Friday, March 30, 2012

Being Bipolar can be really fun

If you have recently been diagnosed with being Bipolar type 2, don't despair. Once you get over the fact that what you have been experiencing, now has a name to it, even though its sounds scary, its really not that bad. Its from this point onwards you can start moving in a positive direction in your life, and you may even get to the stage where you can look back at yourself and have a jolly good chuckle at the impulsive things you did in your hypomanic stages or on your way to being manic.

Here is a classic example of how I become. My brain doesn't want to switch off and I need to suddenly "DO STUFF". Most of the time its incredible positive and beneficial stuff, other times it lands me in the dog box. One day my husband came home and to his shock and horror, my little trimming and pruning of the garden had turned into a full scale assault. My neighbour had irritated me that his house was so dark because of the pine trees outside our shared fence. So I decided to trim the branches, and while I did so the idea of "lets really give this guy some light", took hold and I removed ALL of the side branches, leaving our two properties so exposed and now letting us see directly into his kitchen. Peek a boo! ( Dog box for me!)
Then I got the urge to paint the house. This is a common and happens quiet a bit and I race around choosing very interesting colours that later perhaps weren't the right shade for the room. The first time that happened, I had forgotten to mention to Rob that I was painting that day and he arrived home to an interesting shade of peach for the dining room. I thought it looked superb. Rob took a deep breath and opened a beer. ( Dog box for me!)
A good one is when I get the gardening overdrive urge, I go full tilt, and garden to my hearts content. I really like gardening, but not as much when I am a bit manic. The down side to gardening is that its REALLY expensive and I like to spend money when I am happy. Manic me =Happy me. Happy me= spend money. Life is always very good when your like this, and the week ends are always go go go. The kids think I am such fun. The other day I bought them body boards, wet suits and we all took to the surf. They spend a lot of time in the water so at least when I had come down to earth it was a good buy after all.

But seriously, if you are bi-polar and want to chat, please message me.I can really be useful in showing you how to manage it with your diet, and other tools, not just meds. It can be very  hard living with this, and often people have no clue as from their perspective you seem pretty normal.