Why I didnt tell you...

Dear Friends and Family,

When I tried to commit suicide many of you had no idea I had ever suffered from depression, let alone that I had been having recurring bouts of it since I was a young teenager.

I didn’t talk about it much, I had seen many of you suffer yourselves I spent many hours on the phone with some of you trying to provide a positive outlook or a listening ear, this always seemed to help me feel better about my own situation and take my mind off things.

Why didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t I share my struggles or ask for help?

•   I didn’t want to burden you. You had enough going on in your own lives without having to worry about the likes of me.
• I didn’t want to lessen the validity of your situations by interjecting my own.

• My ‘reasons’ for wanting to die felt invalid. I had a good upbringing, loving husband, beautiful children, friends. I had no good ‘reason’. Why would someone as lucky as me want to kill themselves? How selfish, weak & pathetic.

• I hated the thought that people would think I was attention seeking. Yes, the stigma surrounding suicide as an attention seeking behaviour is still huge and I didn’t want anyone to think I would try and get attention this way when all I really wanted to do was hide away and be quietly miserable in my own little bubble.

• I genuinely wanted to die and I didn’t want to be stopped; nobody could change my mind, I had decided and that was that and the thought of being locked in a psych ward as an alternative terrified me beyond belief.

• I didn’t want anyone thinking that they could have done something to stop me, that they were somehow responsible. If people didn’t know, surely they couldn’t feel guilty about not preventing it.

In the end when it happened, you all reacted to the situation in different ways. Some of you whom I hadn’t seen in years or even spoken to apart from the quick obligatory ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Birthday’ phone calls appeared at my beside having driven and flown hours from interstate. I didn’t expect that, and at the time couldn’t understand why you had come all that way when you could have simply phoned to find out how I was doing.

Why did you care? I couldn't understand that it was because you loved me. I mean, why would you?

One of you with whom I was very close no longer talks to me, in your eyes I made the decision to leave you and your family without even asking for your help first, and that angered and saddened you. I understand why you feel that way, I do. I genuinely have no hard feelings towards you about it and I will treasure the memories of the times we spent together for the rest of my life.

My kind sister, I hadn't seen you in years yet you stayed with me over-night when I was in the ICU, you slept on two uncomfortable chairs as a makeshift bed and tried to calm me and distract me when I was delusional and paranoid that the doctors and nursing staff were trying to do experiments on me for some weird hospital reality TV show. Your presence really helped and I am so thankful.

There were my four special friends who drove an hour and a half to visit me three times a week in the psych ward after working / studying full days, you brought me new pyjamas, chocolate covered blueberries and the gift of unconditional love. Each of you suffering quietly from your own mental health conditions, it must have been horribly confronting to sit in that ward, but you never let that slip you just smiled, listened and told stories to cheer me up.

My amazing family members who quietly and generously offered financial support so that my husband could take four months off of work and visit me every single day that I was in the mental health unit and then be home to care for me after. I am so very grateful and am working towards repaying you, even though you said not to worry about it.

For a while after I got out of hospital I decided to be honest. I let you know if I was having a bad week or month and it hurt me to see the concern in your eyes, the fear that I might ‘do it again’ the barrage of phone calls “just checking in”. But after a while it feels like old news, "yeah I’m still depressed, no there’s no reason, medication side effects suck, yes I will let you know if you can do anything." Rinse, repeat, broken record.

So I slowly stopped telling people the truth and started saying “Fine thanks! What have you been up to?” Again instead. Over time, the concern melted off your faces and was replaced with care free smiles and ease of conversation again, you no longer walked on egg shells and I stopped feeling like a guilty leper. Now when I am with you, I can forget my issues for a while, concentrate on what’s happening in your world without the burden of guilt that I might be causing you pain. This distraction can be life saving.

 I do of course need to talk about it though, it is the only way I can process things. So I write stories, poetry and songs, I listen to podcasts, I blog, I tweet and I find my mental health support in online communities that are full of people like me, people who just GET ME, people whom I can explain my late night suicidal ideations to without judgement as they have been there too, they understand what it is like to have the most AMAZING week of your life and then want nothing more than to die the next.

Those people help me through the hard days so that I can be there for you on good ones as a smiling, bubbly friend/ daughter/ sister, ready to listen and to help. They give me the opportunity to feel normal all the time, even when things are at their most awful. That may sound weird but it’s just a different kind of normal from the one you are used to.  

So everyone in my 'real life', thank you for being there when I needed you and while I am sorry I didn’t talk to you before, I guess I am only sorry because it made you feel bad. Know that it was always my choice to hide it and not your lack of observation or care. 

While I no longer tell you what is going on in my sometimes dark and clouded mind, I just need you to understand that it’s not because I don’t trust you, but because I can only survive by separating my worlds, it gives me freedom from myself, it’s the way I have always coped and it’s just who I am.

Being Bipolar in the Workplace

I often get asked the question “your kids are all at school now, why don’t you go back to work full time?” and it always leaves me floundering a bit. I haven’t had a major hospital requiring episode for nearly 2 years and the truth is I am scared to, scared I will over commit and become unwell again. 

