Bipolar Dementia Art Chronicles

I'm Still Anxious & Bipolar

I'm still anxious and bipolar, but trying to write too many blogs at once became too stressful.  I'm now putting everything into my All About Art blog, which I am updating once a day.  I just started a new project:  A Year of Making Art.  Each day I make art and write about it, including all the other stuff going on in my life, like depression, hypomania, and anxiety. 

Hope you'll check in with me there.

Nervous and Jumpy

I feel so nervous and jumpy. Tomorrow is 06/06/06, and Eloise, my Christian friend, has warned me that the beast is coming.

Last night I had the desire to escape from my life.  I’ve been in Ithaca for six years now, and even though we moved to a new house and neighborhood last summer, it still feels claustrophobic.  I need to get on the road, to get away, to make a fresh start in a place where no one knows my name.

Oh this is so ridiculous.  I want to slap myself aside the head.  I have everything I always wanted except fame, fortune and eternal youth. 

Sometimes I think I should just give it all up—painting, writing, striving.  That could be the door to a new life—a life of nothingness.  Maybe then I could find that zen moment, as it all blends into a dull monolithic stasis. 

I don’t think so.

The Capriciousness of Mood

For most of the past week, I just felt blah—everything tasteless, no point in doing anything, feeling like my life needed a complete overhaul in order to make any sense. Then on Friday around mid-morning, I noticed that I simply felt GOOD. My life made sense, my body felt alive, and work was interesting again.

When I felt lousy, I kept looking for reasons, and there seemed to be plenty.  I had the customer from hell who wanted a painting delivered at a pinpoint time of his choosing, which ended up in my giving him a refund because I couldn’t stand dealing with him any more.  At the last moment he came around and was ready to be cooperative, but that was WAY TOO LATE for me.

I also had someone write a really nasty, vindictive review of my book on Amazon.com.  And to think, I had provided this reviewer with a free book in order to get the review.  Is there no justice?

Bad news contributes to my depression, I’m sure, but good news doesn’t usually cure it.  It’s those bipolar chemicals messing with my brain.  Too bad I still think whatever state I’m in will last forever.  Today is an up day, though, so that must mean I’ll never be depressed again, right?

New Meds, Old Meds, No Meds

I suppose for some of us there is a perfect medication regimen that works steadily day to day, week to week, year in and year out.  But I fear many more of us do not find the perfect solution.  We experience side effects that are intolerable for one reason or another.  We miss the old zip in our lives, that hypomanic edge the meds have taken from us.  Or, even when we’re good little boys and girls and take our meds conscientiously, we still have episodes of mania and depression. 

There are many ways meds can disappoint, just as there are many valid reasons for taking them.  For most of us, some form of medication is vital to managing our lives, but they are just one piece of the story.  If we do nothing to manage our lives in other ways, the meds will most likely not provide the fix we’re looking for.

That’s one reason I think it’s just as important, if not more so, to deal with our psychological issues, our health issues, and the management of our daily routines.  It’s not very sexy to focus on going to bed and getting up at regular hours, getting enough exercise, and eating well.  But if we study ourselves, we soon learn what makes us tick.

I know, for instance, that I need to take a walk every day if possible.  When I neglect to get outside and get some exercise, I can feel the difference.  When I overeat or drink too much alcohol, I have trouble sleeping at night.  When I let negative thoughts take over my brain, I can slide too easily into despair.

We wish there were a magic pill we could take that would simply make us feel great, but life is more complicated than that.

Who Are You?

Do you ever go through times when you feel you are losing a sense of who you are?  I had my worst experience with this when I was eighteen and a student at the University of Southern California living in a dormitory. I looked in the mirror one day and could not recognize myself.

Since then, this feeling has popped up occasionally when I am under a lot of stress or going through a difficult transition or relationship.  But today I noticed myself writing in my journal about having that feeling right now, when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.  My life as an artist and writer is pretty much on track.  I’m happily married and enjoying living near my daughter and her two children.  There are no big goals looming ahead of me other than the usual fantasy of “rich and famous,” which I don’t take seriously any more.

So what’s the scoop?  Sure, aging can take away some of our sense of ourselves.  When we look in the mirror, we no longer look eighteen, even though we might feel it on a good day.  As we age, we do lose pieces of ourselves—our hair or hair color, our strength and stamina, our sex appeal. 

But what I am feeling today is an inner sense of loss, not an outer one.  It’s as if I am going through the motions, living a life I’ve been programmed to live, instead of acting authentically.  I feel like I am living in a glass bowl and people looking in can tell I am a phony. 

Well this sounds crazy, and I’m beginning to scare myself.  Maybe it’s just that I ate too much last night and couldn’t fall asleep until almost 3 a.m.  Or is the reason I feel this way that we spent some time with neighbors this past weekend and I acted like a phony then?  When I’m with people I don’t know very well, I pretend to be who I think they think I am rather than WHO I AM.
   
That explains it.

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?