I’d rather be shittered than shattered but the latter seems like the baseline when trying to “do too much” as certain mentors caution. I look confused and reply “I thought that’s what grad school was all about?” and am surprised to hear otherwise. I guess I underestimated the scope of the transition from my home province to a new one. I have had to try to construct new networks peopled with the same kinds of supports and distractions that I had grown fond of and accustomed to back home. I have been reasonably successful in this but it has been slow going. The constant, relentless pace of academia offers few opportunities to socialize outside of a work or seminar setting. So naturally I try to bury myself in my work with the end result being, at least for the next few days, the uncoupling of my “give a shit button” since my brain is starting to give notice of a strike vote…
Hi there. You don’t know me, but you left a comment on my blog about a year ago. I suspect my husband may have bipolar, or at some time in the past may have been diagnosed, but hasn’t told me because he’s anti drug, anti doctor. When I started my blog, I was hoping to one day hand it to a doctor so they could properly diagnose him, if I could ever get him to go to a doctor in the first place. Reading your blog and considering things my husband has said to me is making me think it’s not such a good idea to get a MD involved. All of the things you say, my husband has been saying all along. If meds and doctors are not the answer, then what is? More importantly, what is the best advice for those living with and loving someone with bipolar?
Hi yes I remember you and will check out blog soon. As far as advice? I’m not the best person…or could be…but not officially…so shoudn’t…you know.
At any rate, if you read through the posts I’ve left on here…I struggle daily with the diagnosis of “bipolar” and the actually tangible effects of living with mental states that attract enough attention to get their own codified pathology. What I can say from experience is that family members and friends are always hard done by because so-called abnormal mental states seem to be a lot more embarrassing for those indirectly affected than the actual person going through it. Personally I believe that family and friends of a so-called “bipolar” person have way way more rights than the designated sicky and I honestly believe that there isn’t much to worry about from most “manic-depressive” states other than complex conversation and some erratic behaviour. Should we panic and create new “regimes of care” for those “manic-depressives” or “bipolars” who resist the meds? Fuck no. It’s sanist, mentalist, panic button, neoliberal, rule by fear and divide, tactics. The “chemical imbalance” hypothesis is discredited even amongst psychiatrists, so how do various psychoactive and neurotoxic drugs fix something that ain’t there? I gotta say loving and living with someone like me would be hard…but it hasn’t stopped most of the peeps i choose to associate with
There is just something wonderful about the whole thing…