Living with Bipolar Disorder, OCD, and Social Anxiety

Well it's been awhile since I lasted posted my thoughts.  My life for a few weeks was very stressful and there seemed to be no light at the end of that dark tunnel.  Well it seems I am digging out once again and in the past month I have stumbled over something about myself that I don't think I really took to heart or really understood.  I was told I have bipolar disorder years ago and I have been under treatment for many years.  While in therapy I was also told I had OCD, (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) as well as social anxiety disorder.  Being told that I had these two other mental illnesses was really no surprise as they do run in my family and I was familiar with them.  I was also told that having more than one mental illness is not that uncommon but I just thought to myself....Isn't Bipolar Disorder enough?  When will the punches stop coming.  I have since learned through a lot of hard times that they never do you just have to adapt and try to be strong and get through each moment. 

With my OCD I am a recovering checker.  This means I use to check my front door 15 times before I went to bed every night.  It meant that I would check the stove each morning and night that it was turned off.  I don't just mean one or two times I would literally have to put my hands on the burners at least 15 times each to make sure that they were not on.  This was even on days when I did not cook anything.  While I have received much therapy in this area and I do take a medication to help, there are a few days that I have a slip and I have to walk back inside to check the stove or oven.  I tried what is called cognitive-behavioral therapy which will expose you to whatever is causing your anxiety and you have to experience the anxiety of not checking the items and seeing that nothing bad happened.  On most good days I can get through each day without over checking as I call it.  Most of my checking steams from my fear that I will leave something on that will burn my place down and not just destroy my property but it could harm others in the process.  I think my fear of harming others as well as my beloved cat when she is home alone is what really is behind my checking.  I believe I think I have a good understanding of this mental illness and have it under control. 

The social anxiety was something that I thought I understood and didn't think it was much more than having panic attacks in public when I am alone.  I have now arrived to the point that I will not go out in public alone unless it is an emergency.  This has hindered my life so much but I have never paid it much attention or tried to understand why I felt this way but it makes so much sense now that I look back at my life.  I think I have spent so much time in therapy concentrating just on the bipolar disorder that I never really looked into my 3rd mental illness.  After looking up my illness further on the net after watching a show on television about anxiety disorders I was surprised at how much it described me as well as why I had overwhelming panic in pubic so paralyzing that I could not move.  You can find one of the articles I read at the following link http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-social-anxiety-disorder but I will list what what struck me the most later in my post.

Celebrate your survival with mental illness each year

The other day I was trying to think why do my Birthdays mean so much to me.  It is not the presents, it is not parties that people throw for me, and it is not the attention you get from it.  I finally figured out that it meant that I had made it another year surviving with bipolar disorder.  Some people may not understand why living another year is such a big deal but to a person with a mental illness it can be a huge milestone.  The statistics are not in our favor.  They say about 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will kill themselves.  I can relate to this so much because I suffer more from severe depression more and I have to fight the suicidal thoughts too often.   When I did a fundraiser walk-a-thon  for The American Foundation For Suicide Prevention http://www.afsp.org/, I realized just how devastating a suicide can be on the family and friends left behind.  They  have so much guilt, they feel they should of done more, or that they should of seen more and figured it out. The number one comment I have ever heard is that they all wished they had one more day back with their loved ones to tell them how much they were loved and missed.  I always keep these comments close to me when I get to feeling really down and remember how much more pain I would cause if I did end my life.

Why are Bipolar Patients more likelly to get SAD

When you first look at the title you simply think oh they suffer from depression, so of course they are sad.  This SAD is quite different though then just being sad.  SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder.  As I was going through my routine this morning and that includes any interesting topics that I find on twitter.  One tweet really caught my eye that was listed by http://www.bpkids.org/.  Per the article that Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation linked, stated that research shows that patients that have bipolar disorder are more likely to display symptoms of SAD.  The full article can be found at http://www.medwire-news.md/55/91425/Bipolar_Disorder/SAD_and_symptom_seasonality_common_in_BAD_patients.html

Support is key to survive with bipolar disorder

This morning as I was going through reading my daily blog post, and I was suddenly empowered by how much support there is out there for people that have bipolar disorder. Back in the 1980's when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, support groups were confined to going to a local meeting and sometimes with this disorder you are not always able to physically make it there. While those meeting are valuable and needed, it is encouraging to find new ways to interact with others immediately and read about their own struggles and success. I know this weekend my depression was starting to rear it's ugly head and I was empowered and refreshed from responses from others that follow me on twitter as well as some blog post I was reading. Here is a list of  a few blogs that I looked through that truly made me feel not alone and they knew exactly how I was feeling.  I encourage you to check these out as well and find more personal stories and others that have bipolar disorder to interact with and to most of all feel connected.

http://geneanderson.blogspot.com/
http://suddenlybipolar.wordpress.com/
http://myyeartothrive.wordpress.com/
http://bipolarbatesy.blogspot.com/

How did I go from sucessful Accountant to being on disability??

