My task today is trolling through the massive pile of information I received from Outpatient Therapy. All of it is focused on coping skills for your new medication permeated existence. Because the medication, while important, is not as important as figuring out what triggers the ups and downs and what you can do when you feel a new episode coming on.
I should clarify a bit because I know not all readers are specific on details of Bipolar and how it overtakes the brain, how it manifests itself in my daily life. Bipolar is a world broken into poles, much like the earth. Imagine, if you will, a ship traveling the Pacific Ocean from The Arctic down to Cape Horn and back up again. The Arctic is the depression, one pole. Cold and isolating it is a period of time when my mood is so low functioning in this cold climate is slow and debilitating. As the ship moves closer to the equator functioning becomes even but my moods are always changing as I pass through the equator and come closer and closer to that final pole. During this part of the journey is what is called a mixed state, or hypomania. Cape Horn is the pole of mania. Warm and welcoming I come out of my shell and am exhilarated. I talk and act with rapidity, I feel that nothing can harm me and live life on a frenzied edge. But, inevitably the ship must travel North again leading back to cold and despair. Each step of this journey there are warning signs, triggers, that a new location is coming and treatment teaches you to recognize what port you are approaching.
I am rifling through the information given to me during Outpatient to help me be reminded how I can dock without being affected by the location. I am also doing this because therapy now is very focused on retraining my brain and my doctors want to take what I have already learned and continue to help me apply it to regular life.
I am posting this now because I have just found a poem that was given to me during outpatient to help remind me that support systems are an important part of becoming healthy, I will expand on that further at another time, but I wanted to share the poem and hope you can garner something from it too.
May you find serenity and tranquility
in a world you may not always understand.
May the pain you have known
and the conflict you have experienced
give you the strength to walk through life
facing each new situation with courage and optimism.
Always know that there are those
whose love and understanding will always be there,
even when you feel most alone.
May a kind word, a reassuring touch, and a warm smile
be yours every day of your life,
and may you give these gifts
as well as receive them.
May the teaches of those you admire
become part of you,
so that you may call upon them.
Remember, those whose lives you have touched
and who have touched yours
are always part of you,
even if the encounters were less than you would have wished.
It is the content of the encounter
that is more important than its form.
May you not become too concerned with material matters,
but instead place immeasurable value
on the goodness in your heart.
Find time in each day to see beauty and love
in the world around you.
Realize that what you feel you lack in one regard
you may be more than compensated for in another.
What you feel you lack in the present
may become one of your strengths in the future.
May you see your future as one filled with promise and possibility.
Learn to view everything as a worthwhile experience.
May you find enough inner strength
to determine your own worth by yourself,
and not be dependent on another’s judgement of your accomplishments.
May you always feel loved.
This was/is important to me. I am still battling with figuring out who I am and loving that girl for all she is worth. I know this is a battle that I do not fight alone. We all, Bipolar or not, go through times where we forget that support and love is all around us and that when it is not we are able to find it in ourselves.
