Confidence post diagnosis

Hi @Former-Member the wifi bird hanging there all alone got me grinning!

Hi @Bunniekins sometimes I'm here in the middle of the night for hours with no one to talk to! But you and me both trying to be good girls with going to bed at earlier times. Just doesn't always work for me still. Ah well, today is another day, tonight is another night.

Hi @Jenn4 love reading your interesting words.

Hope everyone has an enjoyable long weekend.

@Former-Member your contribution above was also intellectual! I like, "It's is the ultimate insecurity I think, to be told by experts that the way we see ourselves and the world is shakey, I get it, but we do find our new normal" especially. Very on point. I think we are both intellectuals together 🙂 (And i also think one's intellect does not determine one's worth)

Sorry to hear you're not good How good is music though, so glad it's helping you. Sending you much love. I love hearing of your musical and recording adventures 🙂 And I also love seeing the progression of technology, so cool. Distractions I think are fine and necessary in good measure! Proud of you for being a champ 🙂

@Bunniekins yeah! I mean one in 50 of us in the world are, so surely at least one in 50 famous people are too! Interesing about those dictators, certainly matches feelings of granduer and ambition and dreaming.

Sorry you hate your meds. Keep trying til you find better ones! There are so many to choose from at so many different combinations and dose combinations. And if your doctor isn't finding you the right ones try another doctor I say! My meds are right apart from I get too tired and unmotivated to get out of bed for many days sometimes, but only occassionally - so still working on the meds to prevent that from happening. You also reminded me to take them! 😄

@Mazarita I'm glad you found them to be so 🙂

Much love to you all, love being able to speak with people who get it

Hi @Jenn4 hope you are having some enjoyable Easter moments this weekend. Been thinking about what you said about not being able to get out of bed for periods of time. I have something similar. The worst of it was 9 months of sleeping 20 hours a day. At the start of last year it was one month of that very gradually spending more time awake over months.

I don't even feel sad when I go to bed like that. It mainly feels like exhaustion. I have also had times when, in the four hours of being awake, I have been creatively manic on the computer. I've barely had anything like what most people would consider normal sleep over at least four decades. Sleep is one of my major issues with the experience of bipolar.

@Mazarita that sounds hard!! I also don't feel sad when I am in bed like that, I mostly just feel nothing, sometimes i feel anxiety/dread that i'm not doing the things i outght but yeah, as you say, exhaustion!

I so hope you can find a way to prevent these downturns! surely meds can help? i reckon the right meds are out there? the right doctor? I have hope.

I am having a great Easter weekend and hope you are too! What are you up to?

Hi @Jenn4 the experience of feeling nothing is not easy. Most of my teens I often felt like that but the sleep issues were less extreme then, younger energy then and also I hadn't started medication.

I have been taking a mood stabiliser and an anti-depressant for over a decade now, meds have been finessed along the way. Last year it became apparent to me that my sleep disorders (they come in different varieties) had mostly been much worse on anti-depressants over a long time. With my psychiatrists agreement, I went off ADs for about three months. Sleep improved dramatically.

But I became unstable in mood and had no buffer zone with irritability which could suddenly flare into anger. It was painful and I felt I was going down hill. So I am taking now only a very small amount of an anti-depressant that has stabilised me and helped me feel less irritated by nothing. Sleep has been disrupted but it's a choice I've made to live with that rather than the painful instability. Mostly I feel stable now, a great relief.

The psychiatrist I've been seeing for about six years is good to me and has helped me a lot. I like and even admire him and he respects me. I feel supported and well-treated. Like most of the many therapies for bipolar I have tried, there is partial improvement but I do not function as most people expect in society.

Yet I share a peaceful, happy and comfortable home space with a companion, a great friend to me. Though I've lived weird hours I have passionately been involved in creativity over my life, and have been blessed with good feelings of achievement and meaning and purpose to my life.

I am optimistic about improving with the support I will be receiving from next Monday with NDIS as well.

Easter was enjoyable here, very rainy for days, but I like rain without floods. Visited friends for lunch and another friend in the evening on Easter Saturday. That's a big social day for me so I've been sleeping a fair bit (not 20 hours), recovering for the past couple of days.

Happy to hear you had a great Easter!