I was chronically sleep-deprived when younger, especially through college. Some of this has to do with being untreated bipolar and in hypomania; some of that has to do with being paranoid when I stayed at a boyfriend’s house because my mother would call around looking for me if I wasn’t home by 9. If I got four hours of sleep a night I’d be surprised.
When I was in graduate school, I walked in front of a car which was turning into traffic at a stop sign. If I weren’t chronically sleep-deprived, I think I would have seen the car in time and stepped back. I stepped back, but just a second too late, because I ended up with a badly broken leg.
Now, I work hard on getting enough sleep at night. I do not drink coffee after noon. I go to bed early, and spend at least a half hour before I sleep quietly with a sleep mask on. I don’t surf the internet on my phone right before I go to bed. I take my medication religiously. I have sleep meds I take when I think I am going to have a restless night.
My productivity depends on my sleep. My health depends on my sleep. My sleep depends on good habits.
I’ve probably talked about this before, but not in detail. The time during and around the diagnosis of my bipolar is probably what I would call “The Hard Years”.
I think it was about 17 years ago — I am not good with time, especially during that time. It was not a typical spring semester — I had just learned that my department (Family and Consumer Sciences) was being disbanded, and my future position uncertain. I had tenure, but the university didn’t have to keep me. Most people in my department were losing their jobs. The whole situation was ugly because of how it was done outside of proper procedures for a reduction in force.
Meanwhile, I was not sleeping. At all. Days in a row of two hours’ sleep a night, going from project to project. I felt strung out and enervated. Yet I couldn’t stop myself.
My department chair told me I needed to see a psychiatrist for my sleep. I think she knew what was going on, even if I didn’t. I explained to the psychiatrist what was going on, and he informed me that I didn’t have a sleep disorder, but a mood disorder. He drew the sine wave of my moods onto a piece of paper, the highs and the lows, and described what I was facing.
He tried to stabilize me, and whatever he was doing didn’t work. I lived in the twilight zone of my lack of sleep and my fading mood. We tried sleep medicines on me, and I discovered that Ambien caused me to cook in my sleep, while the others (from tramadol to benzodiazepenes to Haldol) did not work. During this time my best friend died while I was on Spring Break, and it hardly registered to me. (I still don’t feel like I mourned her to this day.)
Eventually, I broke. I didn’t realize how sick I was until the evening when I got the twitches. I woke my husband from a nap and told him we needed to go to the emergency room because I wanted to kill myself. I didn’t feel typically suicidal — I didn’t really want to kill myself; I just wanted the jitters to stop. I just wanted the sleeplessness to stop. I remember lying on the table in the room they had sequestered me in, talking nonstop about my high blood pressure and the fact that I could not sit still.
The staff did a great job of handling me. They did not make me feel crazy at all. They didn’t talk down to me; they let me know that they were going to keep me for a couple of days to stabilize my medication. I felt surprisingly taken care of, even when I had to surrender my shoes for grippy socks (anyone who has been hospitalized for mental health issues knows what ‘grippy sock vacation’ means).
Inpatient care meant sitting through programming about how to deal with moods, art therapy, and discharge plans. The people I was in with had a variety of issues, although they all seemed pretty ordinary to me. The thing about inpatient treatment is that the patient no longer has much agency. You can’t bring your computer or phone. You can’t do work. You go to group even if you don’t want to. It feels like a shock to the system.
I spent a lot of time pacing the halls because of my jitters; I later figured out that I had akathisia from the meds. Akathisia feels like having restless legs in one’s whole body, and one has to move to try to get rid of it. It doesn’t go away except with time and the removal of the medication. Luckily that was only a day or two.
The emotional fallout of being in inpatient for psychiatry was a blow. I felt like I was no longer an ordinary person. I was mentally ill. The bipolar was no longer minor; it was a disorder. I struggle with this to this day, the feeling that I have been branded as other, even though I have not been to the hospital since. I have had a couple episodes since; a few mini-depressions, a minor hypomanic episode, but they have not put me back into the hospital.
