Going Through my Life

You were CASTIGATED?! Then shouldn't this thread be in the transgender forum? DOH! That is very interesting about OCD and following school rules exactly, I never made that connection either, and yes I was little miss perfect too. my diabetes nutritionist, when I showed her my food diary with protein grams, carb grams, fiber grams, fat grams, saturated fat grams, cholesterol grams, & yes, calories, calculated by hand with running totals during the day, told me to stop it and get a life - but now that seems OCD to me. People say, oh write down everything you eat, it's a good tool - buddy, you don't know who you're talking to. Anyway, I just wanted to pop in as a sister smartypants and say, never thought I'd see the day! You warm the cockles of my heart.

Yeah, my parents were pretty irritated about that! But I was socially odd enough that it would have been even more difficult if I were the youngest one around (and still outperforming my "peers"...)

We didn't have magnet schools. I did participate in a lot of gifted/talented programs in my school district, though - one of the benefits of being in a mid-sized town with a good university nearby was some great enrichment programs, to which I credit my long-term interest in math and science (ended up getting a BA in math even though it was my hardest subject!)

My PhD will be in Information Science & Technology. It's interdisciplinary social science, so extra soul-searching and flailing about to find your way is required. But it's been great for me. Difficult as all hell, but great.

It really did seem like it took forever, but there's always hope. I'm definitely an oddball even among the slightly eccentric smart kids. Academia is known for being full of crazies, but I haven't actually encountered very many. Or at least, not very many individuals who are "out" as having MI. Nobody talks about it without a drink or two in them, and it's almost always anxiety or depression, which is hardly surprising given how unrewarding and downright grueling the academic life is. Not to belittle those conditions, because I fully understand just how crippling they can be, but it's hard for them to relate to my issues.

I'd really like to be more open about being bipolar, because I think most of the people I know would be fairly accepting, but I'm still a bit leery of others' reactions. I've had so many people give me that "oh but you seem so successful/happy/productive" line so many times, which I find insulting because it invalidates my suffering, although I know that's not what they intend. I just don't like feeling like I have to hide something that is a huge part of who I am.

Heheh, thanks, hankster! Castigated, not castrated, lol! (Though I strongly suspect you are just playing with me, miss smartypants ) "Buddy, you don't know who you're talking to"... that sure rings a bell!

These experiences with Secretum, you and me have me wondering. Kind of a rabbit trail (rabbit trail? who? me? ) and I wonder if it's something we should get a thread going on the OCD forum. Need to venture over there more... it's just that the BP one is home, you know?

Back on track... Secretum, your goal to try to be *less* lonely is a good one, because really, it's not about quantity. Many people prefer to have fewer but closer friends, while others prefer a lot of them/social butterfly scene... but frankly, I don't know how that could have much depth. But maybe that's not their thing. I don't know. Speculating way out of my realm there! Even if it's someone you just enjoy something in common with, that can be significant, you know? Did you have any particular ideas on that?

To be completely honest, the lack of depth is the reason most social butterflies choose to be social butterflies! I speak from experience on that one.

When I'm all manic and outgoing, I LOVE LOVE LOVE being around other people, all the time. I can be the life of a party and extremely entertaining. I joke excessively with others at work, and that usually gets me in trouble - I've had written disciplinary action more than once for "being too social."

Anyhow, the point of me posting this was just to make the point that (for me, anyhow) the whole social butterfly thing is just another way to hide the pain. (And heck yah, it can get painful being manic, for sure, and then comes that crash with a whole new kind of pain.)

Sorry if I seem down, pessimistic or cynical right now. I'm seeing my doc today at one and explaining everything to him for the first time and let him in on the "sneaking suspicion" that I might be BP.

(((all ya'll wonderful peeps)))

Good luck! I had that appointment Tuesday. Hope it goes as smoothly as these things can...

Disclaimer: I have never been dx-ed with OCD, and at this time I doubt that I could have anything worse than a sub-clinical form of it (though PC's OCD quiz disagrees. Haha)

During late elementary school and junior high (time I referred to earlier), however, I think I may have had full blown OCD. I had a pretty big contamination problem. I washed my hands until they bled (at least 30x/day) ...my pediatrician's response? "You know that those things aren't so dirty. Just wash your hands less often." Yeah. She really knew how to take care of mental health issues.

I didn't mean to imply that simply strictly following rules is OCD-related. The obsessions behind the behavior is what made it pathological. I felt so much guilt over helping a kid with his homework that I had to confess. I certainly hadn't broken any real rules; giving someone a clue on the answer to question 7 is much different from actually cheating. However, I was so religiously concerned with not doing anything "bad" that I couldn't rest until I "confessed" that I had.

So, I'd say that concerns with rules can be related to OCD, but are not necessarily so. If you do go over to the OCD forum, it will be interesting to see how many others have rule obsessions. I'm sure the 3 of us aren't alone. I also feel like the bp forum is home. Admittedly I feel awkward starting new threads in other forums. And the people in the borderline forum don't like me enough to answer my questions.

And wow, Hankster! That's an impressive log. I just put food in my body, haha. But I'm not diabetic (yet..) If I feel like I've really overeaten or undereaten at the end of the day, then I'll guesstimate calories because I'm curious. But I could never keep such a detailed diary.

