From Mania to Meh… and Finding My Way Back

As I’ve mentioned before, I have bipolar disorder.

Medication compliance and I have not always been besties. For the past three years, though, I’ve almost never missed a dose, which is a pretty big deal considering my history.

Part of the problem was that, for a long time, I loved my mania.

When I was manic, I was playful, ridiculous, social, energetic, and, if I do say so myself, pretty damn funny. 😂 I was the life of the party. People liked being around me, and honestly, if some of the people who knew that version of me realized it was fueled by a manic episode, they might not have been particularly interested in seeing me become “sane.”

But they weren’t seeing the whole picture.

Outside those fun, social moments, mania was helping me make risky decisions while convincing me everything was perfectly fine. I couldn’t see that some of the most important parts of my life were quietly falling apart.

For somewhere around two or three years, I bounced between full-blown mania and hypomania.

Then the streak ended.

And I crashed.

When the Mania Disappeared

I became severely depressed and eventually earned myself a grippy sock vacation. IYKYK.

I started medication, and it helped tremendously at first. But I didn’t have insurance and couldn’t continue seeing a doctor consistently. Eventually, I ran out of medication and relapsed.

The depression came back hard.

At one point, I was so desperate that I had my girlfriend take me to the emergency room so I could beg someone to refill my psychiatric medication. I had never felt that low, even during some incredibly difficult parts of my childhood.

There had also been a major change in my life around that time, and saying I wasn’t handling it well would be an understatement. I was eventually diagnosed with adjustment disorder on top of everything else.

Something needed to change.

This Time, I Did Things Differently

Thankfully, I’ve been a freaking star student since then. ⭐

In roughly three years, I can probably count the number of missed medication doses on one hand.

My girlfriend and my Buddhist practice have both played enormous roles in helping me realize that getting help isn’t the opposite of strength. Sometimes it is the practice.

And this time, when medication stopped working or caused side effects I didn’t like, I didn’t just throw my hands up and quit taking it.

I talked to my psychiatrist.

We adjusted doses. We changed medications. We kept tinkering until we found something that worked.

And eventually, we did.

Maybe a little too well.

Welcome to the Land of “Meh”

The despair is gone, and I don’t take that lightly.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of my passion disappeared too.

I stopped writing as much. I stopped redesigning this website. The worksheets, journals, resources, and other things I wanted to make for Manic Mindfulness mostly stayed inside my head.

I wasn’t necessarily miserable.

I just felt…

blah.

There’s actually a useful word for part of what I was experiencing: anhedonia, or a reduced ability to experience pleasure or interest in things that normally matter to you.

So I’m working with my psychiatrist again to find a better balance. I don’t want the dangerous highs back, and I certainly don’t want the devastating lows.

I just want to feel like me somewhere in the middle.

And That Brings Us Back Here 🌱

Lately, I’ve finally started feeling a little motivation again.

Not an enormous manic explosion of I HAVE 47 IDEAS AND THEY ALL NEED TO EXIST BY TUESDAY.

Just a spark.

And I’ll take it.

So Manic Mindfulness is waking back up.

That means you may notice seemingly random changes around here. Some buttons may temporarily lead absolutely nowhere. New sections might materialize overnight. Things will move around. Worksheets, journals, downloads, blog posts, and other projects I’ve had sitting on the mental shelf will slowly start appearing.

It’s going to be a work in progress.

So am I.

Eventually, I want Manic Mindfulness to become a place where people can learn about mindfulness and Buddhist practices and figure out how to actually use them in their own messy, complicated, very human lives.

Not because I’ve mastered any of this.

Because I’m practicing it too.

And apparently, we’re building the place while we’re living in it. 💜🌿