Stay on the Meds!

What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?

When I was 20, I was diagnosed with a mood disorder, cyclothymia. This is ‘bipolar lite’, or rapid cycling minor to moderate mood swings. Think of the mood swings as being faster and lighter than Bipolar II, which is not as manic as Bipolar I.

The meds were not as good back then as they are now. We’re talking 40 years ago. The doc put me on lithium and a tricyclic antidepressant. There were no SSRI or SNRIs back then, and tricyclics didn’t work for everyone. They didn’t work for me. So the lithium was regulating the highs and nothing was working for the lows. I stayed depressed all the time.

I finally decided that I didn’t need medication and took myself off it, going back to a yo-yo mood and years of poor sleep.

It took thirty years before I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. The symptoms had gotten bad enough that I could not sleep in my hypomanic days, and depressions were deep. With some trial and error, however, the new medications available helped me find a new normal where sleepless nights are seldom and I don’t cry for days at a time.

I wish I had taken the people at student health seriously, because I could have saved myself years of what I thought was simple insomnia. I wish I could tell 20-year-old me to stay on the meds and maybe try another antidepressant. I probably would have made better decisions with the right medication.

On the other hand, would I be who I am today if I had stayed on the medication? Would I have been creative? (I think so, but on the other hand I would not have had hopeless crushes, which fueled a lot of creativity for me). Would my life have been as interesting? I will never know.

Healthy Boundaries

Write your guide to setting healthy boundaries in relationships.

The one rule that has helped me in making healthy boundaries in relationships is also one of the hardest ones to get into my head. It makes perfect sense yet is maddening.

The key, I’ve learned, is “You can’t make someone do anything.” This has staggering implications. You can’t make someone take out the garbage. You can’t keep someone from cheating. It seems unfair, but it’s true.

You can choose how to react to what the other person is doing. You can argue with them, ignore them, walk away. You can communicate so both of your viewpoints are heard. If that doesn’t work, you can go into therapy or break up. Or both.

It’s not a comforting truth. We want things to go our way, because tension is uncomfortable. Conflict is not pleasant. But it is inevitable, because conflict is what happens when someone’s needs are not being met.

The bright part of this is that trying to control the other is a great part of why relationships fail. Accepting that you can’t control someone else is a way out. Use your words, learn to argue better, nurture the positive so that your relationship feels ‘worth it’ — this is the rest of how to do healthy relationships. But it starts with “You can’t make someone do anything.”

These ideas are not original with me. I would recommend works by John and Julie Gottman for more on healthy relationships.

The Hedonic Treadmill

Daily writing prompt
What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?
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I have taught positive psychology for several years. Positive Psychology is often called “Happiness Studies” because it’s all about how we live a fulfilling life, how we find happiness.

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One of the things you find out when you look at positive psychology is that the adage “You can’t buy happiness” is mostly true. Mostly.

Consumption of goods — buying, possessing, and using — only promotes happiness in the short run. Consumption produces positive emotion, and then the person gets used to having the item and returns to their base level of happiness. To reach that higher level of happiness again, they can choose to buy and consume more — but again, it is temporary. This process is known as the hedonic treadmill.

Enduring happiness comes from things like having meaning in one’s life, accomplishments, relationships, and engaging in life. This is not my idea; it comes from Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology.

Remember I said that money mostly doesn’t buy happiness. There is an exception. Although money spent on goods doesn’t buy happiness, people who spend money on experiences report being happier. This is likely because experience can directly add to engagement in life, and indirectly to things like relationships and meaning.

So the new car will give your mood a boost for a while, then all will go back to normal. But a trip to Disney World may give you a longer-lasting boost if you’re into that kind of experience.

A Feel-Good Song

What’s a song that always puts you in a good mood?

I’m a Boomer, so expect my choice in songs to be old, before your time. The song that came to mind, the one that always puts me in a good mood, is “Lola” by the Kinks. That garage band jangle, the winking lyrics, the feel of perpetual summer.

I understand it’s a controversial song these days, for a different reason than the original one. Originally, the controversy was singing about a trans person at all. Nowadays, it is about whether the song fetishizes being trans. I don’t think it does. It’s a playful nod to the twists and turns of sexuality. It tells us life is not always what we expected.

When I hear that opening riff, I am back riding shotgun in an automobile, endless summer ahead of me, reveling in being alive.

