Bipolar Check-in #80

Went to church this morning and cried a bit. Not a bad cry, just incredibly grateful for the life I am living today. Went to my mom and dad's after and they packed a bunch of food for me to take home, I love them so much. Was so bummed when my dad told me how lonely he is and how much he missed New York. It's all my fault they are here - if it wasn't for going to jail they never would have moved here. I feel like I uprooted their whole life. I feel so guilty and cried a bit on the way home.

But....

When I got home there was a note on my door from my probation officer. I am officially on Unsupervised Probation!! Which means basically OFF of probation but it is in name only until next year, I just can't get in any trouble, which I am obviously not- I have my freedom back, I have my life back, I can travel - no more visits, no more random drug tests - I can do whatever I want now!!

Still feel about my dad - I think I will get an ice cream cake for him next week - but life doesn't get any better than this. After all the pain and hurt from jail and my husband, I am finally putting all of this behind me.

@LadyShadow

That is SO awesome you are off probation! What wonderful news! Couldn’t happen to better person. You have really turned your life around!

pawpaws funeral is wednesday. thre will be a gun salute as he is a korean war veteran. he was94. wow. long life. i miss him so much.

gun fire always triggers bad memories for me of my step mother threatening my life and target shooting when i was 17. scary stuff she was.

i keep getting awful painful muscle spasms since starting risperdal

@halliebeth
Are you doing ok with everything? You're pawpaw lived a very long life. I don't know that anyone in my family has lived that long though I do have a grandmother who is 91.

Gunfire triggers me too

@Mountaindewed
This may not be the ED board, but please stop listing your list of foods consumed daily here & at the ED board. Since you post on the ED board frequently (yet claim to have no ED), you know good and well posting food lists of foods you consume like you do all the time is VERY TRIGGERING to EDs, most especially food lists containing zero sugar this, zero cal that, fat free this, I only ate fruit and veg today, etc. I do NOT appreciate it.

You KNOW there are people on this bipolar board who have EDs and are in recovery. I may be recovered 20 years, but I'm still NOT immune to ED thinking. There are probably others who read this thread who have EDs but do not post. Bipolar disorder and EDs are often co-morbid.

No one else sees the need to list their daily food consumption in such detail.

Stress has been NOT been shown to cause ulcers. The bacteria Helibacter pylori, NSAID use, and vomiting frequently (from the bile) are what have been shown to cause ulcers. Ulcers can increase your risk of stomach cancer significantly. They can perforate. You know how much warning I got between the onset of pain from my perforated ulcer and passing out? 4 hrs. That's it. Next was an ambulance and they said I'd have been dead in 8 hr. from the time it perforated if I hadn't had emergency surgery. Which is why I have gone on about ulcer care.

@Mountaindewed, I seriously hope you take @Blueberrybook's word to heart. You're encouraging some of our stupid ED thoughts, and you're unnecessarily making your health issues worse. EVERYONE on this forum is already struggling enough, and I think it's important that we work on taking actions to recover, or at least look at ourselves and question if what we're doing right now is working, and what might we do to change it if it's not? It's easy to sit in the shyt we've been sitting in and got comfy in, but is it really good to be comfy sitting in shyt?
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I was freaking happy when I was destroying my life and making myself miserable. I was always comfy in chaos. It took a shytty relationship*** to get me to realize I am an embarrassing mess of a person and I need to stop creating and attracting absolute insanity. I'm trying to keep things as boring as possible now, and I'm more even and not wrecking myself and hurting everyone around me, and it SUCKS. I'm hoping at some point I'll learn to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, and even though that idea is seriously questionable to me, I'm going to try and do it anyways.
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Relapses happen, people have poor insight and lack of impulse control, there are some "benefits" that aren't really beneficial to certain things we do and say, but at some point there has to be a search for a path leading to better places than the one we're on when things are less than ideal.

***that person created not one, but two fake FB accounts and messaged me over the past week. I didn't have everything on super private, my fault, but seriously man, knowing I'm still that much on their mind that they want to fcck with me KNOWING I want to do things to them I can't post here, is stressful af. I already question the entire workings of my mind regarding this relationship (was it really the best one I had and I just suck at accepting that, or was it the worst and I'm thinking the prior because I doubt my intuition on this stuff?). It's hard to focus less on his actions and motivations behind them and more on the fact I felt like crap with him and I felt like crap when I was "with him" but not in his physical presence.

@LadyShadow

That's great you're off probation!

@Mountaindewed

I don't have an ED, but I can see where @Blueberrybook and @MuddyBoots are coming from. Maybe instead of journaling in here your food intake for the day you could make a list IRL. That's what I do when I'm on a diet (which isn't at the moment... lol. I had a strawberry sundae with rainbow sprinkles last night before the show! It was DIVINE). Or start a diet thread on the board since so many of us are struggling with our weights because of our meds and the ED people can just avoid it? Just some ideas.

