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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 03:20 PM
  #1
I posted this to the check in thread and soupe suggested I post a separate thread, which I thought was a good idea, so here it is...

I've been thinking a lot about what my life, and I'm sure many others here, is like.

For a "normal" person (someone without known mental health issues) life can be a simple relationship that lives between what you put into it, you get out of it. For example if they want to get stronger, put in exercise and get out a stronger body.

For me on the other hand, I feel awful most of the time, gripped with depression and anxiety. So the question is, what do you put in to get the result of feeling better?

Exercise? Meditation? Sleep? Listen to music? Self care? Positive thinking? Vitamins? Get a hobby? Hang out with friends? Work?

The thing is, I've tried all those things and continue to do them even though they have done nothing to help improve my mood. The relationship between what you put in and get out of life is clearly broken by bipolar.

I have a really hard time explaining this to my wife and family.

I'm not looking for solutions, I'm just making a general comment on many of our situations. Thanks for reading.

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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 04:04 PM
  #2
I subscribe to a modified spoon theory. Where when we're "up" we steal an unknown number of spoons from ourselves. That we then deal with when we are "down". Everything takes spoons and we're blind to how many we have in a given day. So what helps one day may be just to much another day. Just dealing with anxiety steals spoons.

Grab spoons or Straws and do the exercise with your wife. go through a week or two "day" by "day" It'll take about an hour but I find it the easiest way for people to understand BP and other mental illnesses.

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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 04:04 PM
  #3
Yes, I struggle with this a lot. My friends, most of whom I've known since we were little children, have such successful lives. I'm constantly struggling just to be stable. I find myself feeling envious and even bitter. I work hard not to feel that way, though. I don't want to live comparing my life with those who appear to be successful.

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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 05:18 PM
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I get it. I am constantly fighting depression and anxiety so how can I do the higher functioning? Half the time I can't track my own thoughts and that includes following directions from others. One reason I can't work anymore.

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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 08:37 PM
  #5
Thank you @Miguel'smom, @BethRags, and @Moose72.

I read about spoon theory and I better understand what you wrote @Miguel'smom. I guess I was writing about that without knowing about it.

I'm also envious about others who can just get up and do as they like. I think really long term these days and I think through almost every action and it's long term effect. It doesn't exactly help my anxiety.

It takes a lot of energy to get up, get going, and keep going. I think others have the luxury of going on autopilot and just going with things. We on the other hand have to think things through and decide where we want to use our energy.

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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 09:17 PM
  #6
I hate the fact that I can't make plans in advance because I never know where I'll be on the emotional spectrum. "Normies" have more freedom to do so, it seems.
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Default Oct 12, 2021 at 09:43 PM
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Originally Posted by buddha1too View Post
I hate the fact that I can't make plans in advance because I never know where I'll be on the emotional spectrum. "Normies" have more freedom to do so, it seems.
True. Tomorrow I am supposed to pick up my son at 10 and I am worried about where I'll be mentally at that point.

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Default Oct 13, 2021 at 12:27 AM
  #8
I think this is part of why "normal" people seem unable to understand mental illness. They just keep thinking from their own perspective, where there is this simple input/output relationship. They don't seem to grok that their experience is not universal.
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Default Oct 13, 2021 at 05:45 AM
  #9
I also feel i do not get out of life what i put into it.

When i'm up this can be particularly painful because i'm putting out such a huge amount of effort and lavishing love on people... and not getting much back. That's why i crash.

I get intensely frustrated and decide since i can't wring the pleasure out of life that my heroic efforts deserve, the only thing i can do is decrease my efforts to try and balance out the equation more fairly. Then i just crash and am bitter and frustrated and get depressed and have such little energy my activities-of-daily living are overwhelming. I get long periods of feeling up and feeling down, like several months at least, as long as 16 months for depression.

I just don't get the usual amount of pleasure from life. When i was a teen i had a best friend who was brimming over with good health and very active and energetic and was always organizing and playing games of baseball and bowling and i would just look at her vacantly because i didn't enjoy either thing and i couldn't understand how she could get pleasure from such activities. When i'm up, sure i'll play and even enjoy myself. But when i'm down i'll just watch from the sidelines and eat potato chips. I'm down more than i'm up, so this is mostly my life experience.

I've also found that with exercise. I've tried it for relieving my depression but all that happens is i squander my puny amount of energy on it and i start to look like a derelict and my home becomes a health hazard because i have no energy for the activities-of-daily-living like showering, dishes, garbage, cleaning, etc. I've exercised for as long as six weeks without improvement. Clearly it's more important that i attend to my activities-of-daily-living as best i can than to walk on a treadmill. It's really an "either / or" choice for me.

My ex-husband was healthy and he just consistently put out the same decent amount of energy everyday and rarely got tired. He tolerated our long full-time work hours and daily commute fine and was active outside work. He was delighted to stay up til 2:00am every Saturday night at a dance club he loved and just cruised thru life with an even temper and a song in his heart. He rarely complained and toxic people were just like water on his back.

