Posts

Lifting the Lid on Mania

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Lifting the Lid on Mania Most portrayals of bipolar I consumed in media throughout my teens taught me that it is a dangerous illness, characterised by violence, unpredictability, emotional outburst and other, often negative, qualities. I thought of films like Manic [1] , where Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Lyle Jenson, acts so brutally to another teen that he ends up institutionalised. Whilst institutionalised, he meets various people, including Chad, who has bipolar. With it being ‘Time to Talk Day’ only a few days ago, I felt compelled to write about my experiences of having bipolar, and the associated stigma that continues to surround this disorder. Depression gets talked about a lot – something that is by no means a bad thing – but I still see so little discourse about mania, even in my own writing. So, in honour of Time to Talk Day, I’d like to lift the lift on mania   Understanding my Bipolar As such, when diagnosed in 2018 as a teen myself, only negative thought
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ASD Diagnosis and Acceptance

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  I am delighted to share a piece I wrote for  Autism Together  about how my ASD diagnosis has allowed me to be more accepting of myself. It is always a pleasure to share my experiences of neurodivergence, especially in regards to receiving an ASD diagnosis as an adult and how this has enabled me to reflect on my childhood, anxiety, and life so far from a whole other perspective. _   "How an adult autism diagnosis helped one young writer be more accepting of herself" Ever since I was a young child – as early as the age of eighteen-months – I’ve had severe anxiety. Anything from going on holiday to a new place to a slight change in dinner plans was enough to completely throw me. Daily stresses brought me to tears and caused me such intense anxiety that have just never seemed to ease. However, my recent diagnosis of autism has started to explain things a little better. The Very Early Days When I was a toddler, I wouldn’t sleep in my own room, completely restless for no apparent
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World Mental Health Day 2022

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If you know me, you will know that there’s absolutely no chance that I could pass up sharing some of my thoughts on World Mental Health Day, especially in the current climate. Despite having received my referral for Psychological Therapies back in July with the wait for my initial assessment not being until March 2023, I started private therapy this year, so this seems like a good topic for today. When I was diagnosed with Bipolar in 2018, things started to make a little bit more sense. I could recognise traits within myself after lots of research and I started some group therapy up in Durham, something which for someone like myself, I found exceptionally difficult, socially overwhelming, and of very little help. I tried to manage on just medication whilst I finished my second and third year at university which was much harder than I initially anticipated. This meant my mum had to go on a career break from work to help me cope, which eventually led to her leaving her profession in th
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Handling My Contradictions

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  One of the biggest difficulties I face with my bipolar is feeling like I am constantly contradicting myself. Managing hypomanic decisions when in a depressive episode feels overwhelming and creates a lot of anxiety, especially as I often find myself back-peddling on decisions and letting people down. But the lack of decisions made in a depressive episode then leads me to find myself frustrated, bored, and irritable when my mood is elevated. This means I always feel like I’m fighting a pattern of contradictory behaviour. I recently had a lower mood episode, finding myself struggling to get out of bed before nine even though I went to sleep at eight-thirty the night before, not wanting to walk the dog very far, struggling with motivation to clean the house. The side effects of my quetiapine do not help in this regard, causing constant fatigue, memory issues and brain fog. In a depressive episode, it genuinely feels like I cannot get my brain to work in a normal way, instead dissociat
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Crazy Christmas (TW: ED)

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  Whilst Christmas brings enjoyment, excitement, indulgence and treats for many, Christmas to me has always brought an element of anxiety and significant self-criticism. This post is to help myself, and hopefully others, understand the complex experience myself and others with mental health problems and/or eating disorders can go through at Christmas My combined issues of Bipolar and Bulimia means that I have a rollercoaster of an experience every festive season. Christmas is one particular time of year that has a tendency to trigger a manic episode - or at least hypo-mania - due to the excitement that Christmas brings. I would probably explain the mania at Christmas as an enhanced version of how I felt as a child on Christmas day but prolonged for weeks on end and often detrimental to my mental and physical health. This year feels a little bit different with Covid and the tier restrictions we are facing. My feelings towards Christmas 2020 are less hypomania in the sense of happiness,
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My Body

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Sharing body positive drawings, doodles, articles and posts does not make me positive towards my own body. Being ‘body positive’ has not aided me in finding any solace or comfort in my own shell, but instead I seem to encourage others to love themselves as though it is going to miraculously make  me  love myself.  Every day I thank my body for sustaining me, especially in recent weeks and months, but yet I still refuse to stand and look at myself in the mirror. I can’t actually remember the last time I went into a shop, tried on an item of clothing, and left the changing room with a smile on my face to buy the item. However, I do remember the years of standing in a changing room, an ill-fitting dress squeezing or hanging off my body, my eyes blurred with tears as I whimpered back to my mum that it ‘just doesn’t look right on me.’ After years of truly detesting myself and punishing my body for its natural fluctuations, I decided it was time to become ‘body positive’. Yet here
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Life at My Pace

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28/06/22 Edit: Whilst this is no longer my current life situation, having dropped out of my Masters - something which I still struggle with accepting - this blog post, as it is my first, is still important. The message still remains: that I am forever learning how to live life at my own pace. I think this is especially important to keep as a post after my recent blog with Rethink Mental Illness discusses finally trying to come to terms with my 'success' and timeline being different to others. If you had told me in 2019 that I would have have made the conscious decision to leave paid employment to focus on my mental stability, wellbeing and recovery, I probably wouldn't have been surprised. But at the time, when I chose to start a Masters and continue to pursue a career that wasn't suitable for my wellbeing, you couldn't have told me otherwise. I guess there is nowhere better to start than with some reflection, even if it means you have to look back at your mistakes.
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