Also - can taking OTC pain meds make ulcers worse? All this talk of ulcer perforation is making me a tad freaked out for you. I don't know much about ulcers and OTC pain meds though.

I dont think we should be telling each other what we can or cannot post. And since that is exactly what i am doing here, i will report my post!

The guidelines say to do it in a pm, but i can see how it would feel safer in a thread.

I would say the rules got a lot looser after the site became MSF a few years ago. Before we were scared ever to mention a bodyweight, let alone a calorie count.

Anyway i hope docjohn has some recommendations on how to make this a better space for everyone.

In regards to what @Blueberrybook @MuddyBoots and @raspberrytorte have posted I wanted to add a thought.


Like many of us on here I have PTSD. I do not think a single person on here would think it was acceptable to post details of a trauma on here because we all know that there are lots of us who have PTSD. Doing so once would probably bother people but would be tolerated. I don't think anyone expects that it is ok to post about trauma repeatedly on this forum because it would hurt others. That doesn't even need discussion. PTSD is discussed on the PTSD board which can be avoided by someone like me who knows it would be bad for them. In the same way I think discussions of detailed ED symptoms not directly related to BP belong on the ED board and weight loss centered posts belong on the weight loss and exercise board. That lets people choose what they are reading.

We need to keep this a safe space and that means looking out for others as well as sharing our own lives.

@LadyShadow Congratulations! What a great accomplishment!

Went and had a good chat with the assistant principal this morning.

Saw some kids suspended for some unruly behaviour on Friday.

I went up to a kid to help him, he looked at me and barked at me like I'm a dog. The female student sitting next to her clapped her hands and said, "Good, go get her!" Then looked at me and said: "Now you can piss off!"

I was also recorded on a student's device without consent (he was trying to record the student sitting next to him but caught me in the background helping another student). I had a student that asked for a drink of water. I said no you can wait for lunch (10 minutes ) it's not an extreme weather day. He walked out anyway.

It's chaos.

I did something new today! I tried a video game on my phone. It's called "Genshin Impact" and appears to be what i've heard called 'anime.' There is one character so far, a pretty girl i've named "Jude." I can make her walk, run, jump, swim (and drown -- eee!), slash her sword, climb cliffs, etc. I can also control the camera. It's captivating but as with all new things there is a learning curve and frustration. I have a very low frustration tolerance. I have to play for a few minutes, then take a rest.

I feel fragile hope tho that this will become a new hobby for me, as i have been painfully bored lately.

As to all the fuss on the board, remember there is the ignore function. If someone really bothers you consistently, perhaps it's better just to ignore them than try to change them.

@Lady Shadow:

Congratulations on the easing of the restrictions on you! Bravo!

@Blueberrybook:

Glad to hear the mood has stopped escalating and you are more comfortable.

@Crazy Hitch:

So very sorry to hear your work is such chaos. Being a teacher can sometimes be a thankless task. My mom and dad were teachers.

@MuddyBoots:

I also feel being bored is a virtue -- up to a point. I remember all the chaos of my early thirties, being homeless, and am grateful that all i have to suffer now is boredom. And hopefully i have vanquished that with my new project!

Hugs to all else!

I teach year 7 and year 8 Humanities

Ugh. Restless night. Not quite sure what's wrong with me but I've been up since 2:30AM. I forgot to put my meds out last night and my ecig ran out of vape and Husband works until 2PM today. I know I should probably take a seroquel, but I'm resisting for some reason. I have to get my booty in the shower. Maybe a soothing hot shower would make me feel better. Tried writing in my journal.

I don't know. I just feel odd. I guess it happens. I'm afraid to post anything in this thread anymore to be honest. I'm developing a list of things you can't talk about or even mention.

Scales
Mentioning how meds have made you fat
Jello
Anything spicy in nature
Throwing up (even if it's just saying your kid is sick)

Christ! I'm sure I missed something. Jesus. Can we all just chill out? I'm seriously afraid of offending people now with anything I say! I was going to say I have to get my fat booty in the shower but was worried that just by saying the word FAT it would be triggering and I only say it jokingly! Jesus Christ!! God!! Fukk!! Ugh!! I'm taking a shower.

Editing Raspberry coming in:

Sorry for sounding so exasperated. Lol. It's just one of those nights and I'm about to pop (aka have my period).