I thought I was going to go back to work after my three days in the hospital. Human resources at the university disabused me of that notion; they made it clear that I would miss the rest of the semester and would not take on interns over the summer. That was another moment of reckoning that what I was facing was not minor. They were not kind about it.
In the middle of all this, my husband and I bought a new house. I did not help much with the packing or moving because the medications I was on were knocking me out. I was a zombie for much of the summer until we figured out that the Seroquel was not agreeing with me. My new psychiatrist put me on a new medication and that made me feel more normal.
That was my ‘hard year’. It has shaped who I am; has given me a sense of insecurity that has lasted to this day. I feel I could go back there at any time, if the stressors are bad enough. I feel as though I’ve never left, because the label ‘bipolar’ still applies. I question my past decisions, because I was unmedicated when I made them. I am still steps away from the ‘hard years’.
Chaos is the opposite of order. Order means predictability, knowing what will happen next because that’s what happens next. When life is predictable, our responses to life are predictable. We are in maintenance.
Chaos is unpredictable by definition. When life is unpredictable, we need to respond to it in novel ways, or else cease to function. Growth is possible, because doing something new can be wildly successful. It can foster growth. It can take us to a new place.
It has a cosmopolitan feel and an extensive Chinese population, so the food is good. It has a little bit of a counter-culture feel, another plus. Because of its location on the seashore, it’s in Zone 7 USDA, so the weather is nicer than here. Politically, it’s Canada, and if I got my citizenship there, I would be covered by national health insurance.
The thing that’s stopping me is money. It takes a good chunk of money (or a high-demand, high income job) to become a Canadian. Otherwise, I would be convincing my husband to retire there. I think if we won the lottery, it would be only a matter of time before we moved to Vancouver.
On this day in 2023, I wrote about my “road warrior” setup for writing on the go. At that time, I had an iPad Air, a Logitech keyboard and mouse, all in a cozy leather bag. It functioned as well as a laptop in most cases, and not as heavy. I have updated the setup and I feel like I’ve now got the road warrior gear optimized.
I upgraded my iPad a couple years ago for a M4 iPad Pro. It’s a bit heavier, but performance wise I can’t complain. I still can’t complain to this day. I do some Photoshop and Canva on the setup, and I have never had a performance complaint. I wish I cared enough about shooting and editing video to really push it, but I have no talent for video.
I decided I wanted a laptop form factor, because the one problem with an iPad and keyboard is that you can’t just put it on your lap and use it. I missed that from hauling around my Surface. I bought a Zagg Rugged Book, which is an all-in-one keyboard and iPad case. Again, I traded a bit of weight for more functionality. I still think it’s lighter than a laptop, especially the Galaxy Ultra that is my computer at home. And my iPad is PROTECTED with this case.
The rest of my upgrade was a trackball rather than a mouse. I prefer trackballs to mice, especially since some surfaces are not suitable (too small, too glossy) to run an optical mouse. I found the Elecom Bitra with its small footprint a good, but not cheap, solution.
If I want more screen space, I have a portable screen I can hook up to my iPad using Duet, a pairing program. This would necessitate me moving to a bigger bag and would definitely add more weight, which is why I haven’t done it yet. I like traveling better without it, which could change with the tasks I’m doing. I’m glad I have the option for now.
So I’ve upped my road game at the cost of a little weight. I’m still hauling my equipment in a small bag and feel like I can handle the burden. All in all, good choices for a computer substitute.
Sleep is very important to me. As someone with bipolar disorder, lack of sleep is both a problem in maintaining my mood and a symptom of a hypomanic attack. So I am very careful about sleep.
I have a set bedtime, and I spend some time lying in bed resting (not reading on the phone) before I drift off. I use a sleep mask to make the room dark, especially as my husband often stays up later so needs the light on. I maintain a comfortable temperature. Sometimes I play relaxing music, which seems to keep me from having nightmares.
