Beauty for Ashes Part 11

Living Mental

            This work has been a documentation of my life with mental illness.  It has been about my journey and some of the things I have done that have helped me make peace with bipolar disorder, what I write is really not about bipolar.  What I write is about me, for bipolar is not more important to me than my life and living it.  I have discovered life is about balance, and an important factor in creating balance is to create priorities.  Living is most important, and the bipolar must find a place within my life’s parameters, not beyond them.  However, I wanted to, in this last section, outline some specifics for those who have just discovered the uninvited presence of bipolar in their life.  I believe there are some things that should be universally addressed in the life of anyone who has bipolar disorder.  I take my cue from my own life and the lives of those I’ve known who have bipolar as well as those who have someone in their life with bipolar disorder. 

            When that diagnosis is rendered, the most important thing that can be done to conquer bipolar is to believe in it.  Accept that it exists and it exists in you.  Everything in you will scream out a denial, but if you can refuse to believe the denial, you will have won the most important battle of your life. 

            You will most likely be terrified.  Why not?   That is a natural reaction in human beings who face something they don’t understand or is life threatening, and bipolar is both.  The way to combat fear is with knowledge.  Understanding what you are up against is crucial, especially with mental illness, because you will hear all kinds of things from people you know, the media, and just about every venue, about mental illness that is completely incorrect.  Know your facts.  Know what you have.  And when someone says something that is rude and ignorant, enlighten them with the truth.

            Medication should either go right before education or directly after.  If you have educated yourself thoroughly on bipolar you will know that the most effective way to live with the illness is on drugs, the legal kind.  Do no embrace alternative methods of medicating.  Alcohol and drugs have side effects that will kill you.  Find a psychiatrist who can prescribe you meds, not an M.D.  Psychiatrists can better assist you, even if it sometimes seems like they do not know what they are doing.  And that will happen; trust me.  Finding the right meds for your body takes time and trial.  The more you tell them about how the meds make you feel, the sooner they will get you correctly medicated.

            Then after you have connected with a psychiatrist, get a referral for a therapist.  This assuming, of course that you are independently wealthy and can afford all these things.  But if you are an average American, you may only be able to afford what I could and that is the psychiatrist and the meds.  Good enough.  Go to the library.  Go to www.nami.org .  Go to the Internet and type in bipolar disorder.  You will find what you need.  I did.  I did it all on my own.  I had very little support from anyone for years.  My illness was my problem.  Your illness is your problem. 

            You need to immediately start working on the three areas of your life that need to be balanced.  They are the biological, which you will manage with meds, plenty of sleep, eating healthy, taking vitamins, and exercising.  Exercising is so good for the brain, not to mention the body.  Then there is the environmental.  This one may be a bit tricky for a while but basically you need to make sure you are putting healthy things into your mind, and kicking negative things out.  You can create negative thoughts all on your own without fostering them.  You will find as you go what kinds of things you need in your life to help you feel comfortable in your space. 

            Then there is the sociological aspect.  This area involves all your relationships with others.  It is important to weed out relationships that drain you, for you need all that energy for yourself now.  The very fact that you have a mental illness is probably why you are drawn to needy people.  There is something about mess and drama that stimulates the bipolar mind.  But that is negative stimulation and you do not want that. 

Next you want to start journaling, writing down your thoughts.  This may be difficult.  It was for me, but it will help you over time to find patterns in your mood cycles.  Get in the habit of journaling.  It is very therapeutic and will help you to begin to reframe your thoughts during dark days when you want to simply disintegrate.

            I recommend you simplify your life for a while until you can get all these things put into practice.  I would give it all a year in terms of creating solid habits. Do not start anything new like a job or a relationship if you can at all help it.  You need to get regulated and that takes time and consistency. 

            These things are basics.  Remember not to let anyone define you by your illness.  I would not be afraid to speak very openly about your illness, for that is the best way to eradicate stigma.   Someone else’s problem with your illness is just that, their problem, and just as you face the consequences of not taking care of yourself, so they will face consequences for discriminating against you.  Do not be afraid to fight for yourself.  I have fought back a couple of different times when I have been discriminated against.  It just did not sit well that individuals would be allowed to change the course of my journey due to their own paranoia.  And too, if you are able to fight back, it is good, for someone might come along after you who might not be able to. 

            Most importantly, I encourage you to find your spiritual nature—that part of you God designed to respond to Him.  I promise leaning on Him is the best way to get through whatever dark roads might lie ahead.  If you could not read a map, but you knew where to find the one who made the map, would not you go to him for directions?  You were made.  Designed.  So go to the one who made you to get help figuring out your particular design.   As, for me?  Well...haven't you heard? 

 I am Beautiful.  That is my name.  That is what God calls me.    I do not know how it is so. I just know that some way; somehow, he gave me beauty for ashes.