New medication...again...

Went to my psychiatrist appointment today.  Told her about my dark thoughts, my rage, my irritability.  And we are going to finally try a mood stabilizer.  Seroquel here we go.  Will eventually wean myself off of the Trazodone if all goes well.  I hope that this will get my mood swings under control, and also puts depression down to almost nothing.  Perhaps this is wishful thinking.  A bonus of course is that I can continue to breastfeed!  My kids deserve a mom who is there for them 100%, who isn't ignoring them, who isn't sad.  I deserve it too, and my husband most of all - he has put up with so much.  I'm exhausted... good night all.

Dark Thoughts

So right now my medications are:
Effexor XR 225mg/day, Zoloft 50mg/day, Trazodone 100mg/day.
Mood swings are still there.  Last week I didn't leave the house for 3 days, not even to go outside.  And of course this added to feeling depressed.  I was supposed to go out with a local moms group a couple times but decided that I didn't want to get out of bed that early - they were for 9:15am.  And with my daughter being in afternoon classes M-F a chance to sleep in is not usually missed.  Our new baby was born on August 19, a girl - happy and healthy.  She just turned 5 months today - sleep has of course been only 4 hours at a time at night - with breastfeeding and diaper changes.
Another symptom of depression that I have is irritability.  My children do not irritate me, but the four legged animals in our house do.  Our cat drives me nuts - she meows constantly - and when it's around feeding time she is downright obnoxious.  She cries constantly and attempts to trip me until I fill her bowl.  Even when I go to fill her dish she is so impatient that she will usually slap my hand while I pour  the food.
So while I was in an especially bad mood I just couldn't take the noise coming from her anymore and scruffed her, grabbed her by the throat and squeezed while promptly tossing her out on to the front porch.  I sometimes get so irritated that I have a tendency to lash out.  I am not proud of this and actually ashamed of my actions.  I even had contemplated how to kill her on more than one occasion.
Our two dogs on the other hand are just dirty beasts.  They eat poo on a continuous basis, and destroy any kind of cleaning that takes place around here.  I do not lash out at them, but I really don't see a need for them.  I have thought about giving them away or taking them to a shelter, but I know this would be seen as completely unacceptable by my family.  And the problem also lies with me, I decided to get all of these pets in the first place.
It seems that after having children that my patience for our furries has completely disappeared.

I am making a conscious effort to get to bed at a decent time each night, my husband goes to bed around 11-1130pm so I just follow along.  I do still fall into the habit of staying up until 4 or 5am on a frequent basis.  And when I do so I find myself sneaking up to bed and hope that my husband doesn't catch me up at that hour.  I tiptoe up the stairs, get undressed and into a nightshirt in the bathroom, and very gingerly I slip under the covers to be undetected.
My personal hygiene is usually something that suffers as well, I will go without showering for 4 or 5 days at a time, my hair gets all greasy, I neglect to brush my teeth, and I don't look in the mirror except for the half second it takes to brush my hair.  I have to go get 4 fillings this month as of course without taking care of my mouth I have to pay the price.  Very rarely will I wear a stitch of makeup, unless I am going somewhere and feel ashamed of my unkept appearance.  Very frequently I just don't care enough to make an effort, I just don't see the point.
Somehow I still manage to care for my children - they are never neglected.  I only save that for myself, I have lost 10lbs just due to the fact that I usually don't eat anything in the afternoon.  So I usually eat a half decent breakfast with my older daughter, once she is off to school I just don't make the effort to prepare anything for myself while I'm on my own.  And once my husband and her have arrived home later I do make dinner.  I usually have a large portion and a dessert.  I also don't usually consume enough water and am chronically dehydrated.
I have an appointment on Tuesday with my psychiatrist to tell her all of this and see what she says.  I will post an update then.

Aaaagh!! Rapid Cycling

The last few days I've been waking up feeling relatively normal.  As the day progresses my mood shifts into self pity, loneliness, and depression.  And by the time I'm ready to go to bed I am so depressed I start crying and having thoughts that this life is not worth living.  I go to sleep to wake feeling normal again and again by bed time I am in the same depressed state... how I hate not having control over my moods.  What I would give to have relief.  Such is the bipolar life.....   

