Hi alwaysamom,
It sounds like your daughter has a great support team looking after her right now. I have also worked with a team of doctors (when I was in paediatrics though, not as an adult), and I have attended support groups and education sessions. I think that for me, the education sessions were the most helpful.
It is hard to hear but often healing takes a very long time. Bipolar (and eating disorders) are whole "being" illnesses or "states." These illnesses don't just cause physical, somatic pain and mental anguish but they carry all sorts of moral baggage with them and can disrupt our way of identifying ourselves and the world around us. It is hard to read a book and find adequate advice on what to say to ourselves and those we love suffering from mental illness in part because how we speak to one another and what we say varies depending on personality, state of mind and the type of relationship communicating people have with one another.
The following is one perspective on mood disorders and the suffering they cause for us. This perspective is NOT generalizable to everyone but it does speak to some of the seeming paradoxes and contradictions that I experienced when trying to recover from particular episodes over the past 10 years. Some people may not be able to relate at all but for me, the following hypothesis begins to capture that haunting relationship that I have had with my depression where I want it to go away so badly and yet, it somehow has me caught in a trance where I am afraid of giving it up. Then I lose myself and I don't know who to trust.
Sadly we live in a society where people try to accumulate accomplishments and live for the next goal or achievement. It is expected that if you don't hate your job enough, then you aren't working hard enough. We are supposed to feel bad and guilty otherwise we don't deserve any good things in life. Sometimes I think that we've become so obsessed with feeling angry or guilty or fearful that we just can't appreciate feeling peaceful, happy or content because we need to feel guilty about feeling those things or we need to start fearing the next goal or achievement and whether we will make it or not. --Obviously not Everyone feels this way but I see this sort of thing in a lot of young people whether they have been diagnosed with an illness or not.
I think that in a lot of ways suffering is taboo in westernized society and people think that it needs to be "fixed" somehow as though suffering people are broken machines. When suffering becomes such a big secret, some people will hold their suffering so close that it begins to define who they are and they start to see it as the most important part of themselves. This is not selfish but the way I see it, is that it merely perpetuates the suffering. For me, I have actually feared "getting better" because I am afraid of losing my suffering because it is so much a part of me. But that fear is an empty one because I will always have my suffering. When I am happy and content or when I can get excited about things in life, I am not suffering and life is more manageable and I can face the day with strength and I don't need my suffering anymore because I have found a new energy to help me define my presence in the world. But as soon as this new energy goes away, if I get depressed again, I will not be alone because my suffering will return and I will have it back. Suffering will always be there for me. This statement to me seems very sad and yet very hopeful at the same time. It doesn't mean that I will never suffer but it does suggest that I may be able to experience suffering in a different way.
I'm not sure if all of what I just said makes much coherent sense or not. I'll work on saying it better for the future! I guess what I am trying to say is that the enemy from within is, at first glance a different beast from the enemy from without (i.e. the outside world). But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the divide between the interior of ourselves and the exterior world is more an illusion than a fact.
good luck with everything,
astronaut
It sounds like your daughter has a great support team looking after her right now. I have also worked with a team of doctors (when I was in paediatrics though, not as an adult), and I have attended support groups and education sessions. I think that for me, the education sessions were the most helpful.
It is hard to hear but often healing takes a very long time. Bipolar (and eating disorders) are whole "being" illnesses or "states." These illnesses don't just cause physical, somatic pain and mental anguish but they carry all sorts of moral baggage with them and can disrupt our way of identifying ourselves and the world around us. It is hard to read a book and find adequate advice on what to say to ourselves and those we love suffering from mental illness in part because how we speak to one another and what we say varies depending on personality, state of mind and the type of relationship communicating people have with one another.
The following is one perspective on mood disorders and the suffering they cause for us. This perspective is NOT generalizable to everyone but it does speak to some of the seeming paradoxes and contradictions that I experienced when trying to recover from particular episodes over the past 10 years. Some people may not be able to relate at all but for me, the following hypothesis begins to capture that haunting relationship that I have had with my depression where I want it to go away so badly and yet, it somehow has me caught in a trance where I am afraid of giving it up. Then I lose myself and I don't know who to trust.
Sadly we live in a society where people try to accumulate accomplishments and live for the next goal or achievement. It is expected that if you don't hate your job enough, then you aren't working hard enough. We are supposed to feel bad and guilty otherwise we don't deserve any good things in life. Sometimes I think that we've become so obsessed with feeling angry or guilty or fearful that we just can't appreciate feeling peaceful, happy or content because we need to feel guilty about feeling those things or we need to start fearing the next goal or achievement and whether we will make it or not. --Obviously not Everyone feels this way but I see this sort of thing in a lot of young people whether they have been diagnosed with an illness or not.
I think that in a lot of ways suffering is taboo in westernized society and people think that it needs to be "fixed" somehow as though suffering people are broken machines. When suffering becomes such a big secret, some people will hold their suffering so close that it begins to define who they are and they start to see it as the most important part of themselves. This is not selfish but the way I see it, is that it merely perpetuates the suffering. For me, I have actually feared "getting better" because I am afraid of losing my suffering because it is so much a part of me. But that fear is an empty one because I will always have my suffering. When I am happy and content or when I can get excited about things in life, I am not suffering and life is more manageable and I can face the day with strength and I don't need my suffering anymore because I have found a new energy to help me define my presence in the world. But as soon as this new energy goes away, if I get depressed again, I will not be alone because my suffering will return and I will have it back. Suffering will always be there for me. This statement to me seems very sad and yet very hopeful at the same time. It doesn't mean that I will never suffer but it does suggest that I may be able to experience suffering in a different way.
I'm not sure if all of what I just said makes much coherent sense or not. I'll work on saying it better for the future! I guess what I am trying to say is that the enemy from within is, at first glance a different beast from the enemy from without (i.e. the outside world). But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the divide between the interior of ourselves and the exterior world is more an illusion than a fact.
good luck with everything,
astronaut
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