Still stuck in a mixed episode. It now makes day four of it. I'm not as short tempered as I was yesterday but I still have the combination of having energy and being depressed. I saw my psych provider yesterday. She was surprised how long I have been struggling. Now, this makes the first full year that she's been working with me. Starting out, last March, I did my best to make clear to her that the time from late November to about mid-March is the worst of the year for me. Due to a combination of factors, I pretty much spend my entire time depressed.
I am hoping that the fact that I'm not as ready to scream, break things, and generally light the world on fire is a sign that I am moving out of this mental state. I really hate depressive episodes. But I think I hate mixed episodes even more. At least with the depressive episodes I have some numbness insulating me from the worst of the feelings. With this, I feel every knot and twist of my pained mind through the entire episode. I have noticed that I did not get my full nine hours of sleep last night. I'm keeping an eye on that.
It is sad to admit, but I no longer trust a cranky day or a string of good days. I watch everything about what is going on with me. I am wary of what is simply a good day turning into mania. I am concerned that a bad day is going to stretch out into a longer interval with my anger turning nearly uncontrolled. I just don't trust myself anymore on that front. And for some one who has difficulty trusting herself in other areas, this makes me exasperated and sad. It also makes me angry.
My therapist tells me that I just should let the moods happen as they will and adjust to them as they happen. I feel like I can't do that. I feel like there is too much at stake. Multiple rounds of depression leads to my not taking proper care of myself. This ends in my needing dental work, increased problems with exercise, and (apparently) high triglyceride levels. She tells me that I am looking at it from a too complicated approach. I feel like I need to plan for each mood state like I would for the invasion of Normandy.
I haven't hit the point of having crisis plans written up in my binder, yet. I do, however, now have a list of all my medications and my diagnoses in my wallet now. In my times of hypomania, I start organizing everything and trying to make all in my life efficient. This is also when I start thinking about how to possibly manage the household, raise the children, do my writing, and run multiple businesses at the same time. I also get a little bit freer with my spending. But I spend it on practical things, like more canned goods to keep in the pantry in the event of a bad winter storm. Or, if I've gone really wild, clothes for myself. And when I am doing this extra spending, my anxiety of money is such that it stops me from going over about sixty dollars on my purchases.
Anyways, I feel like I need to have a plan in place for when I am well, when I am depressed, when I am hypomanic, and when I have a mixed episode. I don't and that makes me uneasy. My plans for when I am well are simple and I don't really need to check in with other people to make sure that I am well connected with reality. But for the other three states, I don't have anything written down and I worry that as time goes on I am getting worse. And I want to make sure that if something goes majorly wrong, there is a plan for how to take care of it. Because it makes me feel more secure about it all and it makes it possible for there to be some kind of solution to the problems that would arise from my being severely unwell.
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