I'm having a rough go of it for right now. Really emotional. Mom was up for a visit (she lives several states away) and it was good but I miss her.

Plus we talked about some stuff and it made me realize a few things - 1) I hid a lot of symptoms and pain growing up; 2) while I don't have self discipline to keep my place clean, or exercise regularly, or have a regular schedule I seem to have channelled all of that into suppressing impulses and symptoms. and 3) she asked me (again) if I had asked my therapist about going on disabilty. I haven't worked in a year because of the bipolar and when I did work my life was working and recovering from the stress of working (I had no friends, social life, or any real hobbies).

Anyway, I talked to my therapist today and told her and I expected her to say something like "well of course that isn't for you, once you get your meds worked out you'll be back at work with better coping skills." or something to that effect. What she actually said was she has had patients whose lives are less impacted than mine by mental illness who are on disability and that she thought I should talk to my new therapist (I'm not going to be seeing her after our next appointment) about it, gave me the number for an advocate. And also said she was worried that, based on what she knew of me, that working full time wouldn't be a good idea. That if I did I'd be sacrificing quality of life to work.

Which makes me wonder if maybe I'm in denial about how severe my bipolar disorder is. I've only been hospitalized twice, I don't get mania. But I've never been able to complete college, I've struggled to hold down jobs, and the jobs have been those with very little responsibilities. As soon as the responbilities increase my stress levels go through the rough. I know I'm a terrible judge of how bad my anxiety is, I've learned that from talking with my pdoc about medicine and stuff.

So there's a lot going on and lots of questions and I hate the feeling.