This little brain of mine. It’s certainly been putting me through the ringer over the past year.
I’ve had my highs and my lows but if I am honest with myself, I have to say that it has mainly been crippling lows. My depression has brought me to my knees more times than I would care to count. I have been fighting very hard to keep it at bay but no matter how many times I pull myself back up and no matter how many things I learn about my mental health, there is always something in my head which drags me back down into the pits. It seems an almost inevitable part of my life now. I thought I had already come to terms with this but I really haven’t. The knowledge that I will hit a soul-crushing dark spell at some point in the near future is terrifying to me still.
Manic Highs
One of the things that is scaring me currently is a pattern that I’ve noticed in my mental health: I almost always fall into a dark spell immediately after I have had a manic high. I go from feeling amazing, untouchable and invincible, to a pathetic little ball of depression who doesn’t want to do anything. Do you know what makes this most annoying? It means I am now scared to be happy. I am literally scared to enjoy things in case I tip over and fall to the point of no return.
What Does This Mean?
I have been thinking about my mental health and the patterns that I have described, both in the past and in this post. I don’t want to start diagnosing myself, as that is the last thing one should do when it comes to mental illness. Really, I am just making observations and writing them down so that I can analyse them.
In observing the patterns and applying these to different forms of mental illnesses and disorders, the only cases I have been able to compare my experience to have been those involving Bi-polar disorder. This was formally known as manic depression. Somebody who suffers from Bi-polar disorder will go through phases of manic highs, followed by crippling depression. This is of course a simple representation of the disorder, as I understand that there is far more to it than just being really happy and then being really depressed. I have picked up a fair bit of knowledge on Bi-polar disorder over the last few years and I may write a post on the topic at some point but for the purposes of this blog post, I will just leave it at a simple explanation.
Naturally, given that my manic highs seem to be followed by not just a period of feeling down but a crippling depression, I am concerned that I may have Bi-polar disorder. Like I said, I am not writing this to self-diagnose and I would NEVER claim to have a disorder unless I had been medically diagnosed with it. I am simply voicing my concerns over the possibility that I may have it. I will obviously need to voice my concerns to my GP if I want to know for sure and this is something that I may end up doing if my concerns increase or even remain in the next few months.
What Do You Think?
Do you think that I am concerned over nothing? Am I maybe over thinking things? Do you think that I am right? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Even if you think that I am spouting a load of drivel and that I am worrying too much. Drop me a wee comment or even an email using the contact section of my website.
Love and Peace