Why should I keep trying to fix something that just stays broken?

This is how I feel.

It’s like I’ve dropped a priceless vase and every piece that I attempt to glue back together  falls again into another dozen pieces and I’m back right where I started, only it’s gotten worse.

I wish I were talking about a vase though, but I’m not. I’m talking about my mother. I called her today to just talk. We aren’t close. She doesn’t live nearby. She’s manic depressive bipolar. For every six months of downer moods, there are maybe 8 days collective of upper ones.

I don’t call, she’s sad.

I call she’s sad and mad.

So I don’t call.

Time, time, time goes by. I want to call. I don’t. More time, time, time goes by. I call. I cross my fingers; I take a deep breath, hello?

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Filed under: Eliza Barnett, bi-polar , bipolar, bipolar mother, daughter of bipolar mother

same symptoms, different races-maybe you’re not bipolar if you’re black?!

Dr. Cassandra L. Joubert has a new book out entitled, Losing Control: Loving a Black Child with Bipolar Disorder. What first caught my attention in this book is part of Dr. Ira Glovinsky’s foreword:

“Pediatric bipolar disorder manifests itself similarly in the African-American population to the way it does in the Caucasian population. The disease has no cultural boundaries. However… if an African-American child manifested the same symptoms as a Caucasian child, he or she would receive a different diagnosis and a different treatment. This is the clear danger of ignoring cross-cultural commonalities.
keep reading–click on!!

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Filed under: Eliza Barnett, bi-polar

Am I a trigger?

“Oh, they’re bipolar—doesn’t that just mean they’re happy and sad back and forth all the time?”
“No. Bipolar disorder is much more complicated than that.”
“Maybe I’m a little bipolar, my mood changes a lot.”
“Everyone’s mood changes. Anyone can have a mood swing. That’s normal. I can be totally happy and something seemingly out of nowhere to you, could cause me to flip my script. Maybe you’re just wishy wash, maybe you have a short fused temper, maybe your feeling are easily hurt. Going from extreme to another sometimes doesn’t make you bipolar.”

On the most recent posting on the blog “Flying and Landing” One of the first things the blogger says is,

“I do not like the term BiPolar, as it does not describe anything more than polar opposites.”

I agree it’s very true that the name doesn’t only touches on the surface of this disorder’s characteristics. It’s more than just I’m in a bad mood right now. When you and I are upset it’s still within our control to not be. When I feel like I’m pumped up on energy and I’m being all crazy fun—it’s not because my brain is forcing me. Me, myself and I can calm down, chill, its simple enough for me. I’m not bipolar.

Every documentary or TV special I watch on OCD (if you haven’t come across the A&E show Obsessed—I recommend it!!) its always so amazing to me listening to the suffers explain how they don’t like doing the things they do, they want to stop, the wish they could turn off the thoughts in their head that are compelling them to behave as such. And they can’t.
Not by themselvs. The blogger of Flying and Landing writes,

“My first entry Flying and Landing pretty much describes what my mood swings feel like. I have felt helpless at times.”

MYTH: Bipolar disorder only affects mood.
FACT: Bipolar disorder also affects your energy level, judgment, memory, concentration, appetite, sleep patterns, sex drive, and self-esteem. Additionally, bipolar disorder has been linked to anxiety, substance abuse, and health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, migraines, and high blood pressure.

Bipolar looks different, sounds different, and though the general symptoms are the same, the characteristics are personal and personalized.

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Filed under: bi-polar

How do you hear voices when you can’t hear?

Think about that. Everyone talks to themselves in their head, so it’s logical to assume a deaf person would do and same and essentially hear themselves. (Did you think maybe they did sign language in their thoughts as well!?)

So picture that you are deaf and you go to your doctor to try to communicate that you are hearing voices in your head–not yours, not Jesus, but some crazy nut job I don’t know who—and is wrecking havoc on your brain waves. That would be scary enough when you’re used to hearing outside voices. That’s gotta be a thousand times crazier to hear when you’ve never heard anything! A prelingually deaf individual, according to Wikipedia’s defination is someone who was born with insufficient hearing to acquire speech normally, or who lost their hearing prior to the age at which speech is acquired, would be such a person who’s pretty much never heard anything.

The other bad news is that if you’re hearing voices in your head you may be coming down with a mental illness. And by coming down with, I don’t mean—like the flu, because that certainly isn’t as easily curable.

That made me wonder what it might be like to have a mental illness—like bipolar for example!—and be deaf.

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Filed under: Eliza Barnett, bi-polar

Let’s talk about sex.

Today folks we’re going to be talking about hypersexuality.

Can you say “hyper-sexuality”

Lets talk about sex baby.

Lets talk about all the good things,

and the bad things that may be.

Lets talk about sex.

The Webster definition of hypersexuality is defined as “unusually or excessively interested in or concerned with sexual activity.” Hypersexuality is a common symptom of hypomania or mania in a person who is having stages of bipolar disorder. It can be present in adults and children.

In the bipolar child newsletter doctors have discussed this particularly unsettling youth behavior. This behavior is typically under discussed because bipolar or not, you don’t talk about sexuality regarding children in public. (admit it, you’re kind of uncomfortable having just read that…)

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Filed under: Eliza Barnett, bi-polar