So now I’m writing in four journals. One for the Radical Self, one for my online journal (this one that I’m posting in now), one for more personal thoughts (because no, I actually don’t share everything that goes on in my head), and now one for my mood and manic triggers. I love to write, and I always wanted to use it to show what I’m learning as I grow…but damn, I wish I could actually grow. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck.
These blackouts…my coach wants to call them something else. Not spirals, not episodes, not blackouts…but relapses. Here’s why: she believes that if I 100% am honest with myself about the triggers or potentially triggering events and situations, I can meet it and work through it (with the help of my support system and properly established routines…that I’ve been ignoring for x or y reason…). Just like when I started working through the alcohol use and the abandonment trauma, there were triggers that I would ignore “just this once” and end up in a world of mental and physical anguish due to relapse of drink or relapse of reaching out to people who were unavailable. This is no different, except the animal we’re keeping in a cage is my internal dopamine chaser going haywire and losing control of myself, all in the name of poorly-directed self-regulation.
My coach and psychiatrist both think that I can absolutely prevent these. But I can’t be complacent about it at all. I had this cocktail of supplements that were essentially my own mental health support for my bedtime routine, and I can’t take them now that I’m on an actual prescription. I take it thirty minutes before I plan on being in bed, and I can’t waver. Because of my job, I’m going to bed around 12:30am. I’d say midnight, but I give my 30 minute buffer for the meds to kick in. I can’t stay up any later, as being up and tired can be a trigger. I can’t go into places where I feel anxious to go in (specifically large gatherings or online chats) because if I do not know someone I can connect with/have a grounding person, I could be triggered. Until the meds get set in and I get well-established and consistent/persistent with my routines — and I stop saying “just this once I’ll do this thing that will most likely make it worse because it’s dopamine,” I have to treat myself like a rabid hamster lives inside my body.
After analyzing all of the events of this week and comparing it to what has happened previously, there’s a very clear-cut path from “I am okay” to “what the fuck happened?”
1. There’s a stressor. Sometimes it’s an unexpected event, sometimes it’s me daring to go places I don’t feel comfortable, sometimes it’s a memory.
2. Then there’s a period of a couple of days where all feels fine, but it’s more like a lid put back on a soda bottle and shaken up and the bottle is just sitting there building pressure in my subconscious (this is where my support comes in — if I am completely honest, and I acknowledge that this thing is bothering me, then I need to practice what I preach and ask for help with it.
3. When it becomes too much to manage, I start panicking because I know it’s bad, now, and I start frantically searching through my mental rolodex of things that will help me lose focus on the stressor. What happens, though, is that I pick things that compound instead of relax. Like the most recent was choosing 90s rock. It is one of my favorite genres of music, but it causes a sort of cognitive dissonance for some reason, and I end up having a panic attack that turns into a blackout…relapse.
4. After it’s over, which can be just that night or a few days later, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, I’m exhausted, I’m struggling to communicate because I’m afraid of myself, and I feel like I have to start over or that I’m a complete failure.
In cases of large events and needing a grounding person — if I’m so anxious but I really want to be present, and there’s any form of unexpected kindness, it’s instant spiral. This is why the grounding person is so important. It can be as simple as having a sort of connection to someone in the stream, someone in the chat. It doesn’t have to be a friend or degreed professional. It needs to be someone I am familiar with and expect kindness from. So…a friend who is streaming, a friendo who is streaming, or either of those in the chat who I am familiar with. I just can’t put myself in anxious situations alone.
To be honest, yesterday when I realized what happened, I was so embarrassed, but everyone I talked to said I was okay, just overly chatty, and rattling 100 miles a minute from one topic to the next. I wasn’t acting drunk, but I was just out there doing and saying whatever. I still fought the feeling of wanting to beat myself up over it. What good would that do? I don’t quite have all my pieces in a row, and I need to be nicer to myself, not mean. I’ve had enough of that.
With my coach’s talk today, she reminded me that it’s obvious that this has been an ongoing issue, and she’s of the idea that this has been happening since I was first diagnosed, and I’ve found ways to hide it from myself and others (plus I was on the same medication I’m on now and was following a very strict self-directed routine and was also in therapy for what happened in my childhood), and when I had my first alcoholic drink (ever) in 2008, they started happening more frequently and acutely, and I assumed it was alcohol-related, but yay genetics: I’m an alcoholic! Now that I’m out of yet another traumatic part of my life, it’s just a matter of removing each problem until we get to the core of it all, and while trauma is shitty, this may be the core of what’s preventing me from actually living a comfortable life.
I always talk about how I am living in a minimalistic setting (I love the feeling of having very little to worry about), and am practicing not worrying about things out of my control (until these relapses happen), and I have a great job that works me later than I’d like, but I set my own schedule, I work during prime time hours, and it pays really really well. I observe what others do that work for them, and I try to adopt their habits into my own life, but I guess sometimes you have to have professional help. I’m not crazy. I don’t want to be. I try to be kind and helpful. I try to listen and be there for others. It’s just so deeply coded in my head that when I actually need someone, I’m afraid to ask until there’s nothing they can do. It really frustrates my friends. It just feels so stupid to be happy that I have not only a coach, but a psychiatrist, and am on meds, and have bipolar back in my sphere (that most likely never left). I’m not happy. I wish someone would hug me and remind me that I’m strong enough to get this under control, too. I was strong enough to leave, strong enough to admit I had a problem with alcohol, strong enough to get sober, strong enough to get through abandonment trauma. Now I need to master bipolar disorder. I know all this. I could still use a hug, though.