"I dwell in possibility -- " *

In the early 1990s, I started what became a two decade wrestling match with depression that took me into dark places of my mind that I never knew existed. I fought back with prayer, counseling, and medication. When those failed to deliver me, when I developed psychotic hallucinations and delusions, I fought back in psychiatric hospitals. Seven times I was admitted to a psych ward between 1996 and 2005; six times I thought I had conquered the darkness. Today, I know that the depression was due to bipolar disorder. Today, I know that I do not conquer it once and for all, but continue to overcome it every day for the rest of my life.


My long battle with the depressive part of bipolar began in 1992 at the end of a difficult pregnancy which resulted in miscarrying twins. Following closely on the heels of that was a major move and change in lifestyle. From 1992 until 1996, I sought help through counseling within my church and talking with friends and family. There were times when the fog lifted, but for most of those three and a half years, I was bathed in despair. I always felt I was a failure as a mother, wife, and Christian. There was nothing I set out to do that I felt I accomplished with success. That those thoughts were untrue never occurred to me. Part of the delusion that bipolar depression brings about is that of abject failure.


I often thought of ways to die; frequently envisioning violent, gory images involving knives, claws, and other sharp objects. I then spent lots of time alone in my bathroom, sitting in the tub and running water to drown out the sounds of my crying. I was also trying to wash away the things that made me so objectionable to others, though those things were not at all the thoughts or intentions of others. I had many of the classic symptoms of depression: feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness, inability to sleep all or sleeping all day by turns, difficulty in accomplishing everyday tasks, irritability, and fatigue.

The first time I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital was in 1996. The mental images of drastically hurting myself were at an all-time high. I constantly saw images of bloody knives and scissors. I worked with scissors at my job, as well as an industrial sewing machine, and I fought an overwhelming onslaught of imagery involving slicing myself or ramming my hand under the needle. Work became impossible.

One day, I left my machine and called a friend for help. My plan had been to run naked down a busy street in the next town in the hopes of being arrested and locked up where I would be safe. Instead, my friend took me to see a psychiatrist on an emergency basis. By nightfall I was in a locked ward with a dozen other women all dealing with some form of mental illness.


Over the next eight years, I continued with bouts of depression and was eventually started on a years-long course of anti-depressants. Because I never presented to a hospital with problems other than depression, no other diagnosis was entertained.


I started back to school in 1997 and excelled, pulling a 4.0 in spite of dealing with serious stress at home. I landed a job from my externship and did well, but I was having more and more difficulty concentrating, couldn’t sit still, and would behave in very unprofessional ways at work. One of my bosses wondered if I didn’t have adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. I wondered, too. I also wondered if I might have bipolar because I would start the day depressed and end the day feeling super high. I never did drugs or drank alcohol, though substance abuse is often co-morbid with bipolar. Other hypomanic behaviors were there: starting projects and not finishing them, a sense of invincibility, no apparent need for sleep, and a constant feeling of being “up”.


The cycling between depression and hypomania should have been something that my doctors and I “caught” early on. But, like most bipolar people, I only sought help when the depressive symptoms were interfering with my life. Including the doctor that arranged for my first hospitalization, I saw eight different doctors and counselors before learning that my true problem was bipolar disorder. Like many bipolars, I was always initially diagnosed with clinical or major depression.


At the beginning of 2000, I became a reporter/ editor for a local newspaper. I was functioning pretty well and not dealing with much depression. The anti-depressants I was on had me in a state of constant hypomania – one of the problems bipolar people have with that particular class of drugs. I worked long hours, stayed up late, covered everything that needed covered in our small town, and rarely had a “stringer” to help me get everything done. I was the sole news reporter.


The long hours and constant lack of sleep, coupled with the deadline stress and problems at home, resulted in a full blown panic disorder. I’d been prone to anxiety and had suffered what I now know were panic attacks, but the job stress brought everything to the fore. Anxiety and panic disorders are also frequently co-morbid with bipolar disorder. I spent many evenings in ER with dangerously high blood pressure and chest pains. I underwent scores of cardiac tests. Everything was always negative for heart disease. Having the diagnosis of a panic disorder allowed me to get counseling and medication to treat that, but the bipolar continued undiagnosed. Again, I was only seeking help for symptoms that were troublesome to me.