Every single time I have worked ‘full time’ hours, as in 9am-5pm  5 days per week, I have had an episode resulting in having to cut down hours. One or two full days a week seems to fit well for me, it gives me something productive to do and a social outlet but it doesn’t cause the stress build up that can trigger my illness.

“But lots of people with chronic depression work full time jobs.” 

Yes, yes they do. My hat goes off to them because I honestly don’t know how they do it. I have tried to work while depressed and had mixed results. If the depression at the time is relatively mild and not accompanied by anxiety, then I am able to plaster on a fake smile and make small talk in all the right places for 8 hours and then collapse into a heap afterwards. It exhausts me and gives me no energy reserves. My children and husband suffer because they have to deal with a wife and mother who can’t participate in family life, cries uncontrollably, yells too much and stays in bed all weekend.

When I am severely depressed most of my journey to work is spent convincing myself not to drive into oncoming traffic, work itself becomes pointless as I am unable to remember anything, concentrate or communicate effectively with colleagues, my inner dialogue chastises every thought and every thought’s, thought. I am useless, hopeless and I think about my pre constructed suicide plans at least 30 times per hour.

My anxiety spikes because I am aware of how completely awful my work performance has become and I become paranoid that I will be fired at any moment. The anxiety causes my hands and legs shake until I can no longer use a keyboard or construct a basic sentence, I am terrified somebody will realise I am not ‘ok’ and if someone actually asks how I am I am likely to burst into tears.

I literally attempted suicide in the carpark outside an office building I worked in once because I couldn’t face going up there again.

“But hypomania makes you super productive and an asset to a business, right?”

Ha! Yes, and no. Mild hypomania can be wonderful, everything seems crystal clear as though you have cleaned a dirty window or put on glasses for the first time. Your energy levels are up, you are exercising more, dressing for success, getting involved in more social events, and not needing as much sleep as usual to wake up refreshed. Work has suddenly become much easier, words and ideas flow in conversations and meetings, you enthusiastically take on more and more projects, everybody notices your excellent work ethic and bubbly attitude and are a sure thing for that next promotion.

The trouble with hypomania is it usually either fizzles out before you have finished all those new project submissions, or it increases in intensity. Intense hypomania is where everything becomes very, very fast. All those wonderful ideas are still coming only they are happening so quickly that little part of your brain that filters out the plausible from the outlandish takes a little holiday.

You are energetic and excited and EVERYONE needs to hear your AMAZING ideas so that they can be implemented as soon as possible! You are talking fast, really fast; your bosses boss whom you have approached directly to save valuable time and company resources, is having to get you to repeat yourself two or three times so she can understand your words.

To prove to your employer how your brilliant idea will best suit the company you have spent the last three nights at home awake until 5am on the computer researching patents, emailing CEOs in China and creating business plans, brochures and designing logo’s and buying websites.

Despite you feeling like a million dollars, at this point your family has probably realised that something isn’t right and are hopefully enacting some sort of pre organised action plan, if you are in therapy your therapist will have advised you not to go to work and sent you to a psychiatrist for a med review.

If you ignore this advice and carry on in your quest for glory, one of two things will happen. Either the intense hypomania stops dead in its tracks leaving you fatigued and in way over your head paving the way for a depressive episode or it escalates further into full blown mania.

Full blown mania at work isn’t fun anymore, you stop looking like a brilliant all be it slightly eccentric up and comer and start to look just plain crazy. You can’t remember the last time you had more than two hours sleep or ate something that wasn’t put directly into your hand. Your hair and make-up aren’t quite right anymore, you accidently wore your sneakers with your dress because you were too busy that morning writing long lists of famous people to pitch your life changing ideas to and got distracted.

Your mind is whirling so quickly that it can’t keep up with itself, ideas don’t even make sense to you anymore because they have all moshed together, hallucinations begin. You need to tell your boss that you have to go home, he says that’s fine so you head out to the car. Why are you still sitting at your desk? Didn’t you leave? Did you imagine that? Oh you are in your car. No its your desk? You can’t even tell what is real anymore.

You half come to your senses and realise you are in the sick room, your manager and team leader are both with you discussing whether or not to call an ambulance, the room is spinning. You try to talk, to explain, but the words come out too fast and too jumbled to make any sense. Someone comes to pick you up and all your colleagues stare at you in disbelief as you are walked out of the office.

“But now that you are on a medication regime, you should be able to work full time like everyone else, shouldn’t you?”

Unfortunately, it’s not that cut and dry. Medications certainly save many people’s lives but they can often feel like a deal with the devil, you get to keep your sanity but not without serious side effects. Insomnia, fatigue, weight gain, tremors, cognitive and memory issues just to name a few; these can be quite disabling. Many people spend years trying to find a medication where the challenges of the side effects don’t outweigh the issues caused by bipolar in the first place. 

“So how can we support people with bipolar in the work place?”

That plaster cast on your broken leg is a visible reminder that you are unable to run at the moment. Mental illness is invisible, it is understandably hard for people to remember that someone may be struggling when they don’t have a visual representation of illness to remind them all the time. 

