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Desire For Remission

Due to my frequent flirtations with treatment-resistance over the years, I have discussed ECT with a variety of doctors. To the first doctor, and the one after, I said simply, “I would rather die than do that”. Well, as it turns out when faced with death, you’ll do a lot of things you didn’t think you would.
I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. I generally find them phony, unreasonable and dead by the second week of January. I feel if you’re ready for change in your life you make change at that moment, not when a ball drop tells you to. That being said, people insist on making New Year’s resolutions anyway. It’s a psychological and societal time of renewal and a life reset that people choose to mark with promises. So if you’re bipolar, what kind of New Year’s resolutions might be helpful?
I have been through very long, dark nights of the psyche. I have been in pain I didn’t think I could survive. I’ve been in pain I almost didn’t survive. I have done things I never wanted to do. I have done things I never thought I would do. I have been to places most people wouldn’t even come up with in their nightmares. And when I’m not there, I’m grateful. No matter how much I might think things suck, I’m not sitting in that particular pile of blood and muck. No matter how I feel today I can honestly say it can get worse. Every time I think I’ve hit bottom I’ve found there is actually more bottom beyond that. It is unfortunate but true, there is no maximum to pain. And any time I even think about changing meds I’m worried I will go there again.
Many of us with a mental illness have tried to “power through” it. We have tried to muscle through the pain without getting help of any kind. Most of us don’t want to admit we need help. Most of us don’t even want to admit we’re sick. We think that we’ll be fine without doctors and therapists and pills. We think that they are the enemy. We think we’re better off without them. We are so ridiculously wrong.
I get all manner of comments here and many of them scrape against my bones. Because I know these people. Because I know their brains. Because I am these people. Sometimes people think because I write or advocate or win awards I am not them, but it is precisely because I am them that I can do these things. It is precisely because I feel their desperation that I can truly write about it. One does write what they know, after all.
I know that as a semi-public person with bipolar disorder I am supposed to beam hope. I am supposed to remind people of it, write about it, speak about it, and give it to everyone wrapped in a shiny happy wrapper. I don’t do this. There is, without doubt, hope to be had, out there in the bipolar treatment world, but that doesn’t mean I particularly feel too strongly about it personally.
The internet is a fabulous place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. The internet is a horrible place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times, and nowhere is this more evident than in the deluge of mental health information.
When most of us were young we learned that life isn’t fair. Yes, that boy got a bigger slice of cake than you. Yes, that girl gets better grades than you even though she doesn’t study. Yes, that’s boy’s imaginary friend’s clothes are nicer than yours. Life isn’t fair. But when I was diagnosed with bipolar at 20, my definition of “unfair” had to be reviewed.
I mentioned what remission means for a mental illness in a clinical setting: reduction in specific, empirical symptoms by a given amount. In other words, you are given a depression “score” and remission means reducing that score by a given number. But does that number mean anything at all to the patient in question? If you achieved it, are you "better"? If you suffer from mental illness, what does remission really mean?
Once you’re on a magical medication cocktail, see doctors regularly, have done years of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), tried shock therapy (ECT), exercise, have social contacts, a support network, a support group, eat well, tried light therapy, dark therapy, and a series of awful tasting herbs and you find yourself still unwell; the question must be asked: If I’m doing everything right, why am I still sick?