chimaerakaren

Tonight at midnight, your true love will realize they love you.

Something good will happen to you at 1:00 - 4:20 tomorrow, it could be anywhere.

Get ready for the biggest shock in your life.

If you break the chain you will be cursed with relationship problems for the next 12 years.

Post within 13 minutes..

Fleet Week started today in SF and I am literally shaking from the anxiety it is producing for me. The loud, threatening noises are anything but fun. I haven't had many PTSD symptoms in a long time but I guess it never leaves you completely.

I am going to go take an ativan and then I have to go find a mechanical toy that I can strip for parts for my Electronics Class tomorrow. I'm going to an art opening tonight I hope I manage not going bonkers in the meantime.

-K

Well. The Bipolar II is confirmed. At this point its not that big of a deal to me. All these diagnoses are just codifications for behaviors and symptoms anyways. I don't have to do any changes to my meds which is very nice. Actually, I did start taking Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Fish Oil. Its supposed to be really helpful for lower-grade Bipolar II and its really good for you anyhow. So yeah.

Garin started his new job this week and that has been hard to get used to. We are racing around all the time now and I hardly see him. Big changes are a huge trigger for my OCD. I am really stressed but I seem to be handling it better than normal. I think the new med, Geodon, is helping and that is awesome. I feel much calmer most of the time, even though everything around me is shifting.

I just had this major wave of nostalgia about one of my old compulsions. I used to carry this one penny around all the time and ask it questions like a magic-8 ball. I kind of miss it in a way. Its a bit funny.

School is another source of worry lately. Due to all the med changes I have fallen a little more than a week behind in all my classes. I will have to try to force myself to be very productive this weekend. We'll see how that goes. Haha. I already have so many plans I'm hardly going to have anytime to study. After everything I have been through in the last few months, my main priority is doing things that make me feel better and homework does not make me feel better. LOL.

Thats that for now.

Remember that really good mood I was talking about last post?

Well, I had a hypomanic episode on Monday night. At first I thought I was just having fun and I felt kind of "high" because we found out that Garin got the job he was applying for. We went to a friends house to celebrate and hang out and I turned into a totally different person. I started to feel really high and I devulged a lot of information that embarrassed my poor boyfriend and acted like a 'maniac'. I also had similar experiences yesterday in my New Genres 1 class.

After talking with both my psychiatrist and my clinical psychologist about these events we basically came to the probable conclusion that I am not just Major Depressive, I am Bipolar II.

Bipolar II criteria:

"Bipolar II disorder is characterized by one or more depressive episodes accompanied by at least one hypomanic episode. Hypomanic episodes have symptoms similar to manic episodes but are less severe, but must be clearly different from a person’s non-depressed mood. For some, hypomanic episodes are not severe enough to cause notable problems in social activities or work. However, for others, they can be troublesome.

Bipolar II disorder may be misdiagnosed as depression if you and your doctor don’t notice the signs of hypomania. In a recent DBSA survey, nearly seven out of ten people with bipolar disorder had been misdiagnosed at least once. Sixty percent of those people had been diagnosed with depression.

How can I spot hypomania?

Talk to your doctor about the possibility of hypomania if you’ve had periods of several days when your mood is especially energetic or irritable, and/or:

You feel unusually confident
You need less sleep
You are unusually talkative
Your thoughts come and go faster than usual
You are more easily distracted or have trouble concentrating
You are more goal-directed at work, school or home
You are more involved in pleasurable or high-risk activities, such as spending or sex
You feel like you’re doing or saying things that are unlike your usual self
Other people say you’re acting strangely or you’re not yourself"

-Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance


God...add another one to the list!

Now I have been diagnosed with: Bipolar II (Major Depression), OCD, BDD, Social Anxiety Disorder and ADD (its possible the ADD may be ruled out when/if the Bipolar II diagnosis is solidified) but in the past, I have also had PTSD, GAD and agoraphobia as well. In my session today my psychologist put it politely...he called me "complicated".