Sorry if I upset anyone with my post; I just don't have that many people on my friends' list to PM directly

EDs are very competitive by their very nature; even online. It's different from other disorders, no one feels a sense of competition like, ooh, I want to drop more acid than her, I want more PTSD than he has, give me more of that depression, I need some sexual abuse to happen to me, ooh, I feel so guilty for not being as manic as he is or for not having as much OCD as she does. It's a weird disorder. You can see a list of foods a person consumes and suddenly have tremendous guilt about the higher calorie or higher fat or higher sugar foods you just ate and immediately try to purge by vomiting, laxatives, diuretics, overexercise. It's like second nature to someone with a history of an ED. A food list like can suddenly make a person resolve to eat nothing else for the day so she's now eaten few calories than the list posted. Continual weight posts do make a person with an ED feel tremendous guilt at maintaining a weight and not losing it and can trigger a relapse just like that.

And I don't mind if people sometimes post weights, BMI, foods eaten (though lists of foods are triggering). It's when it happens again and again and the foods are mostly triggering (and in some cases very easy to purge as there are foods that are much easier to get rid of than others).

IDK, I'm sorry if I'm oversensitive about the issue. I don't mean to be. It's an issue close to my heart.

And I'm just coming down from mania (at least I hope so). Some of my actions are still impulsive and not something I'd normally do. IDK that I normally would have posted ordinarily since posts like that have been showing up on this board for some time and they've always bothered me but I've said nothing about it.

I'll get back to posting topics more relevant to BP now. Sorry about the rant.

@Blueberrybook

I'm sorry. 😞 I think I need to chill out. I don't know what's wrong with me tonight (or now this morning). I did take a shower and now feel a bit better. I didn't know ED'S were competitive like that. I think I need to take my morning meds.

@raspberrytorte
No problem, you didn't know. And everyone has been great to put triggering issues like rape, drug use, sexual abuse, SH, SI in trigger boxes but not food lists. And like I said if someone says I've been working on my diet to lose 20 lb. (or however much) and by exercising I have lost 5 lb. now, it doesn't bother me. Just when it happens again and again. Such as today my weight was X. Then the next day your weight is Y. And so on. The following day X.1 again, etc. If you say I had a salad without dressing for dinner that's fine. As long as you don't methodically list every other food you ate that day. Posting a healthy BMI is fine. I don't mind an overweight BMI but I DO get triggered by an unhealthy LOW BMI. Now, that may seem crazy, but in this country, the perception is everyone wants to be thin and not overweight. The whole point of EDs like anorexia, bulimia, unspecified EDs is to be thin. I know there is binge eating and so on, but I seriously doubt people who binge eat long to be overweight. I hope I'm making some sense and not going on too long about it. I can't speak to anyone else with an ED though.

Food lists do send me on a guilt trip. When I walk for exercise, my metabolism generally goes into overdrive. I know I have to consume 1500-2000 cal/day to maintain my weight. I don't count calories any more, but thanks to my ED I do have a general knowledge of estimates of calories in most of the foods I eat. So I don't count calories per se, but I have a roundabout knowledge of it and I do know that on average, a lot of people don't have to eat as many calories as I do just to maintain weight. But seeing low cal. daily food intake lists makes me very extremely guilty and as if I'm a glutton for eating so much food, and I'm going to get fat (even though I've never been overweight), I fear it, then I think OMG, nearly ALL the women in my family are overweight, it's heredity, I've got to do all I can to stay skinny and not get fat.

I know what I really need is to maintain a healthy weight and not act on those ED thoughts. But they easily become all-consuming thoughts I still have to fight not to act out.

I should have asked if someone posting issues that are triggering for EDs put them in a trigger box if you don't know.

I think my morning and night meds tend to wear off at points after so many hours, and I am still adjusting to taking lamotrigine 2 times daily and my full dose of Seroquel at night again.

I was agitated after I woke up, BUT I slept 9 hours last night!

I went for my morning walk. It wasn't great that today is trash day and everyone had their trash at the curb, so it didn't smell the greatest. But the park walking trail at least didn't have trash bags along it. I had a good walk, and walked a slower pace than I had been walking last week. I think mania made me do everything fast - walking, cooking, getting up from the couch to let my cat inside or outside, folding laundry and putting it away. It was like I had a motor in me urging me to hurry and do the next thing and the next thing and next without slowing down to take a break from anything or doing tasks thoroughly and not slapdash.

My body is tired from the mania.

When I was stable, I found stability boring. Though of course, I didn't long for depression either. No one wants to be depressed. I did long for mania, but this last round of mania was the first I did NOT enjoy. It was too much input too fast, whirring racing ideas, not even completing one idea before the next idea roared in, my family of course wasn't happy about the mania either, H had to help me with chores like cooking and vacuuming because I couldn't do them correctly. I couldn't read my library books. I couldn't drive. Well, I still can't drive; H has my keys and I don't think he'll give them back until pdoc OKs it.

