This is what a mood disorder looks like

I don't want your sympathy, rather, an open mind for your loved ones with a mental illness, and compassion for yourself if you're struggling

a sunrise the same day I first spoke to my new psychiatrist

“Does your family walk on eggshells around you?” my new psychiatrist asked me on a video call in August.

My brain pressed rewind to a few days prior when, while on a short beach vacation with my kids, I dragged my feet, and forced myself to feel better. I had to create more positive memories with them because I was convinced I didn’t have many.

I was always too busy being too tired and too irritated, and on the edge of either yelling and crying, or numb and emotionally unavailable. I’m not talking about a few days every once in awhile. This was most days, most weeks, most months, and for several years.

This cycle of short ups and then down for long periods of time was my Groundhog Day. I wish Bill Murray was here for comedic relief but the joke was on me — and my family.

So, yeah. When the doc asked me the eggshell question, I said yes, imagined my kids and husband living in their own home, monitoring my edge, and tip toeing cautiously around my mood du jour.

My mental illness was given a new name recently, a type of mood disorder.

Before I better understood my condition, it’s as if I had a doppelganger who wanted everything to be fine, and she donned a convincing mask. She looked like me, acted like me, was devastatingly witty like me :) — which made it surprising to many people that I was undergoing drastic emotional swings behind the disguise.

I make jokes, I am personable, and I love engaging conversations. Have I told you I’m fun to be around? But with this performance of acting “normal”, I had nearly nothing left to give to my husband and kids when I returned home.

This is what a mood disorder looks like. Mine is specific to me but I know it’s familiar to many.

It often looks fine to the outside world. But it’s a silent and secretive diminisher that chokes everyone involved. It’s not being overly sad or feeling anxious in stressful situations, don’t get it confused. It’s deeper than that, like being trapped in a dark broken elevator alone, the call button won’t work and everyone has left for the weekend.

Yes, we all go through shit but this isn’t to prove some have it worse than others. I write this particular essay to ask for an open mind, for more understanding of your loved ones with a mood disorder or mental illness. And for yourself, if you live with it.

But don’t give me sympathy. I don’t want it, it makes me feel worse. I just want you to respect my experience. It’s valid and it’s real.

This diagnosis, according to the new doc, is called bipolar depression because my moods are on a pendulum, they often swing one way more than the other.

In my “up” swings, bursts of anxiety and irritability squat in my brain. It’s like having too many shots of espresso and wanting to jump out of my skin but it’s also a guilty pleasure. For fleeting moments, I enjoy this catapult, an unexpected hit of energy that I thought would never come back after long bouts of being in a deep hole, which I’ll get to later…

!!!! But first! Let me tell you!! This is how the tornado begins!!! I’d get extra excited, super social, powerfully paranoid, spend too much money, go into a mode of do do do, go go go, scavenge for a dopamine rush, a spark of energy, must write and be creative and jam in all the things. Then… Everyone and everything would bug the hell out of me, I’d freak out at my kids, have thoughts about not wanting to be their mother, and think about leaving my life.

For my particular disorder, this twister was short but all these signs were an instant clue to the upcoming detour —>

to

depression.

My family knows the signs well.

After raging on them because overstimulation and overwhelm punched me, they’d witness mama in bed again, hiding out in her mental fort for who knows how many days.

Depression wasn’t only sadness and uncontrollable crying, more so a blanket of numbness and exhaustion. I was dragged down, like a 25 pound weight strapped to my chest that I could not rip off no matter how much I tried.

No amount of meditation and eating right and exercise could exorcise this state of mind and I was too tired to lug the sandbag — mentally, emotionally, physically.

I could not make simple decisions and I’m type A, I know how to make decisions. Piecing together logistics, which I naturally do a lot as a mother, was mental gymnastics. I’d watch those around me witness my struggle and it was embarrassing. Could they see the synapses misfiring? I cannot fathom how I would operate in my old career. Would I even be able to hold a normal job anymore?

I was running on 2% battery all the time, no charger in sight.

When I could no longer function, there was nothing else for me to do except succumb to it. So I lay there, motionless like an old pond of water that had gone putrid and stagnant on a hot day.

I’d ruminate about my marriage suffering and my kids lacking my attention, a redundant and harmful downward spiral but no matter how much breath work and meditation and therapy I was attending, nothing could pull me from the vortex of toxic thoughts.

When things got so bad in the last year, I could only withstand doing the least possible l needed to do for my kids, and maybe one activity a day. Even doing “healthy” things like showering, showing up to a yoga class or going on a walk would send me to a point of despair by mid-day. With just one afternoon of social activity, I’d turn into a marionette, strings pulling me down in a horizontal position.

Knowing this about myself, I often stayed home, avoided social gatherings, and limited my activity, both physical and mental. I operated at a bare minimum. I slept too much. I was forced to slow down, which I probably needed, with or without a doctor giving me a name to my mental issues.

But this was no way to live.

It’s hard to live in our bodies and minds and let’s give a little grace for the 1 in every 8 people in the world who live with a mental disorder. That’s a lot of people, we’re everywhere, we’re the folks walking around with the shit stain of a mind. It’s a battleground. Some wars are harder fought than others.

I believe my disorder, if we see it on a spectrum, is on the mild side. I now take a mood stabilizer that has given me back my life.

But others aren’t so fortunate so I aim to have more compassion for those who need further help, who need to be admitted into a hospital, who live on the streets, have addictions, ruin their relationships, lose their jobs, break promises and, on a daily basis, fuck up and have to wake up and do it all over again.

No sympathy needed here. The next time you know your loved one is struggling, keep an open mind to their experience, because whatever you don’t see or hear or notice is happening, I bet there’s a loud inner battle in their hearts.