Psychiatrically stable but emotionally struggling

Hi @Em22, welcome to the forum.

First of all, I have to admire how far you have come in eight years from a much more extreme state of being, by the sounds of it. I have bipolar too and am now considered 'stable' for the most part. Like you I am still symptomatic in various ways but am grateful to have reach a point of relative contentment with life overall. Certainly more content than when I was when I was flying out of control or sleeping 20 hours a day anyway.

I'm wondering about your network of social activities or friends. One of the things that has helped me most of all is a support worker program that has helped me reduce the isolation I once experienced. Hope to hear more of your story as you are ready to share.

Maz

Hi there @Em22,

Welcome to the forums I have not yet met you before, thank you for sharing your story 🙂

It's very courageous and strong of you to get to this point with everything that you have been through, I can imagine that you have lots of resilience built up now and you have found yourself feeling stable emotionally but also wanting that support so you can talk things through with likeminded people who perhaps 'get it' or understand more about where you are at.

It sounds like you avoid this with family and friends and they also avoid it as you don't want to freak them out and they also don't want to bring up thing with you when you are seeming fine, this can be tricky but do you think you could sit down with them and tell them the tricky situation you have found yourself in lately, something like "I don't want to freak you out as I am not wanting hospital but just want to talk a bit, would you mind just listening, that is all I need now?" Have you tried doing anything like that at all, or how do you think that would be received?

I also think if you could attend a support group would be helpful like @oddity mentioned, sometimes it's helpful to talk with likeminded people just like these forums, so it's great you have come on here 🙂

Lunar

Hi Maz,

Thanks for your reply. I feel like I am socially connected- I play club sport and am involved in music groups and I also have people at work and uni. When I was discharged, the hospital organised someone to come to my house regularly but it became too difficult to fit in because I was busy and I didn't really need it at that point, so we ceased that. I feel like I have a lot of social support for every aspect of my life except for the bipolar. I don't know how to explain to people what is going through my head or how I feel. People tend to appreciate the physical things, like declining going out and having a big night because I've been feeling a bit fragile and need more sleep than the average. I feel like people don't understand that there is a state between being clinically unwell and completely 'cured', which is where I tend to some of my time, a kind of prodromal state that I come in and out of. I find that difficult to talk about with friends and family, and I think that sometimes they don't want to hear it because they don't know what to say. So we just don't talk about it. I also feel like I don't deal very well with being in that state. I panic and think I might be relapsing and go back to all my old thinking patterns. I understand that they're illogical but find it hard to switch them off.

Hi Lunar,

I do try to talk about how I'm going with people, but not with much success. I find that I tend to be met with lots of (albeit well meaning) suggestions and the 'have you tried/done....' questions. I hate to dominate the conversation talking about myself because I know that people prefer to talk about themselves, which leads back to old social insecurities. And no one really ever asks me if I'm ok, or how I'm going. They ask me about activities and other aspects of my life, but not my feelings. Or if they do, it's rarely at an appropriate time for that sort of conversation. I know it comes down to me. I found it easier to talk about changes in medications or treatments because they're facts and clinical changes. My thoughts and feelings are much more nebulous.

My friends and family have been nothing but supportive. They've been amazing. But I find that they talk about the time 'she was sick' very much in the past, because I was sick, found a treatment and am now fairly well again.

As for any sort of support groups, I've looked everywhere I can think of and haven't found anything run at convenient times/ locations or appropriate to my needs. That's why I've started looking online.

Hi @Em22,

Great that you are so well-connected in all those ways. You are far ahead of me with that, as I still struggle to become more connected to the community. I admire your recovery all the more. It sounds like a mental health support group (especially if it was focussed on bipolar), could be helpful for you. I found the one I went to last year by googling mental health services in my local area. I now also have two friends with bipolar in the real world. I find it helpful to be able to talk more expansively about how I am really feeling day to day, week to week. It's clearly the same for them with me. As you said, this is not always possible with the people we know who have not had our experiences.

This forum is another good place to discuss what we go through with chronic mental health struggles. I relate to the 'prodromal' description of your symptoms. I have become more accepting of this sub-par state of being familiar to me over time, whilst continuing to take steps to move onwards from it where possible. I have hope that we can look forward to better wellbeing over the longer term.