Straight Talk on Managing Bipolar Disorder

There is an old saying I remember from my childhood called ‘spinning into butter.’ It means things get so out of control, the milk just whirls and whirls around until it becomes a solid mass of butter!

Mania is like spinning into butter- that’s for sure.  The name Manic Depression was used for so long because it’s an apt description for bipolar in most ways- though we now know the illness is so much more- but… the mania is so dangerous in that it can wreck your life very, very quickly.

If you feel you’re spinning into butter- it can be from anxiety, doing too much, other triggers or… simply from a hypomanic or manic episode.

What is the next step? Make yourself sit down and take an honest evaluation of where you are.  If you’re manic, or starting to get manic- now is the time to take action- not creative action- but manic stopping action. It’s better to be milk than butter.

My book Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder has a good and very easy to read section on mania. I would start with the mania posts on the blog- you can go to the right and click on the mania category- and then I would use Take Charge.

No butter. Julie

I have what I call Ultradian Rapid Cycling Bipolar II with psychotic features, etc. Truthfully, my form of bipolar is pretty rare- which is probably why I can write about bipolar 24 hours a day- my moods change so constantly. I just counted that in the last ten days I’ve had 15 mood swings. I get very, very tired of it.  These mood swings have been constant since 2002- I am not sure why I’ve gotten so much worse over the years- though I know my management skills have improved 1000% since I wrote the Health Cards. That is why I talk about them so much.

I am speaking to a group of psychiatric residents at Oregon Health and Sciences University hospital next week. I am very looking forward to this- and in the opening of my talk, I’m going to ask the audience to guess how many mood swings I’ve had since January 1st of this year. Can you guess? I will post the number after the presentation.  I actually cried a bit when I read the number – I guess we all cry about this illness-it’s so difficult to live with it.

I chart my mood every single day and have done so for at least ten years. It’s essential for me to know when I’m in a mood swing as my brain lies so much and if I listen to it, I will make big mistakes. Even now and I’m 46.

Do you have rapid cycling? It’s defined as three or more mood swings a year.  Hmmm. Most of the people I work with have rapid cycling-  so I think that is a pretty low estimate of mood swings!

What matters is that I’m not sick at this moment. I’m sure the mania that has been dogging me will come back later and I will have to be super careful at karaoke tonight- and when the depression hits- as it will in the next week for sure- I will be ready to fight it off.

How are you today? If you’re unsure of your moods- you can draw a line on a piece of paper- add a date and put a dot above the line for mania and a dot below for depression – with an X for anxiety and OCD and P (for psychosis) and you have a mood swing chart!

There is one in Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder- with an example of one of my real charts in the back. It’s pretty interesting.  Take Charge is the perfect book if  you were just diagnosed or care about someone who was just diagnosed.  I love the book.

Julie

Hi,

People often ask me for financial management advice for people with bipolar disorder. I am going to do a teleseminar on the topic and will keep you posted. If there are particular things you would like me to cover in the teleseminar, just let me know.

The following article was in Yahoo Finance today:

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-110102-5999-1-secrets-of-extreme-savers?ywaad=ad0035

It has a lot of great tips- of course, it describes people with jobs and what seems to be a healthy life- but we can learn from their ideas. Here are a few things you may not know about me!

1. I am cash only. I mean this. I don’t have debit cards or credit cards AT ALL.

2. I try to budget for each place I go.  I find that budgeting for a whole day doesn’t work for me- but budgeting the cash for a certain event such as a Thai restaurant with friends really helps. This is MUCH harder during a manic or depression mood swing. That’s for sure! But I keep trying.

3. I don’t go shopping in order to go shopping. If I find myself looking around and thinking how great things look and how I would LOVE those shoes and how PRETTY that shirt is- I know I’m hypomanic.

These are a few of my ideas. I started all of this in 2010. It has been hard- but it works! I am interested in your ideas.

Julie