[StarLife]

Nothing is working and no one is listening.

It is really hard for me to encapsulate everything I am going through and everything that I am feeling in a message that isn't so long no one wants to read it. But I thank you in advance for sticking in out.

Basically, I am getting the treatment that many think is the answer to bipolar depression – and frankly I don't think there is much difference between bipolar depression and unipolar depression. I am on meds and I am in therapy. Neither the combination of the two nor either one separately is helping me at all right now. I have been on so many medications in the last seven years and while several of them – mood stabilizers like lithium and antipsychotics like Seroquel are 100% effective at completely stopping a manic episode, I think I've only come across one antidepressant out of like 12 I've tried that has ever made a dent in my depression. That one is Cymbalta, and the problem with that one is that my psy doc won't give it to me anymore because he thinks that it has a high chance of flipping me into mania. I've also never gotten through any manic episode without being hospitalized once or twice in the span of 1 or 2 months. So that comes out to about 9 hospitalizations in 7 years. I have never, ever had a mania/hospitalization that didn't put me into at least 3 months of severe depression immediately after. So basically on average I spend at least 5 months out of the years either manic or depressed.

It seems like lately I've been reading a lot of material about mental illness that really emphasizes how much better quality of life is supposed to be when the affected person is “getting the right treatment”. I don't know where these publications are getting their statistics but I sure as hell don't fit into them and I'm wondering how many of the people here do.

My life situation is incredibly crappy. I live with my parents. We've been living in a hotel for 4 months because we can't find a place to live. I have no car, no job, no money, and in the last 2.5 years I have hung out with a friend a handful of times.

Last night I told my mom that I wouldn't be able to make this morning's appt. with my psych. She knew I had been up the entire day and night before. I wanted to cancel because I just knew that I couldn't even wake up with so little sleep. She made a remark about how I wouldn't get another appointment for 3 months. I let her go back to sleep but I wrote her a really nasty not about how she doesn't run my life.

This morning she woke me up because apparently my dr.'s nurse demanded to speak with me. She made comments about “being concerned” (translation, you might be getting manic) because I wasn't sleeping nights. I started crying and saying “It's not like that! I spent ONE night not asleep!) Then she said how I wouldn't be able to get another appt. until FEBRUARY. I said while crying, This is ridiculous! I miss ONE appointment and I can't get another one for THREE MONTHS. She told me to calm down and that the doctor would try to fit me in.

I also made the huge mistake of spending the entire day yesterday on twitter and facebook. I really had only spent a handful of days on facebook in the previous 6 months. But yesterday I was fired up about some things and I made a TON of posts. Some of those things were really important to me. I only got a few likes and comments. I have 176 fb friends and only a few of those are people that I USED to talk to on a semi-regular basis. I came across posts by people whom I was once close to who have since completely dropped me as a friend. All that did was make me feel even worse about the fact not only do I not have any friends in real life, but that I have no engagement with anyone on social media no matter how important or how smart or how interesting my content is. I actually get more attention on twitter (by a little bit) and almost none of my followers know me in real life.
So I have no voice. The only people in the whole damned world who care about me are my mother, my sister, and my father (who I hate). My sister cares about me by letting me and my mother stay at her house a few times a week or when my father gets drunk. When she is home she spends almost no time with us, or she is out with one of her two best friends who she sees a lot more than she sees me. My mother has become my only friend and she is not someone I can really relate to or go out and have fun with. This sounds incredibly egotistical but both of my parents are considerably less intelligent than I am and are completely uneducated.

I feel completely alone and I hate my life. That's what it comes down to. I can have all the passionate feelings in the world about really important things but nobody cares. I am inconsequential and invisible.

I go to sleep crying most nights. I used to pray just to imagine that someone was listening to me but I've stopped believing that.

I turn 36 in December. I am not doing very well.

[bbTofu]

I'm sorry I don't have much to say, but we do listen, I listen (or.. read at least).

I can relate to the social media thing, I used to have about 600 friends and about 10% of them are actually people I can talk to.
The 'real' conversations I can have with intelligent people is at college, practicum, skype with old friends.

[Confusedinomicon]

Are there any outpatient services or volunteering you could do in the meantime? Does the city have transportation?

