Sometimes I wake up feeling so euphoric it’s a pleasure to bounce out of bed and other days I have a brick in my stomach so heavy I can barely crawl inside the coffee pot. This is better than how I used to feel, pre-therapy, which was like a sleep-deprived Gordon Ramsay on anabolic steroids, with a bunch of incompetent staff and a filthy kitchen just before the TV cameras arrive.
Color me cyclothymic. My euphoric state makes me do dumb things like paying a hefty annual fee to join a gym (again) and my depressed state means I go only three times before quitting and willing the rest of the year away. When I’m happy I start all sorts of new projects; volunteering to work with the homeless, organising major functions and redecorating the house, and when I’m depressed I think, what was I thinking? I’ve promised people I’ll do it, but now it’s a bit like trying to run a marathon dragging a broken leg behind me. Feeling normal, for me, is an abstract notion, and something I pass through only ever briefly on my wild pendulum swing flitting between heaven and hell.
Normal is a very useful elastic concept for someone in the arts business. Cyclothymia (I thought the cyclo bit meant cyclone rather than cycling) or going from happy to megabitch in five seconds, has a euphoric/creative component called hypomania and this, as well as sometimes the depressive irritable part, is marvelous news for a writer, actor, dancer, singer or painter. If you can grab the beast ferociously by the neck, harnessing, taming and propelling it through the thick, glutinous mud of changeling emotions and transforming it into words on a page, color on a canvas, music and lyrics in the air or graceful movements on a stage, then you have personal power. But not so marvelous if you cycle the moods and have to appear regular, even, consistent, reliable and stable, which as a part-time medical receptionist is something I have to aspire to. So color me inconsistent with a palette range that makes a glorious rainbow look like a grey sky.
This hypomania is behind my drive for academic and literary success. It’s what pushes me towards the agony and the ecstasy of structuring that perfect sentence, essay, book or blog. It rips me out of bed at 5am on a Sunday morning so I get peace and quiet for several hours. It forces me live next to my depression rather than in it and cuts me so deep that I bleed those essential words onto the white, virginal blank page of a word document. Think Sylvia Plath, Heath Ledger, Jim Carrey and even Michael Jackson. Artists suffer for their art.
Sometimes I’m both euphoric and depressed at the same time, a cluster of mixed emotions which, like CEO’s of a multinational corporation, fight each other for the top position. Those are the days I’m happy being irritable and have fantasies of smacking people rather than shooting them in the kneecap. I don’t get really, REALLY borderline angry anymore because that is something I have worked on very hard with my gentle, loving, consistent, artistic therapist who believes wholeheartedly, don’t get mad, get mindful. Believe me, that’s no mean feat with three teenagers, an old incontinent dog and two flighty, neurotic cats who regularly shed black hair on my brand new cream furniture. Color me crusty and cranky and perhaps slightly certifiable.
I’d be lying if I said I wanted to be normal. There’s something about being emotionally challenged that feels good and right for me. With euphoria on one shoulder and depression on the other (although my therapist would prefer grace and dignity) it looks like a balanced life. Color me crazy, but it’s better than living in a world of black and white.
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PsychCentral (July 2, 2009)
“Color me crazy, but it’s better than living in a world of black and white.”
Then why are you telling the world about this on a psychology blog?
I bet if you look closely, you’ll find that your moods are linked extremely closely to three things:
- The weather (especially the amount of sunlight)
- The consistency and quality of your sleep schedule
- The regularity and nutritional content of your meals, including optimal water intake
If people could just get on top of these three issues, they would immediately win 90% of the battle against depression, anxiety, whatever. People want to make things more complicated than they are by creating labels, diagnoses, complexities. It all comes down to sunlight, sleep, and food. Getting those three core components of your life in order will give you the strength, resilience, and consistency that you need to meet with life’s challenges head on.
Dear Raiser,
Suffering mental illness and mood swings is far more complicated than simply getting some sunshine, food intake and a good night’s sleep.
If that was the case then there would be very little mental illness in the world.
Why am I telling the world about this? Because I try to live in the solution as much as I can and it gives positive hope to other people.
Dear Sonia, I recently had a suicide risk assessment completed and I felt very embarrassed so I did not tell the truth about how I was really feeling. Now I find myself contemplating either self harm or suicide on a regular basis and I have no support, How do I overcome the embarrassment of depression and tell my doctor truthfully how it is?
When we feel safe, validated and not judged, we are usually able to confide in a doctor how we are feeling. In Australia, a GP can make out a mental health care plan for you to see a clinical psychologist and the majority of the bill, if not all, is covered by Medicare and you can have up to 12 individual visits under this scheme.
Feeling safe is the first priority for any sort of disclosure and validation of those feelings can facilitate you being able to freely tell someone how you feel. Therapists are inherently non judgmental and extremely empathic and can help you work out what is happening underneath your feelings of self-harm and suicide. A lot of the time we don’t want to hurt ourselves or die we just want an end to the pain we are feeling.
It is most important to remember that given time, you will not always feel suicidal and wanting to self-harm, you won’t always feel that way. There is a Buddhist saying, that this too will pass. That has been my experience when I was facing what you are. If the situation is critical, phoning the Samaritans or Lifeline can literally be a lifeline till you can get to see face-to-face a therapist.
Having depression should not feel embarrassing, but I can understand your feelings about disclosing them. There is also a very good chance your doctor and your potential therapist have experienced depression themselves.
Thank you so much for this blog. I feel the exact same way. I was diagnosed with depression when I was 14 and have been struggling with it for the past 6 years, along with a severe anxiety disorder. In the past year I’ve experienced my first few hypomanic episodes where I get extremely creative and goal-oriented but then maybe a few days to a few weeks later I just sink into a deep depression and never finish what i started – (sometimes i’ll pick it up again during my next hypomanic phase). However chaotic this makes my life sometimes, relationships are especially difficult, some of my best work has been done during my hypomanic episodes. I’ve also gotten used to this way of living and even though the depression can be debilitating sometimes, for the most part I think my illness(es) have made me a more interesting and stronger person and i’ve been able to accept it and work with it because it does have its benefits. Many of the greatest artists of all time were mentally ill.
Last reviewed: 1 Jul 2009
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