The Gold Run Bridge is eight rigorous miles from the highway. The trail consists of steep climbs, rocky passages, creek crossings, close, narrow tracks alongside the roiling whitewater, and precipice-edged climbs leading far above Bear Creek, a distant strip of white, blue or brown, depending on the season. It winds along the mountainside, in and out of forest and exposure. It feels like an epic journey, culminated with a descent to a grassy meadow, a campfire ring, and fishing protocol.
The bridge crosses Bear Creek in a gentle arc. Step off, and Gold Run Trail tugs you onward. Its effortful, steep ascent makes trivial all that has come before, where fire has opened wildflowers to the sky and scree fields cascade downslope like a vast gray river of stone across your path. Two mighty trails, two fragments of the Colorado mountains’ healing soul.
What comes first, I don’t know. Depression from helplessness, or helplessness from depression; I think there are arguments for both.
First off, I’m not a psychologist, and have no academic qualifications to address any psychological disorder. I haven’t done extensive research and have no scholarly citations to list at the end of this. I do not claim to have the empirically correct solution. I’m just here to share things that, through trial and error, ended up working for me after I lost practically everything to bipolar 1 mania and depression, and I learned helplessness.
When bad things that are out of your control keep happening to you, you eventually come to believe that things cannot get better and there’s nothing you can do to improve your situation or your outcome. Whatever you try leads to no escape and that is the law of your life.
People with learned helplessness lose their motivation, and just get washed along with the current, expecting they will end up in the swamp or the quicksand and sink. There is no point in trying to save themselves. They become hopeless, and even anticipate more bad things. Helplessess is the law of their life.
“Let go of what you can’t control and choose to be positive” is not a helpful piece of advice to someone in this state, so you just have to blow off people who scorn you for not being able to do it.
This quote (somebody threw in my face) from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus is what got me to pondering on helplessness:
“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
Okay. If you buy this, it looks like to win freedom from whatever, you just choose to ignore the things you can’t control, because if you disregard the things, they can’t control you. But it’s not that simple if you’re in a morass of learned helplessness and depression.
Don’t you at least have to acknowledge the things that are beyond your control? Will it really help you, avoiding thinking them over? What is actually going on? Is there a cause? If the cause is something you can’t control, ignoring that cause isn’t going to keep it from controlling you. Looking at it is the only way to begin to understand it.
To find freedom you must first accept the feeling or circumstance. Ignoring is just a way to put off acceptance, and therefore the power of change. One day, look at the circumstance objectively, and look at everything surrounding that one uncontrollable situation. Look at how it is affecting you. This can lead you to find something to change about yourself. Find something you can control. You can’t do that by disregarding the thing you can’t control.
Once you acknowledge and accept the thing that is out of your control, you can move toward finding a strategy to empower yourself.
Steps to self-empowerment:
They say you can control your attitude. Just snap your fingers and CHOOSE to be positive!
Okay, well, that doesn’t work for everyone. I suggest mindfulness as a starting point.
Mindfulness helps you to ground yourself in the moment. Feel the surface under your hand. What do you hear, see, smell? Label it. Describe everything to yourself. Even if you have to actually slam your hand down on the table and say “table!” Knowing where you are and what is around you is the beginning of control. It’s the beginning of viewing yourself and events objectively.
Your approach to the circumstances. Consider approaching the challenges differently (or at all).
One way is to try looking at your situation as containing a problem to be solved. You can make a shift from helpless complacency to being solution-oriented. This doesn’t mean you can control an uncontrollable circumstance such as weather or how someone else is acting, but you may have control over an effect or two on your environment or your frazzled brain. If you can’t spring immediately into a positive attitude toward things, still you can choose what action you take. If you can pick up one little aspect of your life and improve it, do it, and be mindful of that improvement, even if it’s just managing a smile or putting away a cup. Don’t belittle it or yourself. Don’t feel you have to put more effort into it than you can at the moment. As you get stronger, you’ll be able to put more effort in, and your attitude will improve. One little step at a time, you can progress into a solution-oriented attitude by focusing on those tiny adjustments, the things you can control.
Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Prioritize your physical and mental health.
This is another big topic in and of itself. You can’t take care of the helplessness as effectively if you don’t take care of yourself. The hardest thing can be taking the time for it. If you’re not in the habit of taking care of yourself, it’s looking like another big, overwhelming project. It doesn’t mean you have to embrace diet, fitness, sleep, and social time. You can find one thing at a time to improve. You might break it down, make a list, choose the first small thing you can do for your health that you haven’t taken the time to do.
Allow people to help you.
This is a tough one for some people, independence, bootstraps and all that. You can choose to accept help or not. But if you can’t accept help, you could be making the hill you must climb that much higher and steeper. I have little to contribute to the general idea, because it was difficult for me, but I know I usually made things a lot more difficult when I refused help.
