Tag: mania

Thoughts about redemption

Copyright JM Schreiber 2012
Copyright JM Schreiber 2012

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
‘Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it’s just a part of it:
We’ve got to fulfill the book.

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom? –
‘Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs.”

This song by the late Bob Marley has echoed in my mind frequently over the past month or so. Written after the diagnosis of cancer that would ultimately claim his life, it is thought to speak to his personal reflections on mortality. My own longing for redemption relates directly back to my inability to resolve the circumstances which led up to the extraordinarily manic behaviour that marked my final days in the office. And my inability to let it go.

What is redemption?

Disregarding the financial and transaction contexts by which the term is used, redemption is typically understood as:
n.
1. an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed.
2. deliverance; rescue.
3. deliverance from sin.
4. atonement for guilt.

Looking at the news over the past few weeks, there are some very public examples of behaviour that can not be easily excused. The videotape of NFL star Ray Rice punching and dragging his unconscious fiancee from an elevator, the resignation of a Vancouver CEO caught on video kicking and abusing a puppy, and most recently another NFL player accused of excessively brutal corporal punishment against his own children are just the latest in a litany of public figures behaving badly. Unfortunately, they might have been met  with relatively minor reprimands had there not been videotapes or pictures and an element of public shaming.

How many sports heroes, businessmen, politicians and celebrities have been brought down by grossly inappropriate, violent and even illegal actions only to eventually find redemption in the public eye? Many, have found such redemption more than once.

But what if your only “sin” is to have become ill due to a mental health disorder, where does redemption come from? I don’t even know what I want anymore. I have tried to apologize for my behaviour which I know was highly agitated and unpleasant, but there is no way to explain how trapped I was within that state,how miserable and unable to even know what was happening to me until a lot of interpersonal damage was done. Because no one from work will communicate with me I cannot have that conversation, no one can appreciate the degree to which I am still struggling and I can’t stop beating myself up inside for not recognizing the warning signs months before mania was in full swing.

If this was as straight forward as having lost a job, as much as there is grief and loss, I could at least busy myself with looking for a new job. But I am still technically connected to my employer and the question of return is unspoken but not denied. Meanwhile I am not able to function well enough to look for another option or contemplate a return. I am also increasingly aware that everything I loved about the job I had is exactly what, over time, made me ill.

The fact is, I am in limbo. I still have a lot of healing ahead. So why is the desire for redemption so important? Or is this really more the need to be heard and understood?

Isn’t that what we all seek in the end?

Lessons from Mother Nature are not always the ones you expect

Maybe it’s the unusually early snow. Tree branches still rich with green foliage weighted to the breaking point under heavy wet snow are decidedly out of place so early in September. If it warms up we may squeeze a little fall out of the year after all. If we get a killing frost the leaves will turn leathery and cling to the trees until spring.

Copyright JM Schreiber 2014 (yes these shots were taken today)
Copyright JM Schreiber 2014
(yes these shots were taken today)

An omen perhaps?

Is it late summer or early winter?

Like trying to define the weather, it can be difficult for me to clearly pin a label on my emotional state. A stable, well medicated state is actually one of relative distance from what I really feel. Blunted at either end of the normal ups and downs. I am not certain if that is a natural or artificial state. It is probably more realistic to call it functional.

Manic? Well, manic is really only recognizable as it recedes. Think of the way that you can become accustomed to a certain level of physical pain and not realize just how severe it is until the painkiller kicks in. But there is no instant relief for a significant manic episode. Manic gradually disappears in the rear view mirror as I creep along and then, just as the road ahead seems to become clear, I hit depression. Or this anxious emptiness that I feel lately.

Copyright JM Schreiber 2014
Copyright JM Schreiber 2014

Like today.

The streets are littered with branches that could not handle the weight of the snow. The power has been off across the western side of the city for hours. As crews manage to restore power to one section, melting snow frees branches that bounce back and knock the wires out all over again. The silence and reduced light has left me alone with my thoughts for much of the day.

There is, however, an important lesson in unexpected situations like this. You have no choice but to ride it out, stay safe and wait until the storm has passed. Only then can you assess the damage, clean up and move forward. After all, we are supposed to be back up to summer temperatures by the weekend.

My own spirits might not lift quite so quickly, but I know from past experience that they will.

With time.

