven’t been doing, but even still that’s not ideal. I don’t want to have to go back to him too soon. I feel like I am wasting his time. It’s bad enough being on weekly prescriptions and having to waste his time seeing him every week when I don’t really have anything new to say to him.

My mood on Friday was up and down just in a day. I started the morning low, but felt better by lunchtime. I had a good afternoon with Chouette, Kate and Hannah. It’s nice to talk about things and know that they understand, but it’s also nice to chat about normal things like university and living in Manchester. In the evening I went for a meal with some uni friends and although it was nice, I was tired and struggling to engage. My mood was falling throughout and by the time I got home it was on the floor again. I had to try and keep up appearances for a little longer whilst people were around.

Afterwards, things became difficult. My partner was upset and wasn’t talking to me. I don’t know what I had done to deserve that. I felt awful and couldn’t find out what was wrong. I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, but couldn’t because again our relationship was struggling because of this illness. I am fed up of it.

Yesterday was a long day. I was so busy it was hard to know how I felt mood wise. I was low but distracted. I’m just glad it is over I think.

More Shifts…

It seems I may have entered the land of rapid cycling again. A week of agitated depression has shifted back into plain old depression. I’m still a little agitated and the thoughts are still muddled and racy, but that’s part of the course. My depression is always like that, however I’m no longer jiggling about like a cat on a hot tin roof and full of the energy to act upon the intrusive thoughts.

The shift began yesterday, even before the additional medication was brought into force. Taking the haloperidol pushed things that extra notch. I’m already missing the energy, if not the agitation. I did get some sleep last night, which makes a change but I am tired again. Before, I wasn’t sleeping but I wasn’t really tired either. I had all the energy in the world, albeit not with the concentration to follow my flying ideas though. Now I am left just wanting to hibernate and feeling like crap. I wish I knew where I stood.

I don’t know if to keep taking the haloperidol tonight. I feel I should just follow the psychiatrist’s instructions, but I don’t think she expected me to crash back down quite so quickly. I certainly didn’t expect it to happen so soon. On Thursday, it felt like the agitation was going to last forever and only get worse. Instead, two days later, things are different and I’m really not sure I need to be sedated to the same extent. The extra sleep is a nice change I guess, but I’m not hypomanic anymore, so should I really be taking medication used to control mania?

Considering all of these changes in mood have happened since starting a new mood stabiliser, I wonder just how stabilising this medication is. I know it is early days, but so far I’ve just gone from being constantly suicidally depressed to all over the place. I really don’t know what’s going on. One minute I’m full of beans, albeit with a nasty edge of suicidality and the next I’m lethargic, suicidally depressed but unable to motivate myself to do much of anything. I know I’m safer like this, but it isn’t a nice place to be.

I’ve also started logging my mood again. I had homework from Open CBT to log my activity and stress levels, so whilst doing that it made sense to start logging my mood and agitation too. I was told to a while back and did it at first then kept forgetting. I think it will be helpful to see where the shifts are, but it’s difficult to rate things. When you’re depressed, by nature I think you can be quite negative so I wonder if I am rating things lower than perhaps I should. I don’t know how to rate my mood when I’m always suicidal, even though sometimes my mood may be overall a little higher. How on earth do you show mixed states? Over the past week my presiding mood has been full of the energy of hypomania but with the suicidal side of depression. If I rate my mood negatively (ie as depression) how do I distinguish from the times when I don’t have masses of energy? I don’t know. I guess that’s where the agitation ratings come in. Anyway, I’ve tried to put something together but I’m not sure how useful it really is. I guess I will stick with it for a while, but I probably won’t keep it up like last time. Does anyone else rate their mood and how do you do it?