Attend to relationships.
Do your best to nurture what you have with family, friends, coworkers. Find ways to reach out. Let them know they are loved and appreciated. Examine those relationships (objectively, as above, if problematic) and work on improving them in any way that is relevant to your situation.
A personal story of how I empowered myself
During a time of poverty that seemed so hopeless that I lost all motivation to care for myself or my surroundings, I got into the danger zone. My husband couldn’t find work, and when he did his clients took advantage of him. I was disabled due to severe bipolar episodes. I felt helpless to fight the disease. And I was sure we were destined to lose our home. There was no point in cleaning house, because it was too overwhelming. There was only so much we could do to maintain the place with no money, despite my husband’s skills. Furniture was left outside, and though I didn’t want it there, it was there, so there was nothing to be done about it. There was no point in trying to communicate with my family, because I was a bad mother, a worse wife, and there was no understanding between us. And so on. Little things and big things sticking together and rolling along, into a boulder of hopelessness. I was helpless. I knew I was powerless to effect any positive outcome, so I didn’t try.
One day I looked at a table that had been left outside, and it was damaged, and for some reason I picked it up and moved it. I have no words to describe what a big achievement that was. But that was the beginning. I learned that it didn’t have to stay where it was. Yes, it was neglected, but just because it was outside did not mean it was already too late for it. I could stop further damage because I had the power to move it. Wow.
It was not the thing that lifted us out of poverty, but it was an event that began my slow journey out of helplessness, which eventually became part of the greater process of ending the poverty. Despite the large proportion of circumstances that were out of my control, there were things that could be controlled, and it was a matter of teaching myself that I had the power to control them. Somehow, over time, one teeny thing after another, I able-ized myself.
January is Mental Wellness Month, and also this month, it’s expected we welcome the new year with resolutions and then at least pretend to try to enact them. Resolutions can be thought of as promises to make personal change for the better, so it’s a perfect time to focus on mental well-being.
One of the biggest things we can do for ourselves is get regular exercise, right? The National Institute of Health says that just 30 minutes a day of mere walking can improve mood, reduce stress and, of course, provide a host of health benefits. Taking that walk in natural sunlight will even help us connect with that elusive unicorn known as “sleep.”
In the winter, especially, enjoying what sunlight is available is an important component of managing depression and mood swings, bipolar and otherwise.
I don’t know about you, but for me it’s so hard to get out when I’m depressed. Nice, helpful articles with bullet points generally have “Participate in favorite activities,” “Go out in nature,” and “Get enough sleep,” in them. But uh, it’s gray outside, it’s cold, I feel shitty, there’s no snow, I have to work tomorrow, everyone hates me, I hate everything, I can’t get enough sleep ’cause reasons, and, oh yeah, what “favorite activities?” Are you storming kidding me?
My modus operandi is to take a plan, any plan, and find one good excuse to jettison it so I can go sit and not write and stare at the dusty piano and feel sorry for myself.
So, in the name of self-preservation, it’s time to force myself to help myself against my will. Does this sound familiar? It’s sooooo hard! Exercise and sunlight are the topics for this Sunday, and a wan, winter sunlight it will be. How to get there:
I have learned to mechanically program my body to do the things to prepare for the activity, “just in case I change my mind.” Perform tasks, be the automaton, just like at work. Task A, B, C. Miserably put on clothes, drink coffee, eat breakfast, doggedly put on shoes and tie laces in spite of cat helping, and then … the danger point … go back to pee and look for phone.
Once past that, shove the body out of the door with will alone, and … outside. Having someone pushing helps.
I’m still depressed, though, and not having fun, because I’m depressed, and depression is tenacious as a headache. But you know what? Feeling the warmth on my face, the light on my eyelids, watching the solid tranquility of twisted junipers with the breeze whishing through them, hearing good music or clattering freight trains … I’m not enjoying it. I don’t want to be here … the energy is just soaking into the body and brain without me. The sights, sounds, and smells are ambling right in through the eyes, ears, and nose into the “animal hindbrain.” I think about that objectively, how I’m mad, but that’s not stopping the sunlight from penetrating or the images of my surroundings from imprinting themselves.
This involuntary absorption of healing influences is a thing. It will do its job. Going outside for sun and exercise does result in reduced stress, stabilized or elevated mood, increased energy, and better sleep. But yes, sometimes, it has to be forced.
The river had dwindled to a series of pools connected by grassy land bridges full of wildflowers, broadleaf plants and blooming bushes. Each pool wore a different aspect. Most seemed clean and empty of thought, their blank surfaces rippling with each changing breeze. In some, a smoky murk obscured the depths in a fog of slow, swirling rumination. One sulked in stagnation and decay, releasing putrid-smelling bubbles. He happened on one pool that seemed to smile. Clear and shallow, it sprouted reeds and watercress. Pollywogs swam there, some small and lithe, others fat as toads, and all had hind legs. They clung to the reeds; their translucent, vibrating tails stirred tiny currents.