Sometimes I have to take sleeping meds, and I take them particularly when I have restless thoughts. They don’t knock me out; they just seem to lessen the restless thoughts. I don’t take Ambien, because I once cooked some candied walnuts in my sleep while on it. I burned them and threw them in the garbage, then reseasoned the pan. In my sleep.
Sometimes, still, I have a night where I can’t sleep. My psychiatrist is not alarmed by occasional sleepless nights, but says if I have four in a row and still feel energetic in the morning, we need to talk. I generally do not feel energetic after a sleepless night; I feel lightheaded and groggy, a good sign that I am indeed not hypomanic.
I am very careful about sleep because I have to be. I don’t want a return to mood swings, even if hypomania is fun at first. It doesn’t end up being fun when strung out on sleeplessness and anxiety.
Some negative thoughts just flow through you — you think them and then let them go. Sometimes, however, they get stuck and you ruminate over them. Those are the negative thoughts you have to deal with.
Very often, the negative thoughts we ruminate on are thoughts whose negativity we amplify by cognitive distortions — unhelpful ways we frame the thought to “deal with it”. It’s not really dealing with the thought, however. Cognitive distortions are ways to manage the thought and get control over it, but often the thought is getting control of us because our rationale is itself negative.
For example, when the stressor of a job interview comes up, some people tell themselves that they “always fail job interviews” or they will “never get the job”. These rationales are two different cognitive distortions — in the former case, what my therapist called ‘awfulizing’ and the second ‘fortune telling’. Reality tells us that we can’t have that certainty about the outcomes. Uncertainty is scary, and some people manage it by projecting a negative outcome.
There are several categories of cognitive distortion. A few are (Therapistaid.com, 2023):
Awfulizing (the official name is catastrophising, but I like my word better)
Fortune-telling (predicting the future)
All or nothing
Overgeneralization (‘always’ and ‘never’)
Mind reading
Labeling
Shoulds
Emotional reasoning
We are trained to cognitive distortions, largely by family of origin.
Cognitive journaling is a way out of cognitive distortions. It consists of examining the triggering event and the thoughts that come up. In the thoughts, there will be clues as to the cognitive distortions there. Contradicting the cognitive distortions with more reasonable thoughts is the next step. (Brooklyn Center for Psychotherapy, 2026)
Understanding that one’s automatic thoughts aren’t reality can train your mind out of automatically giving in to cognitive distortions. That can help us to stay positive rather than ruminating on the negative.
I don’t know why I believed this, but it is breathtakingly stupid. I used to believe all dogs were male and all cats female. I was pretty young when I believed this.
Photo by Helena Jankoviu010dovu00e1 Kovu00e1u010dovu00e1 on Pexels.com
Maybe it’s understandable, because all the cats my family ever had were female. This was because my mother believed all male cats sprayed urine. They do, if they are not neutered young, but my mother wasn’t taking any chances. So I had never had a male cat till a few years ago.
I remember exactly when I was disabused of this notion. I was in the car with my parents and sister, and my mother laughed at me when I told her this. I don’t blame her — my belief fell into the category of ‘strange things little kids believe’, and it is funny.
Daily writing prompt
What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?
I hated vegetables as a child. All of them. (Except potatoes, and I don’t really consider potatoes vegetables. They’re a starch, like bread. I liked bread.)
I couldn’t bring myself to eat veggies. It was almost as if I thought them poison, which I probably did. I had a phobia about being poisoned as a kid, and vegetables were plants. Like mushrooms and poison hemlock.
Then when I was in high school, everything reversed. I craved vegetables, especially mushrooms. I ate vegetables raw, steamed, sauteed, juiced. I don’t think there was a single vegetable I didn’t like. My diet became more colorful and healthier as well.
To this very day, I’ve noticed a pattern. When I eat fatty foods or fried foods or lots of desserts, I don’t crave vegetables. When I eat healthy, I crave vegetables. This blog is making me hungry for a pile of broccoli.
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.
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.
Words Like Me 