Bipolar Check-in #87

I think you meant MountainDewed I didn’t post anything about my heart or eyes

If your pdoc will take you off cold turkey, can you just keep asking for decreases? That’s what I do when I want to taper off something, but I don’t think my doc will be in it at the slow rate I want to go.

I didn’t sleep well last night. Got only 6 hours. It’s not too bad I guess but not my typical amount.

But I feel pretty good today. Really good actually. I got through the dissociation last night.

I’m about to bake some cookies 🍪

Slept soooooo good last night. Went to bed BEFORE 8 and woke up at 7! I’m still mad tired though, so I’m just gonna lay down for a bit and keep my phone nearby in case med person calls.

I fell asleep around 10 and I woke up at 4:15. Then I got another half hour of sleep until 7:30. I feel fine today. I'm just thinking of getting some more sleep.

I swore my mom said it was goiing to snow 12 inches. But its warm and sunny out.

Kitty cats 🐱

Having a pretty good morning so far. It’s still so early though only a little after 9:30am. I took a shower, ate, brushed my teeth and took my morning meds.

I’d say things on the schizoaffective bipolar side of things are stable. My mood has been stable and minimal paranoia. My meds keep my mood stable and stop the paranoid delusions.

The thing I’m struggling with now that really can’t be controlled with meds is the PTSD part of my diagnosis. Cause like that causes dissociation, hypervigilance, anxiety, anger, irritability etc so I’m doing my best to manage it on my own. I know I have klonopin for anxiety and panic but I only take that once or twice a week maximum cause I don’t want to rely heavily on it or develop dependence. So I’m just trying my best to work on things with DBT and in therapy EMDR. Doing everything I can to stay grounded. The scariest thing that happens for me is when I start dissociating outside in public. Like while walking down the street. Which scares me because it’s dangerous. So I need to find a way to ground myself quickly when outside because I often dissociate outside cause there’s too much happening, too much bright light, too many cars, too many people, noises. It’s overwhelming.

Anyway, Im making some stir fried spicy ramen later so excited about that

And I found a new song to be obsessed with. It’s called Adventure Awaits by Adrian von Ziegler. It’s a Celtic song

Mustachio didnt look too happy about Papi being on the bed, but he doesnt mind now - he's on tv! i love your kitties antics. It is so sweet that they get along, being new roommates.

I need to catch up on posts; this time change has me exhausted. I really hate changing to daylight savings time and losing an hour. Would be nice to live in Arizona or Hawaii which do not observe daylight savings except the Indian Nations.

I did pilates this morning, read with the SAD lamp, had a grocery store pickup, then put away the groceries. I chopped onion & carrot and sliced mushrooms for a stew I'm starting this afternoon. I only drew 2 pics today; a hot air balloon and a kiwi bird, in which I tried my hand at ink.

My scratched eye is feeling a LOT better today; I still have some pain but it's much more bearable than yesterday. Still have to keep with the antibiotic eye drops for awhile though.

I hope everyone has a great Sunday and starts adjusting from the time change!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MuddyBoots If your pdoc will take you off cold turkey, can you just keep asking for decreases? That’s what I do when I want to taper off something, but I don’t think my doc will be in it at the slow rate I want to go.

My pdoc took me off clonazepam slowly and worked with me; sometimes I could make a step down every 2 weeks, sometimes it was a month, in the end it was doing my best to take it every other day and then only to take it as necessary, and when I got down to taking 1-2 0.25 mg pills of clonazepam weekly we stopped. I would discuss it with your psychiatrist; that you want to come off the benzo but you have done it cold turkey before and it was a disaster, so if you could slowly taper it working with me and my needs, I would appreciate it; if some weeks, I might be able to step down a notch, sometimes it might be a month or just over that what you both feel is do-able.

@Blue_Bird I definitely struggle with the PTSD too; if I went to therapy, it might get better but I have been through over a dozen therapists and never clicked with a single one. I just got tired of committing my time and money. But I hope therapy helps you. The only thing that gets me through dissociation, well the 2 things really is knowing that it will pass and doing my best to carry on with my day and not panic about dissociating. Because if I panic about it, it just makes things worse and seems to make the dissociation last longer. I know I have a lot causing my PTSD, but dealing with it ugh! I have a lot of flashbacks, and often they come randomly, which is just the worst because I can't even identify a trigger. For the anxiety I do my best with grounding exercises which sometimes help and sometimes don't, but over time, I am finding I have gotten better with using deep breathing to help high anxiety. This is over a LONG, LONG period of time, I'm talking 2 decades worth of time, but it is something at least, so keep practicing it! Sometimes with the dissociation too, I find that just having a family around, things I need to do for them like meals, dishes, laundry, etc. gets me out of the dissociation faster than if I'm on my own and my daughter & husband are out when it happens. The hypervigilance is hard; I probably only really turn it off when I'm drawing or asleep. I feel like I am in fight or flight mode 24/7 and just cannot stop it. And every little unexpected thing I see out of the corner of my eye or hear really gets my heart racing. Sometimes I wonder if the hypervigilance is part of why my metabolism is so high (though I know I do exercise a lot too).