My next pdoc appt. is Thursday. H is driving me and sitting in on the appt. H usually does not sit in on my pdoc appts. or drive me there, only when I've had a very disruptive episode of mania, psychosis or depression.

I hope everyone has a great rest of the day!

@Blueberrybook

Thanks for being so nice to me. 😊 I ended up taking my morning seroquel so I should be getting sleepy soon and hopefully wake up a little more chill. Thanks for explaining to me further the ED brain.

I'm sorry too. I'm not really trying to say what people can or can't post; I was just trying to get bipolar check-in to be more of a chat to get support from and to people with bipolar d/o rather than a list of foods and details on vomit. There is the "what have you eaten today?" thread and the "weight loss and exercise" thread that would probably be a better place to post that stuff. I don't mind people occasionally talking about what's going on with their bodies, but like blueberry said, when it happens again and again without much relevance to the thread, and no desire to make healthier habits, and the foods are mostly triggering, it's a bit different.

I'm backing blueberry up with Eating disorders being mad competitive. That's why there are thin-spo sites where people literally post pictures of their spines and ask to be called a fatass for motivation to get sicker.

Maybe I'm just being oversensitive myself, but when there are other threads to list precisely what you ate and how much weight you lost, there's really no need to throw it in my face. I'm a lot earlier in my recovery than @Blueberrybook too, so seeing BMIs and sizes and watching someone talk about their change inlbs/kilos/stones they weigh frequently enough that I see the pattern.

And, yeah, never met anyone who binge eats to gain weight. Part of bulimia is binging, and that is more of an out of control, I don't want to do this, I need to stop, I can't feeling, followed by so much guilt and fear of gaining that purging seems necessary, and getting that food out is like a high, hence why when I read "I threw up and feel better now," bothers me specifically. I know that's a me-problem that probably doesn't trigger many people here, so I'm just avoiding it now.
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Anyway, fatigue is really getting to me. I worked on my BPD workbook yesterday and got super upset. The chapter was on recognizing your patterns and the beliefs, benefits, long-term consequences, and behaviors that make them up. I had some insight that certain behaviors/patterns I have led to short-term benefits, but omg are those "benefits" vs long-term consequences messed up. This is kinda why I say recovery sucks in the contemplation/preparation stages abso-fcckiing-lutely suck.

I hate when I can't tell if my BPD symptoms are particularly strong in certain periods or a borderline mood swing just is one of those longer few days one or if I should be looking for warning signs. A lot of the time if I become more emotional, impulsive, and aggressive, I tend to see it as something I'd rather have at the time. Don't want to do anything with meds? Of course it's a BPD thing that's going to have to be handled with skills and wait it out for a few hours or days. If I'd rather think it's going to snowball and, to be completely honest, want to have a reason to scare myself and others if I share, of course it's a mixed episode. If I look at things more rationally and consider current stressors, impulses and the reasons behind them, what behaviors/patterns I'm doing, etc. things point more to BPD right now. Still going to keep an eye on sleep and if my thoughts become more disorganized and racing, or feeling out of touch with reality beyond just dissociation stuff though.

I plan on hanging around MSF here at the library until my computer time is up and then I'm going to take advantage of Monday 70cent boneless chicken wings for lunch

ugh the muscle spasms are painful. i did call my pdoc. risperdal is really helping my mental heatlh but omg the spasms. our pdoc here at work told me invega may be better for me.

@raspberrytorte
Don't worry about it. Water under the bridge. I'm glad you took your Seroquel.

@halliebeth
Is your pdoc stopping your risperdal and changing you to invega?

@MuddyBoots
I am so sorry your BPD workbook upset you. I hate it when things that are supposed to help seem to do the opposite. Though you do have to work through the hard issues to recover or come to some sort of peace with them. When do you see your T again? Is this something you can talk about in therapy?

@MuddyBoots

Oh, no, you don't need to apologize. I was out of line with my post. I was having a moment. I just woke up from my nap and feel much more chill and sorry about it. 😞

I have no idea what she wnats to do as she hasnt called me back. i need to know before work is over though because i have risperdal waitin at the pharmacy i dont wanna pick up yet

my pdoc does believe the muscle spasms are caused by rsperdal so she has me slowing down the taper and starting cogentin with it

The suggestion to block threads has been very helpful to me. I used to have a particular forum blocked, but then i unblocked it, and now i have been getting upset / triggered by some of the threads without really consciously realizing it.

So yesterday / today has been much better without those "pings"! Nothing that would bother a "normal" person, but i did once yell at a cube mate for breathing, so... Probably more than one cube mate, now that i think about it.

So thanks for the thoughtful discussions and hints.