If you're low income and in a city with transportation there is cheap and in some cases free transport. In my city we have buses and when I was low income/unemployed I spent 15 a month for a city bus fare. It sucks and takes more time to get around but at least it's something.

I don't actually talk to the majority of people on my Facebook. :/

[scatterbrained04]

*Hugs* I don't have any advice but just know I will listen. Or in this case read

I do feel invisible on social media at times. The fact is, there are probably a lot of people who honestly just didn't even see your posts because maybe they just weren't on Facebook/Twitter that day. Try not to take it too personally.

Regarding anti-depressants. Not sure about Cymbalta but some anti-depressants can actually cause severe anxiety or mania for a person who is bipolar.

Are you able to move out and on your own?

[detfan4life]

I can relate to a lot of your feelings. I also live with my parents and have felt very isolated. Social media doesn't help me very much. But it can be hard to reach out to people when we feel like this. I'd recommend looking into volunteering, even something very simple to keep you feeling like you have a purpose. Please know that no matter what happens, we're listening.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Do you have SSI or SSDI? That might help a little. There are generally other things social service wise that might help you get out of the motel. If you have medicaid your caseworker should know about help for you; if you don't have medicaid it certainly sounds like you probably qualify for it and possibly some food assistance too. United way has something called 211 that tries to hook you up with appropriate assistance programs.

Your life just sounds so stressful. I'm sorry. Please keep writing and don't worry about length.

[jacky8807]

There seems to be a minority that go on like lithium and are better forever but for the rest it is a struggle
Do you only get depression following mania? If that's the case than for you preventing mania will likely fix the problem
You are also in a high stress living situation which complicates everything
I hope you feel better soon!

[gayleggg]

I don't talk to most of the people that I'm friends with on fb either in fact I don't really care about seeing their posts either. I don't think that I asked any of them to befriend me anyway. Most found me. Only 1-2 would even try to understand what I go through. I'm not sure why some even wanted to be my friend.

I'm sorry you are having such a bad time right now. Definitely check out assistance programs in your area for you and your parents.

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[Trippin2.0]

Being treated, unfortunately doesn't always mean having the right treatment.

Since you are still so incredibly symptomatic, I'm doubting your treatment is really treating you effectively.

Just some things to think about...

What type of therapy are you partaking in? How is it supposed to help, VS how effective is it?
Do you go there to vent and gain support, or do you go to obtain coping skills to help combat this monster?

Are there different models of therapy you can try if your current model is ineffective?

Have you implemented healthy life style changes such as good sleep hygiene / sleep ritual, exercise, meditation, balanced diet, daily routine?

The medication you're on, have you assessed if it is keeping you stable or actually keeping you depressed? Do the Pros out weigh the Cons? Are you being your own best advocate where your pdoc is concerned and not letting him make life altering decisions that you have to live with?

Have you thought about changing pdocs? Is this an option?

Since you are unemployed and not socializing, have you considered volunteering or getting involved with social groups with similar interests and hobbies?

Please don't think I'm prying or being nosy, these questions and their answers are not for my benefit... This beast has to be tackled from as many angles as possible, and we need to try and live as balanced a life as possible if we are to have any hope of managing it effectively.

I'm really sorry life sucks so badly right now, hopefully if and when you manage to improve your environment your BP might actually ease up a bit, instead of relentlessly kicking your a.s.s left right and center.

I know that is true for many of us here on this board.

[Hemingway]

Just know we're here for you. *many many hugs*

[StarLife]

Thank you so much to everyone who has read my post and responded. It means a lot to me when even one person is paying attention to me because I am so starved for friendship and companionship.

Confusedinomicon, some of the time it is possible for me to use the bus because one of the hotels we have been staying at is right off a major blvd. The other hotel (we have to bounce from one to the other every month) is nowhere near any transportation. I actually applied for disability fare months ago but threw away my card right after I got it because I became manic and was like, “I don't need a disability pass because I'm not disabled.”

Rcat, no I am not able to move out on my own. I have no money of my own, I haven't been employed since May, and my parents are so financially strapped that they rely on my sister a great deal.

BeyondtheRainbow, my whole psych team has been on me about SSDI for a long time. In fact, I have a caseworker that I meet with once a week and I am supposed to have had that done by the time I meet with her. I can't tell you why I haven't done it yet. It's just that for me, important paperwork and anything to do with finances really scares me. I don't have medicaid, but you're right, I should probably see if I qualify because my Kaiser insurance costs $350 and I've been hanging onto that for a while because I thought I really liked my psych team. Now I'm realizing that they are not really helping me so what's the point. My caseworker did mention about the food assistance, though.