Having bipolar disorder does not make you a bad or lazy person, it doesn’t mean people need to tiptoe around you or fuss over you constantly either. While we don’t want to be singled out from our peers and colleagues we ask that you understand that living with this illness can be extremely challenging and working full time hours is simply not a viable option for many of us. 

What we do ask for:

• Increased awareness, ie your time to listen and learn a little bit about our condition.

• Be willing to express concern if you feel our moods are intensifying but don’t assume every scowl or sad expression means we are about to have an episode. People with bipolar have normal feelings of happiness, frustration and sadness each day just like you do.

•  Flexibility, we have doctor appointments, therapy appointments, specialist appointments that we must attend and these are often only available during work hours. We can become unwell suddenly and may require time off without warning at inopportune moments. We don’t mean to be difficult, but having one or two days off now can prevent several months off and severe productivity losses later on.

• Respect for our privacy, if we want to tell colleagues about our condition or give you details about our recent visit to the psych ward we will, but otherwise we would appreciate you keeping these things on the down low.

• Patience, some of us might be taking several different medications that make us unable to function very well before 10am or after 3pm. Our memories might also be affected and we may require a little more prompting than other staff do.

So please understand, while you can’t see my mental illness, it is something that affects my life every single day. I enjoy working part time and challenging myself with new projects and my decision not to work full time has not been made because I am lazy or out for a free ride in life, but because it is the best one for myself and my family.

The Scars of our Souls

Today is self-injury awareness day, so I thought I’d do a post to celebrate. 

Celebrate? Well that really appears to be the wrong word for this sort of sensitive topic doesn’t it? Perhaps, but I am celebrating because spreading awareness makes a real difference and even if we are hiding behind a computer screen, it is still spreading the message. 

Perhaps I am also celebrating because proudly I can say that I haven’t self-harmed in a long time now, probably close to a year? I haven’t been counting. I have had the urge to a few times lately, but I have been able to stop myself. I actually burned my arm by accident taking a tray out of the oven the other day and have been freaking out that people with notice and think "she's doing it again".

When people see the scars on my arms 90% of them don’t have any idea why they are there, perhaps because injuring one’s self on purpose is a concept so far removed from the minds of those who have good mental health that when they see someone who doesn’t follow the society stereotypes of an “Emo” or appear to be acting overtly crazy then surely there must be a logical explanation.

Their ignorance is mostly obvious because so many people who notice my scars will comment on them. If people actually thought they were from self-harm at first glance, then they wouldn’t say anything, chances are they would stop making eye contact and awkwardly talk about the weather until they could walk away and we didn’t have to see each other again.

I get commonly asked things such as “were you a chef by trade?” the first time I heard that one was from a customer at work and I didn’t realise they had noticed my arms so I laughed and asked “Why on earth do you ask that?” to which the person said “Oh I just thought because of all the burn scars on your arms, my nephew is a chef and he has the same thing”. I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say which made the rest of our interaction rather uncomfortable. 

Now when I get the ‘chef’ comment I usually just laugh and say “Obviously not a very good one!” which seems to satisfy people. If customers or strangers directly ask me “what happened to your arms?” I tend to just reply “burns, I’m pretty uncoordinated”.  Which are both true statements, they just happen to be unrelated. Imagine if I said “Well those

scars you see on my body are simply the trademarks of the invisible scars on my soul.” Conversation stopper right there.

A lady I worked with in a government department years ago was also bipolar, I had already known, but she told me this one day when we were having a D & M. I laughed and said ‘maybe that’s why we get along so well, so am I” She just grinned like she had been heard for the first time and rolled up her sleeve to reveal arms covered in winding tattoos of cherry blossoms and vine leaves. She looked at me as if to test me and said “I suppose you do stupid things like this too then?” I looked closer and beneath the tattoos were hundreds of fine white lines, scars of varying lengths.

I smiled back and rolled up my sleeve to reveal my own history “Yep.” From that point on we looked out for each other, if one of us was having a bad day a coffee would suddenly appear on our desk with a smiley face post it note saying “luv ya!” Finally, somebody I knew in real life ‘got me’ and I didn’t have to explain a thing. 

Causes of self-harm vary widely and it’s a very individual thing; for me has always been about punishment rather than trying to “feel”. Inflicting pain or giving myself a scar to remind me of the ‘bad’ thing I have done and theoretically prevent me doing it again; ironically when I do hurt myself I am usually so angry that I don’t feel any pain from the wound anyway and I always inevitably do that ‘bad’ thing again anyway.

I think it is the self-hatred of my eating disorder that triggers me more than the bipolar depression; 90% of my scars are punishments for having eaten or binged. Some of the risk taking behaviours of my mania’s may also be considered 'acts of self-harm' officially, but for me they are less intentional acts and more of an impulsive recklessness. They ‘feel’ like two very different things.

One day I hope that I will be able to be more honest about my scars, stand up tall for mental health and contribute towards ending the stigma in person rather than just behind a keyboard. But for now the truth is reserved for the pages of my blog and people in my life that I love and trust while long sleeves continue to hide my struggles from the outside world. 

Do you, or have you self-harmed?   

If you do, is it a coping mechanism or punishment? 

Can you be comfortably honest about it or is this something you are working towards?