Bipolar Check-in #80

@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.

Missed my first appointment with my new therapist this morning. I know we scheduled it but then my case manager said they won’t take my insurance until the fall so I just completely put it out of my mind! Luckily my new tdoc called and we rescheduled for next week. My mom and I are going to scout it out today so I know where I’m going.

Hey, @raspberrytorte, don't apologize. You actually brought up a valid point that we shouldn't be afraid to say something in fear of it being offensive. Wording and context make a whole difference. Right now I'm just in a precarious place. If I knew I were alone in having urges to bring back that disordered eating bs just by looking at a bipolar check-in thread, I would've kept my mouth shut, but given the fact many of us have comorbidities and some of those disorders are about eating, I just tried pointing out that certain things, with certain details, worded a certain way, and the main focus is what the difference is between something that can be helpful or harmful.
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It's probably a good thing that workbook made me upset. Really validated any inkling of an idea that certain beliefs and behaviors I have are not worth any short-term benefit, and looking at what I wrote down for benefits made me feel really selfish (one behavior/benefit was people wanting to help me because I'm in a bad place, so I'd purposely put myself in that place by screwing with meds/substances/bad relationships and such) and now that is a motivation to rethink those beliefs and change those behaviors.

A Q about therapy (which I am seeing T on Wednesday): Is it appropriate to give your therapist a gift? My T loves dogs and I got a new backpack today with dog prints because I wanted one other than my hiking pack for every day stuff, and it came with a tiny stuffed dog. I was thinking about giving it to her. Would that be okay?

My wings were spicy and flavorful, and I seriously have to do some laundry now.

@HALLIEBETH87 Muscle spasms are awful! Keep us posted on how lowering the dose and adding cogentin works. I'm not sure if it's a direct side effect of Risperdal or if it's something more along the lines of risperdal leads to this leads to that leads to spasms, but given that it's summer and hot it's also important to stay hydrated and get a good balance of electrolytes because taking care of that can prevent muscle spasms too.

Just a quick post to let everyone know I do read everyone's threads but am going to try to step back from trying to reply to everyone all the time; it just is too much for me right now.

I will still post and everyone is always in my thoughts and sometimes I might respond to some people's posts and not others, but I want to devote my time to a few other things right now: catching up on my reading, watching more of my show, cleaning, meal planning & budgeting groceries; my grocery budget has gotten way out of hand lately thanks to inflation & a bit of hypomania.

I'm having a chill day otherwise. It's been raining out and I've been reading some. This is the longest I've taken to finish my library books in months! H still wants me to keep it low-key, not too much stress and he's almost finished with that God-awful stressing grant proposal he's been working on. I am SOO happy about that.

Those posts were why I stayed away. Not because I have an Ed but because I’m struggling with an esophageal problem that is very painful and often makes me throw up. Seeing that day after day was too much. I had bleeding ulcers when I was 8 so cancer is a concern of mine. I’m on a boatload of medication for this.

But anyway the reason I wanted to post was that I’ve come to the realization that I’m terrified to lose weight. I’m very stable and boring but respected and liked by a great many people where I live and I want to keep that. But the AP has lead to weight gain and my pcp wants me to lose it. But I’m scared to because I lose weight on both ends of the spectrum. When depressed I have great anxiety and paranoia and lose weight, when manic I’m too crazy to eat. I have lost everything including homes, friends and jobs when this happens. And I like what I have now. I should probably get a therapist and talk about this, but that too is fraught with past associations.

I see THAT class first thing this morning Period 1.

In a way it's good because I get it out the way.

In another way it can be bad because if the class goes pear shaped (which likely it will with student behaviors) the rest of my day is messed up just thinking about it.

My other classes for the day aren't bad so I'm just going to hang in there.

@Nammu I'm glad to see you back. I've missed you and your perspectives on here while totally understanding why you stepped away. I'm so sorry you've not been well. I had a prolonged lithium toxicity once with a lot of vomiting so I understand how it could be a trigger if you are going through something of your own. I hope you figure the weight thing out but if you're dealing with something else right now maybe it's not the right time to put yourself through something else that is stressful? I don't know but it seems like one thing at a time is a good way for me to approach life with BP.


I hope you are able to stick around while understanding if you get triggered. Hoping this isn't triggering in any way.

Thanks for the welcome back, rainbow 🌈 No not triggering at at. It’s the day after day that gets to me.

I would check every once in awhile. It’s good to see all the recent activity though. That’s really goood.

I just wanted to say, like @Nammu mentioned - weight loss is a big issue for me too, and some of the posts were bothering me as well. I was on the Weight Loss and Exercise thread for a while, and also on the "what did you eat today" thread which was helpful. I guess it's good to know where to put all of that other information.

I am sorry it's been hard for you guys. I know our bipolar check-in has been so helpful to me and to others over the years. I try to keep my posts on here relevant to bipolar. And as far as Risperdal goes, it can cause very bad muscle spasms - I went to the variation, which is risperidone and at a very low dosage, and I am also seeing my pdoc tomorrow and she is dropping my Lithium which is such a relief to me. Symptoms have been very mild the past week, but I will admit an elevated mood due to all the amazing things happening recently.

I am just very thankful for everyone here, and everyone's input. Watching your journeys unfold has given me insight into my own battle with bipolar. I have been on this forum a very long time, and all the different perspectives at all different times of the year have always been helpful. I hope everyone has had a wonderful day!

Bought some biotine for dry mouth. The bottle says it’s long lasting but I’m not so sure. My tongue has sores on it from being dry from lack of saliva from one of my meds. It is helping so that’s good.