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Originally Posted by mssweatypalms
Yes. A few years ago I experienced the same thing, but I didn't manage it well. I quit my job because of it.
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Thanks for your response!! And it's not a problem if it's long
I don't mind reading
and it's informative.
As for what you mentioned there, I don't plan to do that at all.... I want to do everything to not have to.
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In my case, I try to balance it. If I have deadlines for my other job, I really skip the gym. Instead, I go on weekends to make up for it.
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Some of the deadlines for me are at the weekend, lol.
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I didn't include the first 4 years of my diagnosis in my story. I quit my job after 2 years because it was too stressful for me. The schedule was more irregular than my teaching job now. I had to work very long hours, especially when I had business trips.
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Hm yeah, this is pretty irregular but only because I don't have some external reference point to look to. If that made sense? Not sure what to call it in English.... I mean I could make it really regular if that worked. So the job itself isn't at fault at all.
EDIT: Oh.....well, so the only one external reference points I've got are the deadlines themselves. That's not often enough, not regular enough, not several times everyday if you get what I mean. I don't know where I can go from this.
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Some months after quitting, I had a hypomanic episode. I suddenly decided to go to another country to work there. I was able to start training in one company, but I suddenly fell into depression again. So, I went back to my country, lived with my mom, and dealt with depression for around 6 months. I tried to do some freelance work during that time, but I was basically unemployed.
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OK I don't have experiences like that. Interesting.
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My doctor changed my medicine at that time, so all those 6 months were spent managing my sleep and overall mood. I think I can relate to that difficult transition from downtime to getting back to a normal routine. It took me several months, so I can't really say how I got through it. With the my mom's help, I managed to adjust within half a year. I never thought I would be able to be stable at that time. There were days I couldn't get up. By the seventh month, I think I got used to the combination of Lamictal and Seroquel. It wasn't perfect but I felt more and more like myself again.
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Oh my "not normal routine" was about 16 years though it was not a downtime because I always had goals to work on. Whether it was me working for someone else to earn a living or some other goal, I always worked on one. But yeah, not a nice normal routine with sleep, or anything else, except for my training.
And I don't have that external reference point rightnow, I mean not even family because they went to travel for a week now. I did ask for help recently from them for that, and it helped a little but they can't provide enough of that external reference. They are not "official" enough I think. Or they would have to keep paying lots of attention to me by giving up on some of their plans for a while. That would mean some temporary sacrifice, of course. I've not asked them to do that for long.
But yeah, my mother has also helped me some in the last few months because I moved to their place when I stopped caring to eat. I moved back to my own apartment recently, because they went on that one week-long travel but I don't plan to go live with them again. Maybe go there during the day and pretend it's a work office...but not sleep over regularly. Go there in the morning, go back in the afternoon/evening/whenever the job is done.
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Then, when I got the teaching job, I started forcing myself to follow the routine I wrote about before.
Sorry for the long story. I guess what I want to say is that medication does a lot.
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So again, no problem with the length of the story
I don't think I can do the type of medication you've listed because it would be too strong for me at this point. I've never taken antipsychotics actually....I took Lamictal for a short period but it was a bit too strong lol. Even though effective some, too. Like it made me feel content and stable. Also turned off my mind pretty much, which was also the side effect as it killed my working memory half of the time. So I was gonna miss deadlines unless I was gonna work from morning to evening all day bc of how slow it made me, lol.
But I took it only after 8 years into the bipolar symptoms, so I got access to it pretty late. By then I didn't really have many episodes left. Let alone mania. Earlier it would probably have worked wonders (minus killing my working memory, but earlier I didn't do any intellectual type of work for a while so I wouldn't have even noticed I think.)
That's also why antipsychotics aren't really an option, no mania for me anymore. (I know I sound very er, unorthodox with that claim)
OK well....I really have to focus on how I'm going to manage this because I don't want to give up my training any longer, and I don't want to give up the work either. Do you know of any group or some place like that where I could think about this out loud? Or by any chance, would you be okay with talking with me about it a bit?
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You're right. Talking to students helps me a lot. It's definitely one of the reasons I can keep doing this job.
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That is cool.