Draw me a map to my self

Yesterday I took a small road trip with my son out to visit my parents. It’s about a two hour drive each way and this is the first time I felt that I had sufficient stamina and concentration to manage it since my breakdown in June. The countryside is beautiful but the journey did not really offer me more than time to sit and fret behind the steering wheel.  I thought about how I used to need a road map to navigate the back highways when my 86 year-old father’s ongoing retreat from civilization first drew them out there a few years back. I no longer need a map and know the route well.

Copyright JM Schreiber 2013
Copyright JM Schreiber 2013

I could, however, use a personal map or trail of bread crumbs to follow back to make sense of the past year or two of my life.  A mood disorder can wreak havoc on one’s internal compass. In the hazy debris of an extended period of hypomanic energy sliding into manic, I am finding it impossible to make sense of where I was or where I go from here.

At a deeper, more fundamental sense I have lost faith in myself. Or rather my ability to make sense of my self.

It is likely that this is the affect of depression. It’s hard for me to know because I have rarely ever experienced the sort of black dog depression that many others describe. I tend toward anxiety and a bone weariness that weighs me down, but I do not crawl into bed and pull the covers up. I don’t sleep well, in fact I tend to insomnia. But I don’t recall experiencing the all pervasive lack of physical energy that haunts me now. I find it hard to remember how I ever managed to accomplish all of the projects, personal and professional, that I tackled during the many years of relative stability I experienced over the past ten to fifteen years.

At the moment, the fact that’s really eating away at me is that the last impression I left at work was of a manager who was increasingly high strung and finally quite stressed and obnoxiously concerned that he alone had the skills and perspective to resolve the challenges facing the agency. The manic Mr Hyde side. But how long was he showing his face? And now that I am living with a shy, anxious shadow of my Dr Jekyll self (assuming I even have one) I wish I had GPS system of some kind to help me retrace my steps.

A good therapist would help, and I do have one, but at $180/hour I won’t be seeing her much and if I am going to spend that much I would rather wait until I have figured out where I have been so she can help me figure out where I go from here.

Or maybe it’s better to accept what cannot be changed and look forward instead…

Shame, guilt and absolution

Shame: A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.
Copyright JM Schreiber 2014
Copyright  JM Schreiber 2014

A severe manic episode leaves a residue of shame that no magic formula can resolve or wash away. Your behaviour, actions, words and deeds – no matter how out of character – are remembered by others while you, yourself, have only the foggiest sense of a hellish few days or weeks.

As the weeks pass I find myself unable to shake thoughts of my workplace, the environment in which my manic drama played out. I don’t think about returning to work and I know that at this point I could not even mentally or emotionally entertain that notion even if they would accept me. I realized today that it is the unbearable shame I feel for actions and words I could not control and can never properly apologize for that is eating me up inside.

A post on a blog I follow inadvertently put me in mind of a poem I discovered in the wreckage of my first manic psychosis many years ago. The poem, “Deceptions”, by Philip Larkin was inspired by an account from Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor of a young girl who was drugged and raped by her master.

The poem is exacting in its depiction of her grief and the poet admits, unapologetically, that there is no consolation he can give her; recognizing that both victim and perpetrator were deceived in the violent act. I think it is this very measured recognition that there is nothing that he can offer to absolve grief and shame in the sufferer whether the event is recent or buried by the sands of time that gives the poem its power. The following lines struck me when I first encountered them and this time around, perhaps because my manic episode was a much more public event, they clearly articulate the feelings with which I am currently trying to come to terms.

… light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding.  All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

This too shall pass, I know, and I will ease the drawer closed and the emotional scars will fade with time.

Absolution is not the issue. Mental illness is not a sin.

As we know, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye

We have all heard this expression, probably said it ourselves if we are parents. Somehow, today, as we continue to simmer in the aftermath of the news of Robin William’s tragic suicide on Monday, this is the thought that keeps coming back to my mind. For those of us who live with the very harsh reality of a mood disorder his death holds a special poignancy. So does the inevitable, endless discussion that only unexpected celebrity death seems to be able to generate.

I am presently on sick leave after a severe manic episode and although I feel the worst of my own suicidal ideation has passed, the extreme mixed state I passed into as medical resources were amassed to put the brakes on my mania was the worst I have known to date. I relied heavily on the local Distress Centre at all hours of the day and night and as much as practical on my elderly mother and young adult children. Otherwise I was intentionally and completely ostracized by my employer and they have yet to follow up on my well being. Still I feel fortunate. Robin Williams and countless others are not so lucky.

