Lines and Colours

In my mind, I am normal. This is because I live with me twenty-four seven (OK, not always twenty-four seven because some of those hours I am asleep).

I have BPD. In the past, I never realised that I feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do. I thought the intensity of my emotions was normal. Turns out, it’s not. I read somewhere that in non-BPD people an emotion typically fires for 12 seconds. In BPD’ers it can last up to 20 percent longer. BPD’ers emotions also repeatedly re-fire, or re-live, or recur, however you want to say it, so emotional reactions occur for even longer. I do. I go over and over and over the emotions, pinging from one to another like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

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New place, new luck

Hello everyone,

I wish that I could have posted earlier to speak with all you and keep updated…

But here I am.

After seven years of living abroad and three of those being very sick, I have returned to England to see how it goes here starting afresh again. I have been back for just over a week.

Helping to Break Stigma

When I received the job offer a few weeks ago I thought it over for a few days before excitedly accepting. My new manager arranged that she would send me some paperwork to fill out, and the next week we would meet so I could have a look around one of the branch practices I would be working in.

When I’d quit my previous job a few weeks ago I never expected to land on my feet. My parents were terrified that I had no long term prospects and I was just going to be a temp nurse.

The struggle

Hi everyone,

I haven’t posted in a long time and my last post was extremely positive. Unfortunately I have truly crashed since then.

I have treatment resistant depression, BPD, AvPD and OCD. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll add any more diagnoses to my list.

Social Rhythm Therapy

Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (ISRT) is a type of behavioral therapy designed specifically for bipolar disorder. As Wikipedia tells us, it’s:

used to treat the disruption in circadian rhythms that is related to bipolar disorder. ISRT provides a biopsychosocial model for bipolar disorder and recognizes that the illness cannot be fully treated with medication alone, although it is biologically based. It postulates that stressful events, disruptions in circadian rhythms and personal relationships, and conflicts arising out of difficulty in social adjustment often lead to relapses.

There is hope

I just wanted to say a few things about hope and the road to recovery.

All of your hard work and patience will pay off eventually. I’m not saying that it is easy but as long as you have at least in the back of your mind that you really want to get better, then you will.

There are days when you will think there is no hope, I am hopeless and helpless but ever so gradually you will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Like I say, it just takes time and determination.

The Cost of Mental Health

Maintaining your mental health is expensive. Medicine is expensive. Many of the antidepressants are generic now, but still cost about $1/pill without insurance. Lithium is much cheaper at 30 cents a pill. Prices on anxiety meds vary depending on if they are generic or not. But the antipsychotics… woah! I take Geodon, which recently went generic, and without insurance the cost is $379/month! Fortunately I only have to pay $76 because I have insurance. Even Lamictal runs $170/month generic. These are only some prescription prices. What do you pay in supplements that aren’t covered by insurance?

Seeking Professional Help: A Personal Journey

At what point do you say to yourself, “I need help”? And how many times do you say it before you actually reach out? Do you wait to hang by a single thread? Or do you wait for that last thread to start tearing before someone else tells you to grab on for dear life because you’ll end up at the bottom, dead?

Well, we’ll all end up as putrid corpses. One day the braided threads of our lives, as we know them now, will unravel. But you get my drift.