Bipolar Dementia Art Chronicles

Which Kind of Anxiety Do You Have?

Does it make any difference which kind of anxiety we have?  I always thought I had “social” anxiety because I suffer for days ahead of any social event where I have to talk to people I don’t know very well.  But once I’m actually at the event, I usually do pretty well.  No one would ever believe I had a problem because I seem so outgoing.

Adrian, on the other hand, doesn’t worry about things ahead of time, but when he is in the middle of a social gathering with people he doesn’t know well, he has trouble talking to them.  He is often miserable at these events and very quiet.  He reports later that he “couldn’t think of a thing to say.”

Well, we just spent three days in New York City sightseeing and attending the opening for an art show that I am part of.  I was nervous until I met the gallery director on the morning before the show.  After meeting him and seeing the gallery, and especially seeing my work hung beautifully near the front entrance, I felt much better and my anxiety dissipated.  By the time I actually got to the opening, I was a little nervous, but mostly fine.  Friends, family, and art clients came to celebrate my art and my new book, and it’s always fun (for me) to be the center of attraction. 

We also paid a visit to an old friend of Adrian’s who is a psychiatrist, and we talked about our anxieties.  After I described the usual scenario, he said that what I had was “performance” not “social” anxiety, because I was only nervous before the event, not at it.  And I have to agree with him on that one. 

Not that a label for it is going to make my anxiety go away, but insight always helps, I think.  Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to go to a social event without demanding of myself that I “perform” in some special way.  Maybe I’ll be able to just go as me and see what happens.

Anxiety in its Many Forms

Anxiety:   A nudge that wakes you up fifteen times during the night.  A slightly queasy feeling in your gut and tightness in the chest. A clumsiness that makes you bump into the edges of furniture and walls, or cut your finger while peeling an apple.  A dread for the day that makes you linger in bed in the mornings.  A general gloom over everything you do.  These are the forms anxiety takes in my life.  It may have other variations in yours.

What should we do about anxiety?  I suppose, if you know what makes you anxious, you could just stop doing whatever that is.  But most of us don’t want to give up the thing that makes us anxious, like our jobs or leaving the house or going to a party.  I do feel sometimes like making a general proclamation about the things that cause me anxiety:  “From here on out, I say no to any social invitation whatsoever, in the name of mental health!”

That would be a relief.  And one of these days I might just do it.  But the thing that’s bugging me this time, and has been bugging me for weeks, is a trip to New York City we’re making in four days in order to attend the opening of an art show I’ll be in at a new gallery in Chelsea.  It will be a big, big party with friends, relatives and art clients coming to celebrate the event.  How could I not want to be part of that?!

I do want to be part of it, but some corner of my brain evidently doesn’t, and has been making me anxious as hell for these past weeks leading up to it.  One thing I can be thankful for is that it will all be over by this time next week, and I’ll be able to breathe freely again. In the meantime, I live with it, wondering why the taste has gone out of life.

Whenever I started a new job in the past, I spent many anxious days fearing that first day or week of work.  But after I did the job for a while, I got used to it and the anxiety disappeared.  Or it didn’t, and I learned that that wasn’t the work I was cut out to do.

But now that I’m self-employed as an artist and writer, I don’t have work anxiety any more.  It’s the invitation to a party, a get-together at the neighbors, or having people over for dinner that makes me crazy.  When I count how many days of my life I’ve spent waiting for social events to be over so that I can breathe again, I wonder if I’m making a bad deal? 

Hiding Depression from Yourself

It's been a long winter (still not over here), I've had a cough on and off I can't get rid of, and life has been mostly blah.  But still, I tried to pretend everything was hunky dory.  It's true I slept late and had trouble getting up in the mornings, it's true I did not feel like painting, which is my life's work and raison d'etre, yet still, I tried to deny I was depressed.

After a petty fight with Adrian the other night, however, and going to bed feeling crappy and pissed off, I closed my eyes and saw the image of a gun pointing at my head.  "Bang," I thought.  "It would be a relief."

Well, I guess you would call that suicidal ideation, though I knew I wasn't actually going to do anything to resolve my condition.  I was just going to suffer.  "You're depressed, you idiot," I said to myself. 

It was a relief to finally admit what I was feeling.  I told Adrian the next morning.  "You know I have no patience when I'm depressed.  It just makes me bitchy."

Hey, I'm still depressed and I'm still bitchy.  We had another little tiff today.  But at least I know the reason for it, and so does he.

The Stimulation Principle

A long time ago I decided to write a book called The Stimulation Principle, because I adamantly believed this principle guided most people’s lives.  The gist of the theory was that we all needed something new, something exciting, something—anything, even if it was bad, to get our juices moving and save us from the depressing boredom of everyday life. 

The theory was certainly true for me.  Whenever things stayed the same, I got bored first, and then depressed.  Making changes in my life stimulated my hypomania, and that was always worth more to me than stability or financial peace.  Thus, I moved 31 times in my life, took classes at four schools just to get my B.A., and changed jobs and careers on a regular basis.  My dream of the good life was hitting the highway and discovering something new.  Jack Kerouac’s On The Road was my bible. 

Some things just naturally stimulated me, like competition of any kind, whether in games, sports, or on the job.  One of the thrills in my life was beating my older brother at ping pong when I was nine months pregnant.  I loved being an underdog and coming out on top.

It was only after I was diagnosed as bipolar that I began to realize not everyone thrived on stimulation.  I had always wondered why, when I took a new job and a coworker told me they were planning to leave the company, they were always still there by the time I had left.  It was the same when a friend complained about her apartment.  I would have been gone in months if that was me, but it took her years to get around to moving.

I wonder if it’s a trait of bipolar disorder to crave stimulation and change?  I’ve talked to others who ran their lives on the same principle, but I have no idea how widespread this tendency is. 

I’m trying to learn to stay put longer these days.  I also know you have to stick with something in order to make a success of it.  I’m working on it.