Just One Skill?

The prompt says “One skill”. Just one? I would like to be skilled at a lot of things. For example, things having to do with my writing. I would like to be more skilled at writing and definitely more skilled at promoting. And many other things as well — I would like to be more skilled at athletic things (and as I’m starting at zero, there’s no place to go but up.)

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But here’s one skill I’d like to have that seems to be out of nowhere — carpentry. I would love to be instantly skilled at carpentry. I am so far away from skilled at carpentry that my friends keep me away from power tools because I might injure myself. This is not an exaggeration — I had three friends yell “No!” When I asked if I could use the chain saw. I took a shop class in high school and the boys in the class did all the bandsaw and sander and router work for me. I was allowed to varnish. That’s it. I have profound hand-eye coordination problems and everyone who has met me instinctively notices this. Probably in the way I can’t walk a straight line when sober.

But I really admire carpentry. To be able to build something that stays together and is useful? Yes, please! I would love to have that power. Christmas presents would be easy from that point on. Everyone needs boxes, and carpentry is based on building boxes, even if some of them actually look like chairs. Or tables.

Of course, if I could do carpentry, I would need lots of equipment to do it. Expensive equipment. Of course I would need it, because when I get a hobby I go all out with it. And then I get bored with it. Writing is probably the only hobby I haven’t abandoned after a couple of years, and even so sometimes I get bored with it. Maybe it’s a good idea I can’t do carpentry. It’s an expensive hobby.

My Husband

Who do you spend the most time with?

The person I spend the most time with is my husband. We suit each other well. He has a silly sense of humor, which appeals to me, and we have much in common. He supports my writing, and I support his collecting Star Trek replicas. (I have also supported his writing, but he does very little of that).

We have been married for 19 years (as he reminds me). It doesn’t seem that long, to be honest. Years just fly by, and I swear I’m only 45 (I’m not). It’s enough time that we finish each others’ sentences. Enough time that we kind of look alike.

Richard is my favorite person. The cats like him too. I think I’ll keep him.

It’s a little hard to see, but this is a family tree for Luke Dunstan’s family from the Hidden in Plain Sight universe. There are other, less expansive family trees that attach to this (I don’t have Daniel Ettner’s family tree here for example, or Jeanne and Josh’s) but this is the big one. Luke’s family gets around.

I made this on Canva, using the whitescreen function, because that was the only document big enough to contain all the family.

Hydrophobiaphobia

Daily writing prompt
What’s a fear you’ve overcome — and how did you do it?
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When I was a child, I had a fear of getting rabies. This probably came from my mother cautioning me not to pet every stray dog and cat that wandered in my direction. Instead of ceasing to pet them, I petted them and then obsessed over it — “what if he slobbered on a scratch on my arm and he had rabies?”

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Rabies is a legitimate thing to be worried about. It’s virtually 100% fatal once symptoms show up. And the incubation time is somewhere between 2 weeks and 2 years. So it can come out of nowhere. The biggest thing, though, is that it results from something I shouldn’t do, and it’s” the ultimate getting caught doing something wrong.” Like pregnancy but fatal.

I had nightmares about getting attacked by rabid animals, usually cats, although bats and raccoons also showed up in my dreams. It was through dreams that I overcame the fear. I can lucid dream — that is, I can dream aware that I am dreaming and change the outcomes of dreams. I started taking control of my rabies dreams — by killing off the rabid animals and sending them in to get tested. By getting the rabies prophylaxis shots in time. I did the right things and survived.

This helped me when the bats were getting into my house and my cats were taking them down. I got so I could put on the leather gloves and scoop the bats up to be tested for rabies. It turned out the colony in my attic wasn’t carrying rabies, and we eventually stopped the bats from living in our attic. I think I would have been a total mess if I hadn’t gotten over my hydrophobiaphobia.

Self-Confidence

Daily writing prompt
What’s the best way to build self-confidence?
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I find the best way to build self-confidence is to keep trying and do better. What I mean by this is that the first time you do something, you’ve done your best. But doing it again and trying something new is doing better than last time. That gives self-confidence, because you see that you’ve done better.

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Don’t compare your work to others’, because you’re probably seeing their work after several cycles of getting better and comparing it to your first or second go-around. That will erode self-confidence every time. Measure your own improvement and keep practicing. Keep learning. Keep trying new things.