In the wake of his death, everyone seems to be turning in to look at the darkness haunting so many seemingly outgoing, humorous, entertaining and outgoing individuals. It seems to me like the attention is so keenly focused on depression and addiction. But when he was working all out, brimming with manic energy the danger signals were just as evident. But we were too busy laughing, crying, and being entertained to be concerned. It’s all fun and games…

Another public media post mortem comment that disturbs me is the observation some people have made that he seemed to hide behind his characters, whether in his improvised comedy or the countless powerful and engaging individuals he portrayed on screen. From this they extrapolate  that it is as if he was hollow inside. As if only an individual so empty and devoid of being could ever be driven to take his or her own life! I am no expert on Robin Williams, I never met him, but I would not be surprised to learn that he was a deep and intensely private man. Probably shy and insecure too.

For many people who grow up with an inclination to conditions on the mood/anxiety disorder spectrum, there is often a lot of social isolation. I know from my own experience and that of my son, social interaction does not come naturally to some of us. The need to compensate can drive such people to the creative arts – drama, music, literature for example. Likewise such individuals can be drawn to academic pursuits where energy and intellectual drive can lead to striking success. After all, there can be long periods of essentially “normal” function, especially if one avoids the trap of alcohol or drugs as a means to cope.

From my own recent experience, it seems to me that our western society, rewards the mildly manic. Over the past nine years I worked at a small agency where I routinely held the largest and most complex caseloads and took on any extra assignments placed on my desk. I developed programs, trained staff. I was rarely sick and frequently had to struggle to squeeze my allotted vacation time in before year end. I loved my job.

At home I was a single parent with two teenagers, each with their own special needs. There was whole full time round of responsibilities that fell into play outside the office. Then about a year ago things at work got crazy. The Director was exhibiting signs of significant cognitive decline and it was left to myself and a junior staff to monitor and report on the increasingly toxic state at the office while the Board of Directors tried to decide what to do.

As senior management I took the brunt of the responsibility, workload and, ultimately, abuse. I became irritable, overwhelmed and distressed – big time manic. Although I had always been open about my bipolar diagnosis no one recognized the warning signs until a chance comment about how fast I was talking hit me like a ton of bricks. I immediately pulled myself out but by then it was too late. And it is all still seen as entirely my fault, my failure to control my behaviour.

I wasn’t funny, no one was laughing and I am the only one who lost an eye, figuratively speaking of course.

In the early weeks of my sick leave I remember thinking that if I took my life, maybe my employers would realize how truly sick I had become. Of course it would have only reinforced my madness and saved them the complication that as a disabled person I have human rights protection.

Loveable madness is remembered fondly. Margot Kidder digging garbage out of an alley is not. On a more horrific level, the nice ordinary person who seems to suddenly snap and takes the lives of family or strangers is not. However mental illness is a critical subject that we cannot afford to ignore.

After all, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses a life.

R.I.P Robin Williams
R.I.P Robin Williams

Time – too much or never enough

During the past year, I was haunted by an overwhelming pressure that I needed to be able to slow down, take stock of my feelings. I was becoming aware of a wall coming down between myself and my emotional grounding.

At work a toxic environment was brewing as our director became increasingly paranoid and unstable. My daughter was trying to impress an unreasonable employer at her own workplace while, at home, my son who has long struggled with his own mental health and addiction issues was going through an especially difficult, potentially violent series of conflicts with friends. Just to keep my head above water I was going through the paces. A familiar process. Single parents tend to develop this coping skill.

It is strange how life gives you time to reflect when you need it the most.

Summer grassAlthough I have lived with the ups and downs of a mood disorder for most of my life, a full manic break and diagnosis did not come until I was in my mid 30s. Until that time I felt like I was lost at sea, battling waves I could not put a name to, but hanging on and, as much as possible, faking my way through the years. After all, unless you know better, you figure that everyone else is essentially doing the same thing.

With the diagnosis and other critical underlying issues that subsequently came to light, my life started to make sense. I felt I had some answers, some sense of a guideline. It was not an easy prescription and there were costs, including the end of a long marriage, but I prided myself that I had persevered, that I had survived. Although I was late to the game I was able to build a career that allowed me to support my children, buy home and start to put away some money for the future.

