Rayzed_EdgeContributor
So What Now?
I'm new at this ... but here it goes.
Since being a teenager I have dealt with serious bouts of depression. Not medicated, just some counselling the last few times. Then last August I went manic for the first time. (I haven't obviously previously). Lack of sleep, sense of paranoia that people would target me for not agreeing with them, feelings that God had messages for me everywhere, hidden in plain sight, all I had to do was slow down and see. November the year before I was diagnosed with ASD1 and so I thought what I was experiencing was making sense of that. Looking back now I can appreciate that it had been building in little ways for at least two to three months before this .
So I ended up hospitalised for a week and a half (maybe) and diagnosed BiPolar1. I went back to work pretty quickly on greatly reduced hours (which always amazes my psychiatrist) and expected that, if I jumped through the required hoops, including taking my meds, I would return to life as normal. It's now seven months and life is not back to normal. My Dr and Psychiatrist keep saying 12 months at least and at the last appointment said it will be a new normal because of the effect on my brain. Even though I had left hospital, I don't think I came out of the manic phase for another month - but it had felt normal during that time. My psychiatrist has been happy and amazed by the success of my recovery even having been able to reduce my anti-psychotic meds to a lower amount to enable me to function better.
I'm writing this post and reaching out for a number of reasons.
- I need a community to join
- I continually hear tales of recurrence and frequency of manic episodes and so I wanted to test this as it's all new to me.
- So what now? ... How do I live a life on the Autism Spectrum with BiPolar?
