Did you know depression isn’t always sad and withdrawn? Sometimes it’s angry, and it can be aggressive, too.
Here’s what Julie A. Fast, on BP Hope, has to say about it:
I’ve found that there are two kinds of bipolar depression…. I call the first kind of depression WEEPY DEPRESSION and I call this depression ANGRY and IRRITATED DEPRESSION. People with bipolar tend to experience both, but rarely get help for the second type as helping someone in this kind of a depression is like talking with a really angry snake.
Read more of 20 Unexpected Signs of Bipolar Disorder Depression: Part One.
Do you know how much of a relief it was for me to read this article?!? It doesn’t sound like an awesome thing to identify with, but I know many of you understand the power of giving something a name. Do you know how much I still go back and forth on whether or not I think I have bipolar 2? Mood disorder? Absolutely. But bipolar? Mmm… nah. That’s beyond what I experience, right? Sometimes I think I’m just a pathetic whiner who gets… seriously overwrought sometimes and has a temper problem… who needs to put on her big-girl pants and give herself a kick in the butt.
But people’s descriptions of their experience of bipolar hypomania and depression… They make so much of my messed-upedness make sense.
Something to remember when it comes to any mental- or physical-health issue is that finding the name of something hard is very different from accepting a label.
Giving a name to something hard is not the same as accepting a label. Get the help you need. #mentalhealth Click To Tweet
Getting the Help You Need
Getting help starts with admitting there’s a problem. This can involve listening to those who care about you when they’re concerned about changes or unhealthy patterns in your behavior. We’re not always the greatest at noticing something is wrong in the way we’re responding to people, situations, or stressors. How we’re feeling seems reasonable, whether it’s the life-stinks-and-the-world-is-a-terrible-place of a downswing or the life-is-awesome-and-I-am-awesome or I-can-get-away-with-anything of an upswing. And what we do in these moods also seems reasonable, because, well, we’re in those moods.
There comes a point when we need to be honest with ourselves that something is wrong, and it won’t just go away; we can’t fix it on our own.
For more information on what bipolar disorder looks like, check out my Seven Signs of Bipolar Disorder on Defying Shadows.
The Help I Needed Need
If it weren’t for accepting my need for psychiatric intervention, I’d probably be dead. Suicidal depression is awful, but it’s difficult to make the choice to get help. There are many reasons a person struggling with suicidal thoughts may not seek help:
I don’t need it. The dark repetitive thoughts of depression and ultimately pessimistic view of the world seem reasonable.
It’s too difficult. When even small healthy decisions like brushing your teeth seem pointless, something that could save your life seems impossible.
Help won’t… help. Nothing can fix me. Nothing can lift the weight.
I don’t deserve others’ concern and effort. I’m worthless. I deserve to feel like this. Everyone would be better off without me.
I don’t want to be saved. I can’t take it any more. Making a plan feels like relief, a release.
I just wanted to be done. Life could never get better; the world was too big, cold, ugly. I was too broken to be fixed, too toxic to be lived with. If you haven’t experienced it, you can’t understand what it’s like to believe your loved ones would be better off without you. I don’t think suicidal depression can be understood by those who’ve never experienced it. It doesn’t even make sense to those of us who have survived it, when we can think clearly.
But not understanding how we can believe such horrible lies isn’t the same as being safe from falling victim to them again.
I may not be in the darkness of deep depression, but I need to remember it could be lying in wait to again steal my hope.
My psychiatrist likens lamotrigine to a safety net. It’s keeps me from falling into the abyss. It’s not a magic cure, and it’s incomplete without other healthy habits – body, mind, and soul – but it’s important. My brain has a glitch; t’s prone to getting stuck in unhealthy, unhelpful thought patterns and plunging into darkness. Lamotrigine affects the way neurons in the brain fire. It’s used to control seizures. And as a mood stabilizer.
Sometimes, often randomly, I think I’ll just stop taking it.
Read reasons we give for wanting to go off needed meds, and why they’re wrong.
But I know I’m not healed. There’s still a glitch in my brain that makes a safety net necessary. Medication is only one part of my mental health efforts, but it’s vital.
Read more about healthy body, mind, and soul habits.
No Quick Fix
One thing that can be discouraging when we admit we have a problem, seek help, and take responsibility for healthy habits is that there is no quick fix. When you start taking medication, you’re not going to wake up the next day feeling better. It may even take a while to find the right medication, or combination of medications, that works with your unique brain. But don’t give up.
And don’t give up on establishing and maintaining healthy habits. We’re not one-dimensional, and our approach to mental health shouldn’t be, either.
Our physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, and relational health are all related, intertwined.
What is the importance of spiritual health to mental health? Read Faith and Mental Illness.
Don’t Give Up
You won’t always feel the way you do today. Whether you’re depressed, feeling amazing, or somewhere in the middle, our moods change. Feelings make a poor guide for life and motivation for our choices.
Read more about the danger of following our deceitful hearts in Who Can Understand It?
Suicide is permanent; the troubles of life, the darkness of the deepest depression are temporary.
Those exhausting, hopeless thoughts are nothing but lies. Lies.
You’re not worthless.
It’s not hopeless.
You’re not powerless.
You’re not beyond grace.
Read more about the Lies We Believe in the darkness of depression, and how to overcome them.
The consequences of acting on the frustration and/or increased interest in sex of a manic or hypomanic episode, or choosing to pursue the things that momentarily feel alive in your walking death, can also be life-long.
Sex isn’t just sex, no matter how many people say it is.
Check out In Need of a Clean Heart: Sex, Societal Lies, and Bipolar Disorder.
You’re responsible for your choices. And their consequences. With or without a mood disorder or other mental illness. But grace truly is amazing.
We live in a broken world; I don’t want the glitch I can’t change negatively impact those around me by not taking responsibility to give my brain its best chance.
Read The Joy and Agony of Free Will.
There is always hope. Even when you can’t feel it.
There is always Light. Even when you can’t see it.
There is always grace. Even when you can’t embrace it.
Truth remains truth. Even when you can’t believe it.
Accepting grace is brave. Bravery doesn’t always look like we expect it to. Neither does grace. But God is always ready and waiting to give grace. In our brokenness. Despite our brokenness. Because of our brokenness.
Read You Make Me Bold: My Unexpected Story.
God is always ready and waiting to give grace. In our brokenness. Despite our brokenness. Because of our brokenness. Click To Tweet
You’re not defined by what you’ve done, what’s been done to you, others’ opinions, or a glitch in your brain. You are uniquely designed to fulfill God’s purpose at this time. It won’t always feel good. You won’t always want to do what needs to be done. You won’t always be able to do what you think you should do, or what others think you should do. But God will always give you all that you need to do whatever He calls you to do. Choose to live the way He designed you, not what the world or your brokenness has led you to. Seek Him. Find freedom. Wholeness. Yourself.
13 Reasons Why? Here are 45 of my reasons why not.
2 thoughts on “Living with a Mood Disorder”