I am also having a really bothersome side effect from the Geodon called Akathisia. I have been put in a waiting pattern by my pdoc, he hopes it will go away within a couple weeks. Hmmm.

|ak‧a‧this‧ia  [ak-uh-thizh-uh, -thiz-ee-uh]
|–noun
|a state of motor restlessness, sometimes produced by neuroleptic medication, that ranges from a feeling of inner distress to an inability to sit still.


Thats my update. We are having dinner at a friend's house tonight. He told me that he'd be happy to have a hypo-maniac at his dinner table. :)

I've been in a pretty good mood since last night. Right about the time I was eating home-made nachos with my boy and watching the Simpsons. I'm not sure if those factors have anything to do with it ;), but when I was watching the Simpsons I found the show truly funny. It was strange. Now that I am talking about how happy I was it is making me feel really emotional. LOL. I really am a crazy person! Happy one minute, crying the next.

I have had a pretty good weekend so far. I have done nothing to do with school yet, so that probably has something to do with it. My homework stresses me out because I have so many OCD issues around making art and doing homework and what not. I arranged my classes so I have 3 day weekends. That is really nice.

Also, Garin is expecting to hear if he got the job he interviewed for last week, today. We are all on pins and needles about it. It sounds like an awesome opportunity and we REALLY need the money at this point.

I'm hopeing to get to the gym today. I am still feeling really lethargic from the Geodon and going to the gym makes me feel better. I get a little confidence boost from getting myself there and back and my body feels so happy afterwards. So relaxed. I don't know how I got through life without working out before. I only started 4 months ago due to constant urgings by my therapist. I guess he really knows what he's talking about!

More soon...

I just started a new medicine, again. The 2nd one this month.

I have medicine issues because I am "med sensitive" which means that I get all the side effects and have a super hard time working up to therapeutic doses. I am only able to take 20mg of Paxil, and I should be on 40-60, if it is going to have any positive effect on the OCD. So now my pdoc is adding low doses of atypical anti-psychotics to try to augment the Paxil.

The first one I tried, Risperdal, gave me horrible headaches and migraines, made me terribly sleepy and I got this freakishly rare side effect....I started lactating! That was a strange realization. My pdoc had me stop this one after about 1 1/2 weeks.

So, now I just started taking Geodon instead. Its been 2 days. It makes me soooo tired. I slept 12 hours both of the nights that I've taken it. I don't want to move. I barely feel like expending the energy it takes to sit here at my computer. Hopefully, after a few more days this side effect will pass. I must say that I feel very lucky to not have the horrible headaches that I had on the last one.

Well, I am going to go eat lunch and then my boyfriend and I are going to walk to Haight St. and hang out for a little while. Its about 4 miles round trip...I better muster up the energy. I am really looking forward to the exercise though.


♥ <--- I just stole this heart from someone else's page. I can't figure out how to make my own. How emo of me. ;)

After finishing that paper yesterday and going to class, I came home and I had yet another project to do that was/is due today. I felt like I wanted to hide and sleep and figure the project in the morning. This is my specialty, finishing things the morning that they are due. I HATE that I have developed this habit, but sometimes (like with the papers) it is pretty much the only way I can tolerate finishing projects. I need that impending deadline to outweigh what ever OCD fear and anxiety that is holding me back before I can make any real progress on an assignment.

So, lastnight, I forced myself to finish my project before going to bed. Talk about exposure, it was freaking hard, but I am proud of myself for finishing it. I needed a night of sleep without an impending due date sitting over my head.

My OCD has been really intrusive lately and I haven't been getting enough sleep, which is a real no-no for us OCDers. Hopefully, I'll have some time tonight to write a post about that and everything, but now I have to race to class.

So, I am sitting at my computer right now trying to write my last paper from one of classes I took an incomplete in last semester. After I finish this paper I will be back up to date and I can start focusing on my new classes. I just started Fall Semester last Monday.

Writing papers gives me TONS of anxiety because it plays into a lot of my OCD and social phobia fears, perfectionism issues. I've been putting off writing these papers all summer because I am terrified that people will think that I am unintelligent. When writing I end up over-analyzing everything until I work myself into a panic. It's all I can do to not dwell on the OCD thoughts that tell me I am a failure because I had to take a medical leave and writing these papers just reminds me of that experience. I also have ADD, so I can barely focus anyhow without these OCD thoughts incessantly popping up.