I found the long hours of full-time work and commuting punishing and intolerable and convalesced in my hours outside of work and was desperate for every second of sleep i could get and was tormented by his insistence on staying up at the dance club til 2:00am every Saturday. I'm uber-sensitive to toxic people and suffer a lot from their poisonous energy. Under stress i complain at length.

So that's two healthy people i've know well whose experience of life baffled me. I'm very envious of them, that they could go bowling or play with a radio controlled car and feel re-energized the next day and put in 17 active hours and sleep seven and get up and do it all again, day after day.

It must be nice to be healthy.

Last edited by Anonymous41462; Oct 13, 2021 at 06:14 AM..
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Default Oct 13, 2021 at 08:25 AM
  #10
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scooter9 View Post
I posted this to the check in thread and soupe suggested I post a separate thread, which I thought was a good idea, so here it is...

I've been thinking a lot about what my life, and I'm sure many others here, is like.

For a "normal" person (someone without known mental health issues) life can be a simple relationship that lives between what you put into it, you get out of it. For example if they want to get stronger, put in exercise and get out a stronger body.

For me on the other hand, I feel awful most of the time, gripped with depression and anxiety. So the question is, what do you put in to get the result of feeling better?

Exercise? Meditation? Sleep? Listen to music? Self care? Positive thinking? Vitamins? Get a hobby? Hang out with friends? Work?

The thing is, I've tried all those things and continue to do them even though they have done nothing to help improve my mood. The relationship between what you put in and get out of life is clearly broken by bipolar.

I have a really hard time explaining this to my wife and family.

I'm not looking for solutions, I'm just making a general comment on many of our situations. Thanks for reading.


good observation

a goal in life is for me to be happy (nothing more, nothing less), just happy

trouble is, everything you've just listed is something that... well, doesn't work for me
sleep/ meditation?. blah

friends?. what are they.

work?. I can't work

hobbies?. well, listen to music I suppose, but it's hardly that exciting- I can do that anytime.

and fitness.. my fitness is about as good as my grades at school. aqa fail, fail, fail

not sure what will make me happy really, I really don't

I want to move back to the city I was born in, but when I asked myself why my reply was.. well just to do exactly what I'm doing here- sitting around taking up space. so hmm
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Default Oct 13, 2021 at 09:20 AM
  #11
Hiya Scooter. I'm glad you decided to post this thread!

I've had my share of lofty goals (with some great successes) with crashes and then periods of steps backwards with some steps forward. And repeat. During said crashes I had plenty of frustration, regrets, desperation, and lowered self worth and disappointment in myself. However, for the most part I have also had some ability to let some things roll off my back. I've also eventually been able to tell myself "It's OK where you are right now. It's OK." And that I need to kind to myself and others.

Perhaps some may say one must "forgive" themselves (and others). True, however, far too often people attribute fault, or even sin, to things that were/are out of their control, at various times. We have a serious mental health disorder. That's not our fault. And many of those "normal folk" may not be able to handle near the struggle as we do. A person with two legs who beats a person with only one, to a finish line, is not necessarily "stronger" or "faster" in a core way. Consider a different perspective on this. Doing so can be freeing. But that doesn't mean resign yourself to being unhappy.

In recent years, I've really mastered finding satisfaction in the small things in life. Certainly being on disability gives me the time/opportunity to do so. I have tried working in some satisfying tasks that don't require set high expectations. Expectations is a word to ponder. They can be set to assist with success or to always bring disappointment. I've realized how to work them for myself so they help rather than hinder my life satisfaction.

I wrote a blog post in 2018 on pretty much the above at
Making Progress in the School of Hard Knocks (Learning From Challenges) – Bird Flight Since then, I have indeed gone new places. Pretty exciting ones. There will surely be some bumps in my road ahead, but my goal is to keep trucking along.

Another thing I have reworked in my life are "priorities". They have a lot to do with managing expectations for yourself and others and neither have to be looked at as a sacrifice. Just modifications.

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Last edited by Soupe du jour; Oct 13, 2021 at 10:57 AM..
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Default Oct 13, 2021 at 08:28 PM
  #12
Thanks everyone for your replies. They mean a lot to me.

Yeah 'normies' certainty have things a lot easier than us. They can rely on a simple input-output relationship whereas we have to budget our energy and deal with whatever our bipolar throws at us that day.

I think the spoon theory helps a lot in not only explaining to others but also helps with my own understanding.

I read through your blog post @Soupe du jour, thanks for posting about it.

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Default Oct 15, 2021 at 03:00 PM
  #13
I didn't know what spoon theory was so I looked it up. Here's one article I found:

The spoon theory of mental health

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Default Oct 15, 2021 at 10:30 PM
  #14
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Originally Posted by Moose72 View Post
I get it. I am constantly fighting depression and anxiety so how can I do the higher functioning? Half the time I can't track my own thoughts and that includes following directions from others. One reason I can't work anymore.
Yes, I feel the same way. It doesn't help that I have ADHD (inattentive type) along with bipolar 1. Everything is just harder for me

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Default Oct 16, 2021 at 12:16 PM
  #15
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Originally Posted by AutumnW0lf View Post
Yes, I feel the same way. It doesn't help that I have ADHD (inattentive type) along with bipolar 1. Everything is just harder for me
Glad to know I'm not the only one.

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