Gimme shelter

Storm clouds gather, the horizon blackens, in the distance thunder rolls and here I stand without any shelter.
Shelter has been my predominant thought these past few weeks. My days have been spent house hunting, responding to house ads and attending housemate interviews. As each day has offered forth its share of frustrations and rejection my mood has blackened. I cracked in therapy this afternoon and a wave of pent up emotions came flooding out. I've been internalising the rejection, both experienced and imagined, and it has been making me despise myself. The vicious cycle, for these things are always cyclical and ferocious, is that the darker I feel about myself the more hopeless I see my prospects and this shows through in my searching and interviewing. I rule myself out of houses where the advertisers sound too perky and I show up to interviews defeated and depressed.
I'm taking a break from it all and seeking refuge at my parents house. They don't have the Internet so I won't even be tempted to continue my search.
I'm also hoping that this break will serve as some sort of breaker to my circuit. If things worsen I face the prospect of hospital again and that's an unwelcome thought.
I so desperately want this part of my life; the search for housing, the uncertain hours at work and the fluctuating moods, to be over that sometimes I wish the whole game over. I know these are bad thoughts to have and I chastise myself severely for thinking them. I pay for them too. With dark thoughts comes time out of work which funnels into my financial woes. Another cycle. It's all cyclical.
And so too is this illness apparently, though we've seen little sign of it lately. I'm back on the lookout for signs of mania though as in response to my mood shift my psychiatrist has increased my Effexor. Is it terrible that I'm craving a little hypomania right now? Just a little. Just a taste of what up feels like, maybe enough to see me coast through some house interviews as a bubbly person with a sunny outlook, just a little shot of boundless energy and then I promise I'd come straight back down.
Oh dear. Some days I'm glad my psychiatrist doesn't read my blog.

Happy Winter Solstice!

My prayers were answered and it was a remarkably short stay at The Melbourne Clinic, thanks to a medication adjustment.

I was taken off the Abilify and started on 10mg of Saphris and 75mg of Effexor. Within a day I started to feel brighter and as the days went on I noticed I was less tired, my anxiety lessened and within the week I could honestly say that I no longer felt depressed, hence my discharge. It's remarkable as well what a difference the absence of side effects makes. They were only ever slight with the low dose of Abilify but there was a constant underlying sense of restlessness I experienced. So far, side effect free on the new meds, apart from the mild drowsiness after the evening dose of Saphris.

Taking the Effexor is a bit controversial for somebody such as myself with a bipolar diagnosis. Antidepressants, particularly those of the SNRI branch, which Effexor is, can cause mania and that was the real worry with putting me on it. I was concerned too that my sudden mood shift was one that was going to head into the stratosphere, but so far my mood seems stable at a positive place.

The other thing that was a huge help from my hospital stay came from a group session run on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The session was specifically on thoughts so I was interested in attending due to the hostile nature of the thoughts that had recently been clogging my head. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy we are taught that we are always going to experience negative or painful emotions, thoughts and physical sensations and rather than trying to avoid or fight these we can learn to accept them and cope with them and commit to living by a set of values.

In the session I attended we were informed that around 80% of our thoughts are involuntary and they tend to predominantly be negative. Avoiding or fighting these thoughts exerts a great deal of energy and is mostly ineffective. Instead we must accept that we are having negative thoughts. The thing to understand though is that our thoughts are not necessarily important. They are not commands we must obey or the truth or threats. If we can recognise that our thoughts are not necessarily important then we can examine them to find out instead if they are useful or helpful. Then, if the thought is not useful but still present there are a number of ways to accept the thought while minimising the impact of it.

I'll give you an example, say you have a recurring thought like 'people hate me', you think this over and over and immediately your amygdala lights up and sends cortisol into your body and your heart starts beating faster and you begin to feel really bad. Rather than continuing thinking 'people hate me' (which is an unhelpful thought) or trying to avoid thinking it, which tends to make the thought come back stronger, you can try thinking 'I'm noticing that I'm thinking people hate me'. The thought is being accepted, but diffused by the language surrounding it and the impact of it is lessened.

This all might sound like psychology mumbo-jumbo but as somebody who has the thought 'people hate me' about ten times a day, I've actually found it really effective. And it doesn't just work for that thought, oh no, it works for 'I've failed at life' and 'my life is a mess' and all other manner of thoughts. Try it some time! You might like it!

Well, anyway, the conclusion is, I'm feeling pretty darn good right now. I'm inside and warm on this cold day, the shortest one we'll have this year. Even though this means we're at midwinter, I like to think positively that the days are only going to get longer from now on. And may they mostly be happy ones!