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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Do you have rapid cycling? It’s defined as three or more mood swings a year.\u00a0 Hmmm. Most of the people I work with have rapid cycling-\u00a0 so I think that is a pretty low estimate of mood swings!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Take Charge is the perfect book if\u00a0 you were just diagnosed or care about someone who was just diagnosed.\u00a0 I love the book.<\/p>\n
Julie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n
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 [ Read More ]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11856,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions\/11856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bipolarhappens.com\/bhblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}