Trippin2.0, regarding therapy, what you are talking about it what I've come to realize – it isn't helping. I really adore my therapist, she is so smart and cool, but mostly what happens is I go in there and vent. I go back week after week and I have not one good thing to say about my life, and she tries to say positive and uplifting things and make it sound like it's actually not as bad as it is.

You are not prying at all. Living in the hotel makes a healthy lifestyle kind of impossible right now. I go to sleep every night with the television on pretty loud because my father won't turn it off. In our last place I had my own room and always slept with the television off, so this is making it harder to fall asleep. We can't cook without a kitchen and all of our meals are take-out or microwave. I have almost no access to the car so even though I have a gym membership I cannot use it.

I don't mean to be throwing roadblocks all around your suggestions but to be honest there isn't much more I can do with my time but be online. I'm trying to find ways to make money online and spend time on my blog, but I stopped doing that a few days ago because we had to move into my sister's house for a week and for some reason right now I feel even more depressed than I have been since I last got out of the hospital in August.

Several of you have mentioned volunteering. I think that this is a really good idea. It is something I have always wanted to do and it would probably do me some good. I'm going to look into that once we get back to the hotel. Right now we are nowhere near the city or transportation.

One of the things I get down on myself about a lot is that from my perspective, this disease has completely beaten me, to the point that I feel like I have accomplished none of the things that even make me an adult person, let alone a functioning member of society. I haven't lived on my own in 8 years. I am so jealous and in awe of those of you who have careers, a home, a marriage, a family. The American dream. It's like I need to know the difference between those people and me, why they have succeeded at life despite this disease, and why I have not.

I read a thread entitled “Tell us your worst stories of manic spending sprees.” (something like that). I read a few dozens posts in which people spent tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars during mania. My story was about imagining I was wealthy and trying to buy thousands of dollars of stuff but my debit card was declined. I was so blown away that all these bipolar people had all this money. I don't think I've ever had more than $5000 in my bank account.

I haven't dated anyone in 4 years. I hadn't dated anyone in the 6 years prior to that. Considering my age marriage is pretty unlikely and the pitfalls of that are even meeting someone who isn't divorced or has children of their own. The window of time I have left to have children is getting narrower, and I also have to deal with the ethical implications of that. A nurse in the hospital during my recent stay who had 3 bipolar brothers questioned me about whether or not I thought it was a good idea to have a child that had a pretty good likelihood of being bipolar. I mean, I had thought about it before, but hearing someone else say it really drove it home.

Thank you to everyone who read the thread and said they were here to listen. And thank you for the hugs. I wish we could all get together and have a support group, with burnt coffee and stale doughnuts.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

I do Swagbucks - Free Gift Cards for Paid Surveys and More online to earn money. I make $25-$50/month although you can make more (some people a lot more) if you put more time into it. It is a valid site and does payout. It's also good about giving you credit if you complain if you aren't credited for something (that's a key thing to know, always complain because they nearly always fix it).

It sounds like you just have so many things going on right now that it is hard to know where to start. I think that if you can the SSDI is a good place to start. If you are lucky it takes a few months but I'm sure you know it can take longer. So the sooner you apply the better. Hopefully you'll be like me and approved in 3 months time. You need your providers to write good, full assessments so it is best to have that done before you change therapists if you can handle it (I know it is overwhelming. But the initial thing really isn't bad at all and it does sound like you need the income badly.) The sicker your therapist makes you sound the more likely you are to be approved quickly. You said you were in the hospital in August, that will help you too in getting approved.

I'm sorry that life is so overwhelming right now. I hope that you are able to find some small ways for it to improve soon.

[WibblyWobbly]

When you talk about feeling different and wondering why you can't be functional, I totally feel you. I know we are just a small cross-section of the bipolar community because people only come to forums if they're in a bad place, but I was only yesterday wondering what the average level of functioning is for someone with BP. I feel like I'm a weird case because I didn't get diagnosed until I was 33. In a year and a half I've been hospitalized 6 times and now my treatment team has decided I need residential. Umm... What? Last summer I was finally working my dream job, I was a rising star in my company, interacting with VPs every day. Now I can't even brush my teeth on a regular basis.