I couldn't believe the nutritionist literally told me to get a life! I thought if ANYONE would be impressed with all my data, it would be a dietician. At least now I have an excuse, never to log again. What a freakin relief. Now I just try to eat enough fruit and veg and protein.

I could have written this myself. I feel like my functioning has really been affected by my bipolar. But apparently for some people going from straight As to half As, half Bs is not a steep enough drop (it is if you're trying to get into med school!), having a limited social life is not an issue because academics and family life is more important, and not feeling alive is not a problem because I don't look like a zombie. Grrr.

At least mental health professionals can see that something is wrong now. When I talked to my high school's social worker my sophomore year, she told me I couldn't be depressed because my weight had not significantly changed, and though I was fatigued, my sleep was normal. I wonder if anyone ever told her that the DSM requires 5/9 symptoms...and that means that some people won't have every symptom.

Okay. I'm done with my rant against people who won't even read this. And you're right; they have the purest intentions. They're trying to comfort us by saying that we can't be sick... but that is no comfort when we feel that we must either be sick or so worthless and severely flawed that we can scarcely be called human.

I do agree that you should be as out as possible. The world needs to know that there are smart and successful people who grapple with bipolar disorder. It would decrease the stigma against MI and encourage people who need help to get it. Just be wise. You wouldn't want to limit your job options because some people can't get over their prejudices.

Sillyfab, thanks for the extrovert's perspective. I'll admit that I usually assume that the "social butterfly" types are super-confident. Thanks for reminding me that I shouldn't make unsupported judgments, when I get so angry at others for assuming things about me simply because I am quiet. I hope that once you get your diagnosis you can find your way into remission relatively fast.

Innerzone, I hung out with the AP kids too. We called ourselves the "AP Cult"...Haha. Most of my acquaintances from those days are off studying engineering now. Thankfully I had the stupidity to take calc-based physics my senior year. My hatred of it protected me from suffering a similar fate. (disclaimer: I have nothing against engineers. Engineering is just not for me.)

I think intelligence is a fascinating concept. I'm book smart, and I can reason verbally quite well. However, I find visual-spatial stuff quite hard...which causes me to get lost often. Haha.

I'm going to start a thread on the concept intelligence sometime soon; I'll say a lot more there. I think that intelligence is a concept that 100 different people will define 100 different ways. The differences may be subtle, but they're there, and I believe they have a significant influence on behavior.

She literally told you to "get a life!"?! I just assumed you meant that that was her general sentiment. I'd be mad too; she could have been a bit gentler. But I guess it does ultimately save you a lot of time.

I could have written this. It's like a morbid fear of getting in trouble. No matter how unlikely or downright ridiculous (well what "if" "if" and "if"... when I admit what's actually going through my head, BF will say, "NO ONE THINKS LIKE THAT!". Which of course I counter with, "Well I do, so someone else MUST! And they will be the person that deals with this for sure!" ) It's kind of weird though, in that I will totally sweat the most ridiculous stuff but it certainly hasn't kept me from doing other stuff with much actual potential for trouble, hell even illegal. What is UP with that?!
(Hmmm, come to think of it, they have been of a self-destructive nature... not stuff against others though. No way.)

Heheh, yup, almost all engineers too. Which is pretty much my idea of hell on earth.
There were 3 of us who "ruled" the group, where we'd go, what we'd do... like that. We had a name... The Triumvirate. Lol.

Oh noes! Me too... (Well, not the "get a life" part. And I use my big shiny computer instead of hand-totalling stuff.)

I once tracked step count on a pedometer against pages read for an entire semester so that I could conclusively determine that there's a -.3 correlation between reading and walking.

In addition to a few other odd habits to do with food handling, neatness, and symmetry, I currently have a 100% complete mood chart for nearly an entire year, with full data on sleep, alcohol consumption, meds, menstrual cycles, step counts, and events like travel. I use two different mood charts, one is a 7-point scale and the other is Moodscope which is percentage-based and much more useful for statistical analysis. I also track sleep two ways, with a FitBit and my iPhone using the SleepCycle app. For about 8 months I tracked a couple other covariates until I did some statistical analysis and found that they weren't correlated with anything, so I stopped tracking those.

I would claim that my tracking of all that stuff is because I data a lot. I mean, that's why I'm a researcher, after all - keep in mind that I am actually trained in data collection, management, and statistical analysis! And it has been personally useful for convincing myself that I do actually have BP, and figuring out triggers, because the statistical significance of the correlation between sleep and mood is absurdly high. There's no way I can convince myself that they are not related when faced with statistics like that.

But some days it does seem a bit obsessive... I consistently get an "OCD is probable" score on online tests, but my behavior runs in that direction primarily when I'm hypomanic.

When you read about great scientists, they all tested their cures on themselves, right? We're just like that, that's all! Uh-oh, now I'm remembering The Fly movies...

I decided to get rid of all other variables that could affect my progress, that's why now I do NOTHING except see T. Pure science! I love this thread. Nerd girls rule. I love having an existentialist T who is sometimes as despondent as I am, when he lets me know at the end of the hour that I cheered HIM up.