One of the pools, an inscrutable, impenetrably deep one, made a home for gigantic trout.
It was from this one, with what could only be a blessing from Iryla, that he was able to snare his supper. Yet it was this same pool, dark and sheltered, the greenery drooping over its banks, that stymied him, barring him from hard-won peace. For it was this pool that looked the most familiar. It was the image of the pool inside him, and he wanted to fling himself there and drown. The cool pool of despair. That it should be the pool to feed him was not even an irony, for was it not his despair sustained him? It was his despair that kept him sane on this walk through a life in which hope would be madness. He tried to share the thought with Drisal, but it only made his brother sad. He should have known this. For he was alone. Aershmela would mock such a sentiment. Cerel would have no patience for it, because he could not understand. Lara would listen and comprehend, but then she would argue with him that he did have hope, that hope was in the Duality, and that faith and hope would save him.
Only Theris would truly understand. Only Theris would not judge the observation as self-pitying. Only Theris would not try to fix it as Lara did; and only Theris would see the point of it without Drisal’s capacity to be hurt by what he saw.
He smiled, thinking of Theris, thinking that whenever he needed to talk to someone he could talk to his memory.
The fish was good. The breeze was gentle and the twisted roots beneath which he passed the night promised him no discovery.
I routinely experience rage at work. This particular time, it was at the words of a person, not the bleep of an analyzer, and I like this person very much, so I made an effort and kept it to myself (sort of); my abrupt departure from the room may have been a tell. This happened a little while back, but I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot.
I don’t even remember what the overall conversation was about, but the switch flipped when the co-worker put on their wisest face and said, “Everybody’s a little bipolar.” I looked at them. “No,” they said, looking even wiser. “I mean it.”
I work in a field that attracts social misfits, recluses, and scientific types with organized and exacting tendencies. Often, all in the same individual. We laugh, we suffer, we generally understand each other, and I know that no offense was meant. I said nothing, only got up and left. “Slacking in the break room,” and all that. So perhaps I overreacted.
Now I get that the word “bipolar” means two-sided. Everyone does have their two sides, their ups and downs. That might make one, in fact, “a little bipolar.” So they weren’t wrong. People living with bipolar disorder do not own the word. But it did hit a nerve. Because when the term is used casually, as a joke or an insult or to talk down about oneself, it references the disorder and contributes to stigma.
And it brought to the fore an even more common one, because I so often hear it: “I’m so OCD about this.” Every time I hear this, I swear that the next time someone says it, I’m gonna ask.
“Do you know what OCD stands for? You’re literally using a condition, which can ruin lives if severe enough or untreated, as a casual adjective. Worse, you’re using this adjective for a slight self-deprecation. You absolutely cannot do that.” Well, everyone, as it seems to me in the moment, does!
We have sensitivity trainings galore. About race, culture, gender, religion … why not about mental health? You wouldn’t say a company meeting is a pow-wow. How is it any more acceptable to say anyone is “OCD about” anything? I would argue that it is not. That’s misappropriation too. Besides being terrible grammar, once you spell it out.
Sure, I’m grinding on something here. There are probably many of us living with these challenges who don’t get offended by this language, or are inured to it, or use it this way themselves, because they can. But I suspect there are many others, like me, who are disturbed or triggered. Use of these terms in casual conversation seldom lands as complimentary. Think about that. It’s a symptom of the stigma, deeply entrenched.
I don’t think it would be a terrible idea to educate the workplace about use of these terms.
These earrings personify the bipolar experience for me. When I am manic, I am like the skeletor face and when I am depressed I am the personification of the drooping mask…even though we are required to wear masks in our day-to-day life I don’t know about you, but it is nearly impossible for me to wear a happy face in all arenas.
For the longest time I was reluctant to wear these earrings because I thought they were too weird and Aztec pagan, but recently I realized they are the perfect expression of my personality. Someone from outside could look at these and think they are weird or cool. But no one but myself will know what they truly signify. And I don’t know about you but sadly being bipolar is part of my identity.
I think, from DBT class and a lot of other blogs, that bipolar shouldn’t define a person. You can use your social and behavioral skills to mask it and not rock the boat for anyone else. But, right or wrong, being bipolar is part of who I am. I cannot escape from this, no matter how acceptably I behave; no matter what positive philosophy I adopt.
And I truly do believe that these positive philosophies are the way to go. Bipolar DOES NOT own you. But for my part, though it doesn’t own me, it is still a part of who I am and I do get sick of all the “positivity” and “cheerleading”. Does that make me a person who gives up? I don’t think so. Being aware is OK. It keeps a person ready to think a moment before reacting to something.