So when you say you wonder why you're different than other people, I understand. I have a twin who I feel like got handed all the luck (relatively) in life. I don't know why I can't consistently function like her, but I also don't get why I can't function like I used to. My family doesn't understand how I look like me and my voice sounds like me but nothing else is the same. They think I don't want to get better. I just can't believe it's possible that I have plummeted so far and I'm somehow responsible. I think the chemicals in my brain are off and I haven't found the right meds yet. Btw my pdoc really didn't want me on antidepressants either. He grudgingly put me on a low dose of Cymbalta and I felt like it was helping. I went IP under a different pdoc and talked him into hiking it. You couldn't do that if you were manic but if you went for depression...

I'm not able to see any potential in my life when I'm stuck in my mom's basement and not interacting with people, all I see is how much things suck. I feel like it's so hard to maintain relationships with friends because they all work except for one who is a stay-at-home mom. I envy all their lives and can't relate to them right now so I've dropped off the map and after a year most of them had given up trying to reach out. I rarely post on fb and I feel rejected when I do for the same reason as you (although I think there is some kind of algorithm where people whose stuff you 'like' more frequently shows up at the top of your newsfeed, so you might entirely miss posts from people who are hardly ever on because they get pushed down). Just try to remember that other people might feel like you are the one who disappeared, not the other way around.

Last thing is I am 100% with you on being anxious to do paperwork. I'm lucky because my mom took over. She handed me things to sign and dropped it in the mail for me. The SSDI process was actually pretty easy and it only took me 3 months to get approved. They are giving me a chunk of benefits that are retroactive from the date they consider me to have become disabled. If you could do that, buy a cheap car and have more independence it could change your whole life! <3

[StarLife]

Originally Posted by WibblyWobbly

When you talk about feeling different and wondering why you can't be functional, I totally feel you. I know we are just a small cross-section of the bipolar community because people only come to forums if they're in a bad place, but I was only yesterday wondering what the average level of functioning is for someone with BP. I feel like I'm a weird case because I didn't get diagnosed until I was 33. In a year and a half I've been hospitalized 6 times and now my treatment team has decided I need residential. Umm... What? Last summer I was finally working my dream job, I was a rising star in my company, interacting with VPs every day. Now I can't even brush my teeth on a regular basis.

So when you say you wonder why you're different than other people, I understand. I have a twin who I feel like got handed all the luck (relatively) in life. I don't know why I can't consistently function like her, but I also don't get why I can't function like I used to. My family doesn't understand how I look like me and my voice sounds like me but nothing else is the same. They think I don't want to get better. I just can't believe it's possible that I have plummeted..
<3

WibblyWobbly thank you so much for posting this. It makes me feel a little better knowing that I'm not the only one who feels like they have underachieved.
It hurts so much because when I go to sleep at night i can't think of anything other then being a failure. I try so hard to imagine a happy scenario where I am living even a normal, simple life. But every night I dread going to sleep because then it's just me alone with my thoughts and I can't muster up even a nice scene of me walking on the beach.

In my last appt with my pdoc I said something about the fact that I've been hospitalized 9 times in 7 years. I stopped for a moment and said out loud (in regards to my condition) "it's pretty bad." He just looked at me and nodded his head. It was like we sharing a moment when I was finally saying what he already knew.

I certainly don't want to make it out like you have it worse than me, but 6 times in one year? I've never been through that much hell all at one time. That's freaking impressive.

I'm working on the SSDI. Thanks for throwing in that glimmer of hope about the car.



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[LorrieTorrie]

OP, except for a few minor details, I could've written this post myself. Even the fact that my parents depend on my sister, and I am currently living in a hotel. I am sorry I can't offer you any advice, but I just wanted to tell you that you aren't alone. I too wonder why I can't function like everybody else. I find myself crying alone in the bathroom (hiding from my husband and children) because I just feel like it isn't fair. Why me? What did I do that made me stuck living this life? Everybody says it will get better. Will it?

I'm sorry, I don't want to be a downer on your post. All I can say is to keep hoping. That's what I'm doing. If I hang onto hope then there is always a possibility of me getting better, and for now that's good enough. I'm wishing you the best