At some point in 2000, the anti-depressant I was on quit working and I started having problems with depression again. A new anti-depressant put me into a full-blown mania that lasted for well over a year. During that time, I married an ex-con I’d met online and had moved to Indiana. I was spending more and more time online and losing all contact with my teenage daughter and my other friends. I was working more hours at the paper, but risked my job with some bizarre behavior outside the office. Finally, it all fell apart.


The year 2004 saw the beginning of what would be six hospitalizations within a 15 month period. All the psychotic features of the worst depressions were back. Now I saw my hands as werewolf-like, capable of ripping my throat out. I would close my eyes and see demonic images full of fury and hatred. I became depressed again and suicidal.

What started happening was severe rapid cycling. The more my depression was treated with anti-depressants, the worse the manic and psychotic features became. I would go to the hospital to get help with the suicidal ideation and difficulties sleeping, get counseling, and still end up back in the hospital several weeks or months later.


It wasn’t until sometime in 2005 that my psychiatrist finally pegged me with bipolar disorder and started a course of medical treatment that included anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers to lower the highs while maintaining the anti-depressants to raise the lows. Since that time, I have been on various “drug cocktails” as we work to keep my symptoms at bay. I left the paper, quit several other jobs, left the ex-con, moved back to Texas, changed psychiatrists several times, and have been on more medications than I can count in my effort to put my life back on an even keel.

Bipolar is never something that one “gets over”. It cannot be cured like cancer, but it can be controlled like diabetes. For now, everything is mostly under control. With counseling and finessing the meds, I have been able to return to school where I maintain an A average. I will be graduating next year with my first bachelor degree. From being at a point where I couldn’t function in a normal job or in any normal capacity, I have now held the same job for five years. From feelings of hopelessness and despair of ever having any success in life, I know now that I live a life of endless possibilities.

* Emily Dickinson

"Life is the only real counselor..." *

With a soft, southern drawl harking back to his Arkansas roots, Kevin Thompson’s voice invites you to sit back and be comfortable, open up, talk about yourself, and discuss the heavy things of life or laugh at the craziness of it all. That’s a good thing because Kevin is a counselor at the local mental health center. Getting people to open up can be a difficult thing when they are dealing with bipolar, depression, schizophrenia, or any number of other mental illnesses. But Kevin has a voice, and a knack, for letting people feel they can safely do just that. It also helps that Kevin knows quite a lot about what you are going through; he himself has bipolar disorder.

“I know the depths of the pits, the highest peaks of the tallest mountains, and everything in between.”

And indeed he does.

After leaving college in his early twenties (he freely admits to being there for “nothing but fun”), Kevin joined the Air Force as a firefighter. He was active duty for three years and twenty days. Before he left, however, he was hospitalized for what was eventually diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Mania. Depression. It was all there and it came to a point where being inpatient was required.

It was not a positive experience.

“They didn’t know what the hell they were doing,” he says of the hospital staff. “They were babysitting me…thinking I was just faking for a medical discharge.”

He wasn’t faking, and he did get medically discharged.

That time spent in the hospital became his inspiration to become a counselor.
Armed with his experiences in the military’s psychiatric hospital and an understanding of what it was to be bipolar, he returned to school to pursue a degree in psychology.

In spite of dealing with his own illness, Kevin graduated with his Bachelor’s degree at 25 years of age and his Master’s at 27. During that time, he worked at the mental health clinic as a peer counselor. Now a licensed counselor, he has two peer counselors working under him. (A peer counselor is a person who has similar issues as the people he or she is helping and is successfully dealing with them.) The program Kevin leads helps about twenty clients in various group and individual sessions.
When his clients find out that Kevin is “one of them”, their first reaction is often surprise.

“Oh, really?” they ask him. “Can you do that?”

He points to all the certificates and licenses on his wall and assures them that yes, he can do this.

Not that everyone thought he could. The vocational rehabilitation counselor at the VA hospital told him that he couldn’t become a counselor.

Kevin’s response to that was, “Are you sure about that?”

“I was going to do it whether or not he thought I could,” Kevin says emphatically.
And he is doing it.

That isn’t to say it’s easy all the time. “I feel less effective when my meds wear off in the morning,” he admits. “I still do (all my work); it’s just harder.”

Still, one of the best things about his job, he says, is when the clients look at him and say, “You know what you’re talking about.”

Asked about his motto for his counseling career or his life with bipolar, Kevin is quick to answer: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” He quotes not Freud or Jung, but Saint Paul.