In the year 1994, I did graduate from a 4 year college with a degree in Accounting.  Now it was not the medical degree I once wanted but I thought at the time it was a good career path.  I was just thankful that I did graduate with a great G.P.A while still battling some extreme mood swings.  How little did I know at the time that working as an Accountant was going to very stressful and my mood swings would go from one extreme to another because of the pressure I was under at all my jobs.  I had these huge goals at the time and I thought I had it all planned out.  I would work at a fortune 500 company, meet a great man to marry, have two wonderful children, live in a huge house and drive a fancy sport's car.  Wow, it seems so shallow and silly to think back to those days when I just 21 years old and just starting out in the rat race. 

While I have worked at a few high profile companies and climbed the ladder to the top in my field, it did not give me all the happiness that I thought it would.  I did meet a man that I married but he turned out to be the worst nightmare I could ever imagine.  He was very controlling and abusive and he never understood my disorder.  He caused more stress in life than my career did at that time.  Between work and my home life, I had very little to look forward to or much to live for at the time.  I did have a beautiful house and I was driving a nice car and I was making a very nice salary.  But after working just 10 short years in my field I had to make some changes or I was going to die.  You see I wanted to end my life and I was very close to being successful one night. 

How was I diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at such a young age?

So many people ask me how I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at such a young age.  Back in 1989, very little was really known about this disorder and there was such limited information.  Back in those days it was still referred to as Manic Depressive.  The one thing that I believe caused my illness to surface so early was all the stress in my life.  A lot people have said at 16, how could the stress be bad enough to cause symptoms.  Well as most people remember that time in any one's life can be difficult.  The problem with me though was was my need for perfection and overachieving.  I was taking 5 college level classes in the 11th grade, I was on the school's dance team, I was President of the honor society, and I was involved with many clubs and doing volunteer work as well.  I still remember the shock in the eyes of the treatment team when they looked at just my class schedule.  They said that no one should be under such stress and it was no surprise to them that I was having extreme mood swings.  I was barely sleeping back then and I was also obsessed with my weight so I would skip eating for days.   This was a recipe for disaster. 

Fighting the stigma of Bipolar Disorder

I was reading another one of my blogs today that I follow at http://geneanderson.blogspot.com/ and he brought up an excellent point on how some people out there want to say that Bipolar Disorder is an addiction.  He has a great blog on the reasons it is not an addiction.   I am a strong advocate of fighting stigma associated with bipolar disorder.  The media is notorious for jumping on the band wagon of misconceptions about this disorder.  I don't even understand how some people could say that bipolar disorder is an addiction.  For starters it is a genetic condition that the person is born with and there is nothing that caused this other then being born.  I will agree that self medicating can lead to an addiction but bipolar disorder is not an addiction.  This just shows that there are so many people out there that have no idea what the illness really is and what it is not.  I have channeled my disdain for these misconceptions and partnered with NAMI at http://www.nami.org/ and joined their stigma alerts.  I have found new empowerment by writer to Senators, and Representatives as well as people in the media.  I would encourage anyone that wants to fight this stigma to join the stigma busters and educate the world that Bipolar Disorder is just and illness and it is treatable. To take action go to http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=fight_stigma and sign up to educate and stop these misconceptions about bipolar disorder.

So I was told I have Bipolar Disorder... Now What???

The first 5 things you should do once a doctor tells you have bipolar disorder.

1. Take your medications as prescribed by your doctor
2. Seek out therapy to work through the stress in your life and coping with the illness
3. Find a support group and support system
4. Eat healthy and try to exercise at least 3 days a week
5. Educate yourself with books and online material

Hearing those words is not easy and it can be overwhelming to you and others around you.  Probably the first thing a Psychiatrist will do is prescribe medication that will help stabilize your moods. As I said before everyone is different so the medicines you are prescribed will be different than other people with bipolar disorder. Also note a lot of medications have side effects and you will need to work closely with your doctor to work out the best combination for you. I still have to change up medications and normally do so on a yearly basis. Your treatment plan does change throughout the years. Your Psychiatrist will probably refer you to a therapist that will give you tools to better cope with stress in your life and your illness. Stress can play a huge factor in causing mood changes so it is important to find ways to help control that as much as you can.