Now the reality of the diagnosis has cruelly returned to confront me leaving me unable to know if returning to the job I had is either possible or even desirable. I find myself re-evaluating what I want for myself.

Something that haunts me this go round is the notion that people with mental illnesses, bipolar in particular, have a shorter life expectancy. Although the reasons, methods of study and populations under consideration is not clear this is not a factor I ever considered before. Funny thing, we are bombarded with the message that we have to be prepared to support ourselves financially for longer than previously expected and yet we see people die prematurely – of natural or unnatural causes – all the time.

Fact is, life offers no guarantees.

Read. Travel. Write.

Either everything has meaning or nothing has meaning.

Negotiating tangled emotions

The aftermath of madness leaves its own measure of grief.  Because the manic end of the bipolar experience is by nature expansive, the episode is rarely one that occurs in isolation. At the very least, strange, anxious and pressured calls are made. Sometimes to strangers. Sometimes to those you know. Friends and families may observe the cracks as they start to spread. The first tremors may be intermittent. They can look like occasional or periodic moments of stress – the bad days anyone can have. When things start to spiral out of control I suspect it is already too late. For the person inside the experience, the pressure, the racing thoughts, the inability to sleep or find relief from the escalating crisis becomes a space in which all perspective is lost.

And generally there is damage.

At the most severe there can be serious physical harm, violence toward the self or others. More typically major manic episodes impact relationships, bank accounts or jobs, sometimes beyond repair. Yet in the middle of it all is a person who is very ill, who will need time to recover physically and emotionally for whom there is frequently very little understanding or sympathy. Especially when they are isolated.

14629062611_de5f459467_zAs I struggle to cope with the rotating cycles of sadness, embarrassment, anger and fear following my recent breakdown I am aware that because no one from my workplace has contacted me, no one has any idea how severely ill I have been. They just remember the last days of fractured functioning before I was finally able to get away from the office. Four weeks later I am exhausted, still unable to regulate my sleep and uncomfortable driving beyond my immediate neighbourhood. When I am deemed well enough to return to work my employers will be able to imagine this “illness” was all a convenient ruse and I have reason to believe it will be held against me. The nine years I worked there and the senior management position I held under increasingly toxic work conditions will mean nothing because it was always an environment in which your work was never acknowledged or appreciated. My mistake was to care enough to stay because I believed in the work we were doing.

The emotional roller coaster is the worst. It is interfering with the comfort and enjoyment I have always found in reading and photography. It finds me moaning and wallowing in self pity when I’m not trying to push grief and anger behind me. And my young adult kids and 80 year-old mother deserve a break from having to listen to it all.

And I would much rather be blogging about books and ideas, not the black heartache of depression.

Reining in the manic mind

Manic thinking is big thinking. Massive. As mania progresses it becomes impossible not to become overwhelmed by the hugeness of the circumstances you perceive them. It is not unusual to feel caught up in the frantic spin of galaxies, astronomical or closer to home. Thinking is logical but as speeds ramp up, your judgements and interpretations can slide off the rails. The first time I was seriously ill, back in my 30s, I am sure there were some very grounded personal and even hormonal factors at play but, in the spectacular end I was experiencing definite delusions.

They say you mercifully forget those moments of rambling, crazed phone calls, strange behaviours. The kids crying in their rooms. The morning the ambulance finally arrives. I have not been blessed by such amnesiac elements.

With my recent breakdown, the stressors building to the moment of collapse were situational, profound and prolonged. They built over months, a year maybe. Then the roller coaster crested and the decline came on rapidly. And I was the last to notice. My workplace had been through a period of turmoil but as we tried to move forward I became increasingly obsessed by the massiveness of the work that I felt needed to be done to pull the agency together and make up for years of underfunding and failure to plan for the future.

My anxieties may not have been entirely misplaced. But I could no longer stop and see the good, to measure the necessity to take one step at a time and realize that moving forward is a process, not an emergency. I was so consumed with the forest that I lost sight of the trees.

Rainy day solitudeAs I am beginning to heal I am aware that I am still prone to a significant measure of massive thinking but I am also starting to doubt myself. I find myself wondering if the entire nightmare was of my own making. I have to remember that I was not the only staff member to express serious concerns, and that everyonewas impacted by the stress. One co-worker has battled stomach ulcers, another who is never ill was laid low by the flu for weeks.

I almost lost my sanity.