He has Christ, and he has his family. Kevin’s biggest fan club is comprised of three matriarchs in his family: “Momma, Memaw, and Auntie.” Asked how they encourage him, he says with a childlike grin, “They tell me how wonderful I am.” His father, too, is a big supporter. When Kevin took home pamphlets on bipolar disorder, his father not only read them, but took them to work to share with others. His bipolar is not a secret or a shame in his family. Kevin is just Kevin.

In spite of all the difficulties having bipolar can bring, Kevin still counts it a blessing in his life, especially as it pertains to his counseling.

“It’s helped me understand the extremes of human emotion,” he says, “and to be able to talk people away from the edge.”


* Edith Wharton

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." *

About seven years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I don't remember exactly when, but sometime before Thanksgiving of 2005. I remember because I was in the hospital, again, on Thanksgiving of that year eating beef and noodles for dinner. I have spent an Easter in the hospital for depression, and Thanksgiving as an inpatient for bipolar. They are odd holidays to be hospitalized for feeling so down you want to die: a holiday of hope and new beginnings, and a holiday of reflection and gratitude.

Just over six years ago, I moved home to Texas from Indiana. I couldn't hold a full-time job there, my husband was leaving me to come to Texas for marital counseling, and being up there alone to figure things out didn't seem to make sense. My parents said, "Come home." And I did.

Five years ago, I started a part-time job at Cracker Barrel. It's part-time not just because they don't really offer full time positions much, but also because some weeks working too much can trigger bipolar symptoms and some months I need time off to deal with med changes or other issues from the bipolar. Still, I've worked there for five full years and have received my first pin -- given at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years. Much as I like my coworkers and like my job, though, I don't want to get my 10-year pin.

Three and a half years ago, a friend challenged me with the question: "What are your passions? Do you have still have any anymore? What is it you really want to do with your life?"

My most fulfilling and rewarding job, of all that I have had over the past 17 years, has been writing. I loved being a newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. It was a small town paper, published three days a week, but I loved almost all of it. I got burned out because I was manic and didn't know it (pre-diagnosis), was having severe marital and family problems, and quit to do something I thought would make more money but couldn't do well as it turned out. I've always been a writer of some kind, though. I loved English and essays and research papers in school. I loved some of the freelance articles I did on the side at the paper. I am prolific in emails, online support boards, in blogs, and in Facebook. I spend so much of my time communicating with others via the written word.

To be questioned about my passion reminded me of all of that. Writing is my passion. It is the thing I find most challenging, most interesting, most rewarding even now.

So three years ago, I went back to school. I enrolled in the online program at Southern New Hampshire University. I started out as an English Language and Literature major, then switched to a Creative Writing with a Non-Fiction Specialty major. I have enough hours that I will have my minor still in English.

What will I do with a degree? I will write. I will write for myself. I will write to be published. I will continue with what I've been doing on the side. I may go back to working for a newspaper. Some say that newspapers are dying, which is true. But news is not. And someone has to write what you read about online or hear about on television. Maybe I will write for a magazine. Those are as much online as in print now, too, but people are still reading them. And I will write to continue to educate people about bipolar and other mental health issues.

Seven years ago, I thought I was worthless and beyond redemption as far as any meaningful contribution to society was concerned. Six yeas ago, I was in a safe place and working on recovering from all that my mind and emotions had put me through in the ten years previous. Five years ago, I was finally able to re-enter the workforce and start contributing to my family. Three years ago, I started planning a future.

Now, with only four and a half classes left to take for my Bachelor's, I'm setting my sights on a Master's degree...also in Creative Writing. Never before have I even considered such a thing and now it sounds not only possible, but plausible. I have talked with my advisor, met the new Master's advisor via phone, and have all the information I need to start planning for 2014 and beyond.

Will I get a job at a paper? Will I work for one of my favorite magazines? Will I be a freelancer and get my work published all over the place in different venues? Will I end up teaching other writers as they start their own education and careers?

That part remains to be seen. But I'm pretty much determined that I will be off disability, out of Cracker Barrel (though it has been very good to me and for me), and working in my degree field before 2016.

* Nelson Mandela

"... I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell..." *

I like Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty, and have for some time. When the song "Unwell" first came out, it was before I was diagnosed with bipolar, yet it resonated with me somehow. Probably because my whole life, especially in school, people would always talk about how "crazy" I was. Generally, they meant it in a funny, teasing, laughing-with-me-not-at-me kind of way, because let's face it, folks: I have an AMAZING sense of humor, if not sometimes just a little wicked and warped.