I am doing my CBT and it is helping, but I hate that I am in this situation. Part of me feels like I just want to run as far away from school as possible, but that would leave me with pretty much no options. And I actually love school, I just can't stand the unrealistic expectations I am constantly pushing on myself.

I'll let you know how it turns out...

1:39pm 2 pages down, approx. 5 to go (ughhh)

4:55pm 2 1/2 pages, LOL. I better start working a little faster.

5:33pm 3 1/4 pages...

12:14am 4 1/4 pages

Ahhh. I am so distractable. I can't stop "checking" (in the OCD sense of the word) my email and my myspace account. Looks like I'll be finishing the rest of the paper tomorrow. Luckily, I have a good amount of time empty in the morning and early afternoon. It will all be over and done with tomorrow.

Goodmorning. yawn.

8:03am 5 pages, approx. 2 to go...the home stretch?

8:34am 5 1/2 pages

9:45am 6 pages! I'm so close! Just the conclusion page left...

11:23pm 6 1/2 pages!

12:44pm I DID IT! I'M DONE!

My first memory is an obsession I had when I was 5 or 6. I was in a gift shop in the mid-west and I was picking out a stuffed animal from a huge group of stuffed animals that were essentially the same. I picked up one and was about to bring it to my parents so they could get it for me and I noticed that it had a flaw on its face, something from the manufacturing. I went to put it away and I started to notice that they were all imperfect, I got this huge wave of anxiety and I then determined that if I were to put the first one back I would be rejecting it for being ugly and that would be a horribly mean thing to do. I brought the first one with the "flaw" to my parents and after that I developed a compulsion that I had to pick the first toy or stuffed animal I touched, to be "fair" to them. I did that my whole childhood until I was about 12 years old. I still get guilt feelings when picking stuff out in stores, I'm sure its related to this experience.

I am now 24 years old and I was just diagnosed with OCD 5 months ago. The ironic thing is that I have been in therapy on and off for 8 years to treat my anxiety and depression but OCD was never officially diagnosed or even mentioned. Actually, nothing was officially diagnosed...I was seeing a therapist who didn't like to diagnose people my age (at the time I was 17) because of the "stigma" that mental disorders carry. If I could go back and change anything, I would have tried to get an offical diagnosis back then. Anyhow, I now know that I have 'primarily obsessional' OCD which is harder to catch because of the lack of physical compulsions. I have a few physical compulsions but I am mostly plauged my the horrible horrible mental compulsions. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to melt because of all the anxious activity in my head. I was also TERRIFIED to tell anybody, even my therapist about my obsessions because I was "sure" that they would tell me that the reason I couldn't stop thinking about these things, was because I truly was whatever I was fearing/obsessing about at the time.

So, I discovered I had OCD the night before I went into an outpatient mental health program in mid-April 2006 (I admitted myself because I had a nervous breakdown and had to take a medical leave from school). I was searching online for "obsessional thinking" and a link came up which had personal accounts of the obsessions that go along with OCD. In the past, behaviors I have had did strike me as OCDish but I don't have any contamination OCD, so I quickly disregarded it. I was just as uniformed as most of the general public in thinking that people with OCD are only concerned with contamination and orderliness. I have sexual, violent, relationship and perfectionism obsessions...all the fun ones. :)

This is the link that I found...

http://www.concernedcounseling.com/communities/ocd/doubt/look.html

After reading some of those postings, for the first time in my life I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I was so grateful and overjoyed that I started crying right then and there...and then of course, since I have OCD, an hour later I started doubting that I even had OCD. I decided I must be the one person in the world that really is their obsessions. LOL. It's not really that funny, but it is just so OCD that I can't help but laugh.

Now, I am getting really good treatment though and I have an actual diagnosis. Severe OCD with BDD and social anxiety disorder, ADD and major depression. I'm still getting used to it, but that is me in a mental health nutshell.