My Bipolar Life

Please welcome Christeen, my first guest blogger......... I am Christeen, and Lisa has graciously allowed me to share about borderline personality disorder here on her blog.  To be diagnosed with bpd one has to exhibit 5 of the following symptoms: fear of abandonment, torrid relationships, black and white/all or nothing thinking, impulsive and/or dangerous behaviors, suicidal thoughts,inappropriate anger, intense and highly unstable moods, paranoia, and dissociative symptoms. Of the 9, I have 8.  The hardest part for me about bpd is that even many mental health professionals consider us to be beyond help.  How can we tell ourselves we can manage our symptoms, let alone our loved ones, if even ours psychiatrist tells us we cant? If you have bpd and are seeing a professional that believes you cant get better, please find a new one.  We CAN and DO learn to manage our symptoms. I would like to talk for a moment about how my mental illness affects my personal relat...

Six small words that are nearly impossible for many to learn.  I have learned over time to not let the bipolar define me but rather be a small part of the many things that define me.  Learning this was a turning point in my life.  I think that realizing this was almost as important as the medicines that I take to keep the chemicals in my brain balanced. The thing is, bipolar can be such an ugly disease that rips away a lot of who you are underneath it all.  Bipolar makes you behave selfishly, bipolar makes you act impulsively, bipolar makes you behave rudely,  But what we all need to remember that bipolar doesn't make you selfish, impulsive, and rude.  I know that people have a hard time separating an action from who a person is in general.  I get that because I feel great shame for a lot of my behaviors over the years.  I have figured out, in time, that I have to forgive myself for the bad behavior bipolar creates within me.  I wish that...

I learned something interesting in my journey just this last week.  Bipolar doesn't only affect your mental health but it affects your physical health, as well.  What kind of bullshit is that?  It's not enough that I have to feel like I am literally losing my mind sometimes but I can't feel pain in the same way as my"normal" friends can?  That kind of blows but it clears things up a bit for me.  Let me try and explain.....the chemicals in a bipolar's brain ebb and flow, this we know.  But what I learned was that this ebb and flow causes us to sometimes  feel pain more intensely than it really  is and sometimes less than it really is.  As many of you know, I had my knee replaced on July 1st.  Two weeks after surgery, I was asking if we could talk about me going back to work on light duty ( it was anticipated that I would be out until December) and how soon I could go on the rides at Six Flags with my kids.  No, I could never walk ...

Today is a day that is hard for me whether I am bipolar or not.  My husband lost his uncle two years ago today.  To watch his cousin, Jessie go through that, even from afar was difficult because I love Jessie as if she were my own cousin and with Facebook we have become more and more close over time.  So the interesting thing about my blog is that it just talks about life as I pass through it, as anyone passes through it. Looking back to two years ago, I am going to share my Facebook status from that day.  I had just come home from my sister's wedding in San Diego and it was what should have been a very happy time for us as a family.  It turned sad and heartbreaking quickly. Facebook status 8/11/13: We didn't always plan on driving to  Kensuke  and  Kim 's wedding but a few months ago, I came up with one of my great ideas or as  Dan  calls them my "Lucy ideas". The thing was, and until now only Dan knew this, I felt a very st...