Still, I also knew what my friends and peers did not know: that sometimes, there were things going on inside of me that I had absolutely no control over. While part of me considered that these odd thoughts, random visions, and creepy sensations possibly normal, I also had some sense that maybe they weren't. Maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to tell anyone some of the stuff that happened inside my head.


For instance, before I was three years old, I remember waking up and feeling like monkeys - really evil monkeys - were sitting on my back, daring me to turn around and look them in the face. I could never breathe when that happened. I would lay really still and wait them out. Because I was afraid of what they would do to me if I ever told anyone about them, I never did. Not until I was an adult and they had been gone for decades.


When I was in grade school, I would get these odd ideas that if I did something in a certain way, or thought wrong thoughts, then something awful would happen. I can remember having obsessive thoughts (not knowing what they were at the time) that kept repeating themselves in my head, scaring me, and making me sure I was going to hell for having them. I also had a special litany of catastrophes I had to pray against every night, being very specific, so that God would protect us all. If I didn't remember to do it, I knew if anything happened, it would be my fault. That went on for several years, probably until I was 9 or 10, when I finally took the chance that maybe God could handle things and knew what He was doing better than I did. I quit praying that particular prayer...and nothing happened. Our house didn't burn down. We weren't robbed. No one died. I'd had no power or magic that was keeping it from happening; it just didn't happen.


In junior high was the first time I had actual "outside my head" hallucinations. It was always an image of the hooded figure of Death, complete with his sickle for reaping souls. It was bad enough when I saw it at home at night in my room, but when I started seeing it while playing softball, I remember being really freaked out. At the same time, I started having what I know now were episodes of "depersonalization" - when my own voice sounded like it was coming from someone else, when other people sounded like they were talking to me from across a great chasm, and when time (the fact that it kept passing and passing and passing) became a threatening and awful thing to contemplate. I detested looking at clocks and watches, the ringing of bells to change classes, watching the sun follow its course through the day. It overwhelmed me. Again, I don't remember saying anything about this, though once my mom and I were talking and she did ask if I felt I needed to see a psychologist. I said no...because I didn't want to think I was insane, and back in 1975 that's all I knew about psychiatrists - they saw people that were really, truly insane.


In high school and college, I was having wild mood swings. Mom (and I'm sure everyone else) knew when my period was due because I'd get snappy and crabby. But I didn't let anyone know, when I would become so horribly depressed that I was mapping out a will in my head, that anything more than just typical teenage angst was going on. Because honestly, I didn't know that it wasn't just that, anyway. I would also have these tremendous bursts of energy, days and days when I could just go and go and go! I've always been a talker (ask the people that freaked when the 9-month-old in the shopping cart at the store would greet them in complete sentences), but I felt compelled to talk and would...faster and faster. I know now that is called "pressured speech". I would have these amazing ideas, start all kinds of projects and never finish them, blow any money I had on buying gifts for my friends just because I felt expansive and in love with the world. In college, in 1981, I remember feeling it was a kind of "frenetic peace" - and I wrote once that it felt like God was tagging me on the shoulder and saying, "Come on...let's go play!" Creative? Intelligent? Very likely manic.


I never did the hypersexual activity, I was too much of a prude. Drugs? Nope...I was terrified of them. I couldn't even take an aspirin correctly, or prescriptions without worrying they would kill me (can anyone say, "comorbid anxiety disorder"?); besides, no one ever offered me any. That's probably a good thing. I also never drank. Oddly though, when I would go into what I was calling a funk (now what I realize were depressive episodes), the first thing I would think about to deal with things was "Maybe I should get drunk..." Yeah. Didn't make sense at all...but frequently nothing did.


I did well at work. I did well at school. I had always done well in school, especially in the "abstract classes" like English, composition, literature, art, etc. But wow, my head could give me fits at times.


One other thing, depressed or hyper, or even just on "even keel" - a condition that was never comfortable to me for some reason - I have almost always had voices in my head. I've explained it as like having a TV on or a radio talk show going all the time. The voices don't comment on me or talk to me, except for rare instances when my bipolar is not under control and twice on medication that caused auditory hallucinations as a side effect. Instead, it's like I'm eavesdropping on other people's conversations. Sometimes, I get a visual in my head of who the people are that are talking. It just lasts a second or two, then the "station" will change and it might be someone else talking, another show to listen to, or maybe nothing at all.


