Life as Cerys

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

  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