We Lie

People with Bipolar lie. We lead secret lives. People walk by and they ask breezily, "How are you?"
And we have to lie.
Because 1. They really do not want to know how we feel. "How are you?" is a social marker to indicate that you notice someone exists. Explaining how we really feel would take some time, is too intimate a reveal, would invite criticism or pity or, maybe worse yet, advice...
So we keep it inside. Lying, hiding, shying away from self-revelation becomes a way of being.
I am an incredibly good listener. People open up to me and tell me things they have never told anyone else. Am I a good listener because I want to hear all about them? Not always. But it does mean that while we are talking about them, we are not talking about me!
It is the simple "how are you's" that get me.
So I have affected this very even, extremely polite, interested in what the other person has to say demeanor and I do this even when the inside of me is SCREAMING.
I even lie to my husband. He called and said he was going out and would not be home for dinner. I said great and then I settled in for a nice cry (I was reaching the bottom of my crash), took some trazadone, and planned to take a hot shower and eat comfort food while weeping over a movie...but he stopped by to get a jacket. He called up the stairs, I called down. He asked "What are you doing?" Ah. I came out of the hills with my hands up, "Oh, just having a panic attack, boo hooo hooo, don't mind me...it will pass..." "Do you want me to stay home?" "Oh, no, no need, boooooooooooo...." I sincerely did not think he needed to stay home with me. I know a crash when it happens, it's a physical thing...so I downplayed it and he left...but he did come back early and we did watch some TV together like we do every evening.
I think the mood swings are my business. They are not connected to reality so why cling to them, just let them go. That's why I always reply "I'm fine" when people ask, because underneath it all, I am fine.

Hypomania...a double edged sword

I always seem to have trouble keeping tabs on my mood.  I can switch moods so quickly sometimes I don't even grasp that it's happening.  I become irrational...  So here is a list of symptoms of hypomania, it helps to serve a reminder that you don't usually do these types of things.  A great way to protect you or your family from grief.

Hypomania symptoms

•      You don't need much sleep.

•      You're more talkative than usual or feel pressure to keep talking.

•      You are experiencing a flight of ideas or feel that your thoughts are racing.

•      You are easily distracted.

•      You are driven toward accomplishing specific goals (either socially - at work or school - or sexually) or you are experiencing psychomotor agitation.

•       You have grandiose thinking. For example, you believe you are better than anyone else at doing something or that you can accomplish a difficult task in hours instead of days.

•       You've become excessively involved with pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences, such as unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments.

Some Expressions of Hypomania

Here are just a few examples of hypomanic behavior:

•               Hypersexuality, which may take many forms such as making unusual demands on your partner, making inappropriate sexual advances, having affairs or spending a great deal of money on phone sex, Internet pornography or prostitutes.

•               Unusual irritability, excitement, hostility or aggression.

•               Behaving inappropriately; for example, making crude remarks at a dinner party.

•               Spending recklessly, such as buying a car when you can't possibly make the payments.

•               Talking so fast that it's difficult for others to understand.

•               Dressing and behaving flamboyantly.

•               Jumping from one subject to an unrelated subject while speaking to someone.

•                Taking chances you normally wouldn't because you "feel lucky."

Introduction

I started this blog as an outlet for myself and also in the hopes that someone else out there might feel the same way I do and be helped or comforted to know that they are not alone.  I am 32 years old and I live in Canada.  I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder a few months ago.  My life has been a roller coaster ride of moods since about the age of 13.  I didn't know why I was always making poor decisions, ruining relationships, stuck in deep depressions for prolonged periods of time, and having periods of high elevated moods.  All I knew was that I was different from everyone else, as a result I had a tendency to isolate myself, something that I still have a tendency to do.  I sometimes feel like I'm two different people sharing one body.  When I'm feeling high (hypomanic) I am in a nutshell pleasure seeking...my drug of choice is sex.  I am married to the love of my life and we have a young child.  So as you might well imagine my husband would be happy that my drug of choice is sex.  Well at first it was, until I started looking for sexual partners outside of our marriage.  I knew that this behavior was wrong but I didn't care, that is a hallmark of cyclothymia and bipolar - whatever it is that is our pleasure we don't care at the time that it is bad or what the consequences might be.  I have been caught numerous times seeking outside relationships, or in outside relationships by my husband.  And I don't know why my husband sticks by me but he does...I guess you could call that love.  Our life has been rocked by my disorder and I struggle everyday with what I have done.