[verb]
1 informal very surprised and shocked I was poleaxed when I heard I’d passed the exam. 2 unable to stand because something has hit you very hard I don't deal well with surprises. Bad surprises are particularly unwelcome. I'm not going to get into any political crap, because the fact that everyone and their uncle Bob is talking political crap and there is this heightened fear for very real reasons and very imaginary reasons and no reasons whatsoever... I'm not here to talk about that. This, after all, is intended to be a blog related to mental health. And my own experiences as a person living with a mental illness; specifically bipolar disorder. Nobody needs yet another cis-gendered white chick living in a safe neighborhood with a job and a family and a house talking about how frightened the election result makes her feel. So that is not what this is. Right. So I had a current-events related shock on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Something I had not mentally prepared myself to deal with. And furthermore I had done the following things:
This was the second time I was on the edge of a Depressed mood episode at my current workplace. This was the second time that I had trouble pulling myself together from moment to moment so that I would not burst into unstoppable tears. The first time was simply workplace anxiety related to formal observations of my teaching. And I was the only one who was sad. This time I was surrounded by sad people and upset people and frightened people who kept telling me or showing me how sad upset and frightened they were. Which meant that as soon as I managed to pull myself together, there was another trigger to fall apart. I was not at my best teaching-wise. What was deeply upsetting to me on the mood-disorder front is that it felt very much like the beginning of a full-on "mood episode" in which there is some inciting incident that makes me sad, but then it is like the sad thermostat is broken and I just get sadder and sadder and sadder and I am stuck there. And that made me really mad. Because I have not (at least I don't think I have) had to deal with full-on mood episodes for a long time now. There have just been some Ups and some Downs that have been kind of tricky to negotiate at times. But overall things have not been such a dramatic roller coaster. I have felt Better. The last Depressed mood episode I recall was when a F/friend committed suicide. Which was sad. But I couldn't bounce back from that into my normal moods. For a really long time. This was prior to my diagnosis of bipolar and we just figured that my antidepressants magically (the crappy kind of magic) stopped working. So here I have had another unpleasant shock of a completely different variety. Only now I have the correct diagnosis. Now I am taking medication intended for my mental illness. Now I have an eye on my own emotional reactons... I am happy to report that several days after the initial emotional blow, I don't feel like I am in mood episode territory. Just in regular emotional territory where I can have the same sorts of situational emotional reactions as everyone else. Still, I'm going to keep an eye on this. Grateful Crap: privilege (even though it makes me feel guilty) Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |