Stuff

Not 100% sure what I’m trying to get across here, little bit stream of conciousness I guess.  I think I’m just trying to underline all the reasons that with my BiPolar II that I doubt myself in many ways due to lots of different factors.  At the mens wellbeing group at NIS this week I talked about the Devil on my shoulder.

Im prone to occasionally doubting my diagnosis, devil on my shoulder making me think that Im maybe malingering, imagining things or just not trying hard enough to be well, whatever that really means.  I visualise my battle by talking about navigating my condition, like a ship on the seas,  through that tryng to live the best life I can with the BiPolar II condition that I have.  BUT I think its true to say that educating yourself helps to get to a more functional life, the more you know, the better you can fight, however there still are no silver bullets.

I have some doubts about medication as well, some books will look at different meds and treatment approaches but ultimately I want to trust my GP and Mental Health case worker to be taking the right decisions on medication and therapy for me, I don’t really want to second guess them so too much information can be worrying for me in that area.  I don’t want to be too unsure about my medication by having too much information.  My Mental Health case worker always asks me about medication changes with the vernacular ‘ how do you feel about that’ as a change so Im pretty comfortable with that relationship and manage to avoid most ‘health anxiety’ regards medication but not all. An area where I do have ‘health anxiety’ is with the weight gain that I have experienced in the last 18 months, I’ve read that the meds can cause this also the condition itself presents with this as well, I know I really need to attack my exercise regime and work against my lack of motivation in this area as well as I’m keen to try and correct my over eating, portion sizes of my meals.

I fear the unknown around my condition and can get quite het up if I have symptoms that I really don’t understand.  Its recently been brought to my attention that as well as hypomanic, depressive and anxietal episodes you can have manic/hypomanic and depressive symptoms at the same time, called a mixed episode.  This was something that I hadn’t really unpicked with my GP as I was very confused about a recent episode last year where I was going around at 100mph once up & about but was still finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning, I just thought maybe I was exhausted from the mania perhaps but the mixed episode explains it better. 

The https://imgur.com/gallery/zH9aRMX information from Jim Phelps is really useful in understanding and looking at the spectrum of the BiPolar II condition and its symptoms.  I totally recognise the symptoms in table 2.1 and where my symptoms generally sit.

Hope this adds to peoples understanding of BiPolar II a little.

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