I have been through episodes of major depression - once after miscarrying twins, once when my husband at the time had a psychotic break and we found out he was schizophrenic. I was hospitalized for depression the first time after his diagnosis and after having been under extreme stress and major life changes for three years straight. Later, I was being treated for depression and had been doing well enough, but as the medication stopped working, I became depressed and started having visual hallucinations, thoughts of harming self, wanting to stop existing, etc. I wasn't sad, though, that was the thing. I just felt hopeless and worthless. I wanted to shake out of it, but I couldn't. I remember telling my family doctor, who I had worked for at one time, that "I should be stronger than this!" He just looked at me and asked me, "Why?" That's when we discussed depression as a condition and not just a reaction to something sad that has occurred.

We continued to treat the depression with different medications. I then took a job at a small newspaper, as the news reporter and photographer. I loved it! But there were long hours, lots of deadlines (of course!), and so many things to do at all times of the day or night that needed to be covered. For some reason, all those years of anxiety - reaching back into childhood - came to a head and I started having panic attacks.


I didn't realize at first that they were panic attacks. I was in the ER many times for outrageously high blood pressure, severe waves of heat spreading through my body, then massive cold waves, electrical tastes in my mouth, and a feeling that I was going to die at any second. It took a while to be diagnosed (finally!) with the panic and anxiety disorders, but after getting some counseling and medical intervention, as well as learning coping techniques over the course of several years, the panic attacks decreased and I rarely have them anymore.


After that diagnosis, and while still working at the paper and on anti-depressants, some really weird things began happening. I started acting less and less like myself. Dropped out of church. Stepped away from many of my acquaintances. Became involved in online friendships with men that were really pretty inappropriate (several guys were married, one was probably a stalker, and I married the one that had just gotten out of prison and had anger issues). I did wild things in the course of that long manic phase: slept in my husband's truck in the church parking lot because I was angry and didn't want to go home; covered my upstairs apartment patio so no one could see me, and slept naked under a full moon just to see what it felt like; mooned someone while I was merely a block away from the police station. Not at all the behavior of a professional woman. Not at all the behavior of anyone I'd ever been before. We won't even talk about the stupid, stupid things I did before I married my Internet boyfriend. How I did not see that I was behaving bizarrely, I don't know. My mom saw it. My daughter saw it. Friends saw it. But even when they pointed it out, I didn't get it.


Eventually, I ended up in the hospital as I crashed from the long manic episode. I was depressed. I was seeing horrible images in my head - very destructive ones. I was afraid I was going to hurt myself and I didn't want to. And we always treated the depression every time I went to the hospital - which, in the first year, was four times. It wasn't until the fourth time that my doctor realized I was bipolar, and looking back on all the symptoms from when I was a little kid, I probably always have been. Once we started treating the bipolar (adding mood stabilizers or anti-psychotics to the anti-depressants), things gradually got better. Gradually, though, because I ended up separating from and divorcing my new husband - which was probably one of the best things I could have done for my mental health at the time.


In the past six years, while I have had some depressive episodes that have interfered with being able to work and function sometimes, I at least have not had to be hospitalized again. I have learned to recognize my symptoms for episodes and try to work with my doctor to handle things. I know to pull back from things that I can when stress starts triggering the overt symptoms like bad mental imagery or more voices. I've managed to go back to school online, hold an A average, and take classes every term but one (because of financial aid problems that term) for the past three years.


In spite of how my head can be sometimes, I'm still amazingly funny (albeit wicked and warped); I still have friends and family to communicate with and can usually function at work, though I only work very, very part-time. I'm writing again, which I couldn't do for several years after I left the paper - either because I was too hyper to really do so or because I was too depressed.


What I'm trying to say here is what Matchbox Twenty says, "I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell." Some days are not great. But I'm still a functioning human being, capable of feeling deeply, dreaming big, and having fun with most other human beings, too. I have multiple interests and follow them as far as I can. I haven't "been off the deep end" in a very long time. And actually, even with all the weird stuff in my head all through childhood and my teenage years and adulthood, I still managed to graduate in the top 10% of my high school class, made friends along the way that I still cherish, and ended up with an amazing daughter who has a bright future in spite of what she went through with her parents.


If you are bipolar, have an anxiety disorder, know the depths of depression, regret some of your actions when you've been living larger than life - I can relate. But always know this: You're not crazy. You just may be a little unwell.


(The lyrics in this video are what resonate with me; the actual video just makes me bemused as I watch it. I know some people actually see things like this...I just never have...not in that way.)






"Unwell", lyrics by Rob Thomas