Ohhh, the time change! Forgot about that. And just like that I lost an hour!

I was having intense dreams, was with a lady whose baby was with her ex husband and his new girl. They were smoking around her and feeding her popcorn. We got the court to give her full custody. Then there was a charity building giving out gifts for Christmas. The lady and her baby went in and I didn’t see her again. Instead a drunk guy was asking me how to tighten safety belts in cars.

I slept well though, from 2am until 10, which really was 11!

@Crazy Hitch I love the pic of your son at the beach!

@Nammu - It is so cool you remember so many of your dreams. Most of mine I don't remember at all or if I do remember, I forget them right after I wake up. Do you keep a dream journal?

4th day doing laundry. A load takes 5.5 hours and it's small loads. So I have about a week left of laundry.

I had PTSD and I lucked out on getting really good therapists. It’s was years long work but I no longer have ptsd. When my new T and pdoc heard me gloss over my history they asked about that. But it’s no longer an issue. I do recommend looking for a good T to work with. They are out there. . I used to see my ex husband everywhere. It did take a long time but it is possible to leave PTSD in the dust.

Used to keep a journal. I had a class in college, Jung. The teacher required us to keep dream journals. I did that for a few years. Now mostly I remember dreams unless I wake up suddenly or in a panic.

I'm feeling kinda crappy today. Just bored and tired .

I have this strange urge to go to national parks. Mainly to see the Joshua trees. I want to get fit by walking trails and eat trail mix and granola and Nature Valley bars. Lol. I swear I didn't take poppers.

My mom is convinced everyone likes corned beef even though every year we tell her we don't. Then she forgets again.

I had a St. Patricks Day dinner at my cousins one year and Katie Couric almost came. I know that sounds made up but I swear on my moms life its a true story.

My blood pressure is kinda freaky. Google says seek immediate help. I think I'll be ok tbh.

Oh my word I couldn’t get out of bed this morning. Thank goodness it’s a public holiday otherwise I’d be screwed because I’d never have gotten to work on time. I’m sitting with eye patches on under my eyes before I get grocery shopping because I look like crap. Trying to freshen my face up. Going grocery shopping shortly then might come back and wash my hair or just put dry shampoo in it. Going to visit my partner mother this afternoon. I selfishly don’t want to. I get so bored there and I’m sick of the small talk.

I have actual wifi now!

Congrats! That’s huge.

Yeah! I just took the Unit 3 test for my calc I review course (of course that's the first thing I do when I get wifi) and got a 100% too!

I thankfully have a wonderful therapist now who has EMDR qualifications and is very informed about trauma and she is wonderful. I didn’t start seeing her until recently. Previous to this I had never worked on trauma in my therapy because I never would talk about it. And my previous therapist was nice and I liked her and had her for 8 years but she wasn’t very effective cause we just did very light talk therapy. My current therapist is a lot better. Immediately when I started seeing go her a couple months ago she began EMDR with me like in the 2nd session with her. She knows all about the polyvagal stuff and whatnot. She seems super well informed about this stuff and is very helpful. I’m glad I got her now. My current psychiatrist is really good too. I just started seeing him like a year ago

@Blueberrybook yeah I think being around other people helps the dissociation. Like at home. I’m alone all the time. Because I live alone. So it sucks cause I don’t have another presence to ground me when I’m drifting off mentally.

Any time I start thinking about stuff related to my past and any current anxiety or feeling overwhelmed I dissociate. It’s like an automatic response now and I can’t seem to stop it completely, sometimes I have a week where I don’t have it occur but it’s usually at the very least 3 times a week sometimes more. My therapist said she can’t promise me that it’s go away completely but hopefully it lessens in frequency and intensity over time.

For me something that’s really grounding is practicing violin. It’s such a physical thing. Holding the violin, pushing down on the strings with your fingers, holding and moving the bow. All very grounding. And the sound.

Nothing will bring you back to reality like hitting that E string wrong!

Haha true 😂😃

Yeah our cat Tiger was called Tiger the pooh, lol. We sang the the Winnie the Pooh theme song to him but replaced Winnie with Tigrr. He liked it but sometimes I could tell it annoyed him, lol.

Tiger was Jaydens papa. He loved him and would knead on his stomach all the time. Miss both Midnight and Tiger.