Because you are aware. Awareness isn’t a failing. Acknowledgement is not a failing. Acknowledgement is important and really the best way to help yourself.
Acknowledgement is not the same thing as characterizing oneself. I have been guilty of this. Acknowledgement does not give the disorder its power. Its power comes from characterizing yourself.
You are more than your bipolar disorder. But acknowledging it, even gaining personal power from the knowledge and experience, are good things, in my opinion as a person who has struggled with self-hatred and inferiority from this disease.
So I do like my earrings. They don’t mean the same thing to everyone.
I call it macro-shoveling, and I hate it. But it’s necessary in order to obtain beauty.
It’s the part of the job where I go into the weed-infested area that was the flower garden last year (where’d all the weeds come from??), and turn the earth over with a full-sized hand shovel. Step on shovel with one foot, anchor the shovel in the dirt, then jump on it with both feet, jump off, and heave the chunk of soil over. And do it over. And over. And again. I’m out of shape and it’s exhausting and my back hurts.
Oh, no…is Horsebackwriter going into some kind of stupid metaphor about how working hard to prepare garden soil is like managing bipolar disorder?
Meh.
So my husband is going to go over that with the little hand-push tiller, and then it will be time for the good part. The micro-shoveling, where I go in there with a little spade and dig little holes. And we plant flowers! Whoopee!
This is partly why no writing lately. Schedule is mad. School kids are in finals, horses and track, and stress. And preparing the big vegetable garden (with the tractor, hubby’s way)… That and of course bipolar disorder, and depression. Yes I’m writing about bipolar, but it seems like I only write about it when things suck. Kind of like how I used to pray to God. When things suck. Now, through grace, I manage to give gratitude and praise even when things don’t suck.
So when things most recently sucked, I did not write about it, on purpose. Things don’t suck now, so I think I must be slightly manic. Especially since the adventure this afternoon. While driving the car to the bus stop, I smelled something burning. This in itself is not unusual, because of the oil leak dripping onto the engine somewhere, I think hubby said some kind of “manifold,” which causes enough smoke to slither from beneath the hood to make me believe the engine is on fire.
This smell was more rubbery. Mind you, the ignition was so hot from the sun I felt like I was burning my fingers when I started the car. But when I got to the bus stop to wait for the kids, after turning the car off, I noticed smoke coming off the steering column. Funny, I thought it was hot but not that hot. I turned the ignition to “on” so I could listen to my Supertramp tape, and oh, goodness, there was the smoke and stench again. I turned it off. The smoke disappeared. Thinking it was just too hot I turned the ignition to “on” again, and opened the windows. When I looked back down the steering column was smoking again. I turned the ignition off. As I did these things the smoke got to billowing, but only when the ignition was on.
The steering column will explode if I try to drive the kids home!! I thought.
Kids, I said, we have to walk home. No, don’t leave your books in the car, it may burst into flames. How was the track meet? Did you have to give your English presentation today?
Two miles later, I hadn’t yet noticed that I had not experienced a negative emotion one time during this frightening inconvenience. No switches flipping, no panic, no anger, no nothing, except tired. All afternoon macro-digging, and now this. The kids were way ahead of me. I felt old. And I had such a bad toothache that I didn’t dare open my mouth to huff and puff because the driving wind might hurt me. But accepting of circumstances, I plodded along like a horse.
Hubby scoffed at my concern that he was going to get blown up if he went back for the car and tried to drive it home. I said a little prayer when hubby’s friend drove him over to get the car, and soon enough hubby was back safely.
THERE HAD BEEN NO SMOKE! NO NOTHING! Of course, not for him. Well.
BUT IT WAS THERE! And the burning rubber stench, too, I asserted. Asserted, not yelled. Well I am happy for him but a bit appalled that since I will no longer drive that car ever again (I’ve made that promise before), I worry that he will blithely drive it clear into town and not notice when the steering column is once again about to go up in flames.
I wish they made a fertilizer for tilling the soil that also contained a substance lethal to all species of ants but completely nontoxic to humans and animals. Wouldn’t that be great?
Losing focus . . . it is the first sign of change for the worse. It means that I am either stepping up from hypomania into irritable disorientation and rage; or slipping down into useless depression. It doesn’t take me long to figure out which. And the feeling of losing focus, which I’ve been lost in among the ravages of paralyzing depression, is a terrible thing. So, since it is my current condition, I will try to be mindful and describe the feeling.
Losing focus is trying to grasp a tendril of smoke that wasn’t smoke before. It’s anxiety producing.
It feels like . . . hmm.
Searching among fragmented paths for a way home
Fermented clouds soaking the brain
Plucking at harpstrings of dry wool
Bird bashing head against green-glass walls, while frenetic wings continue flapping
Slinky nooses around a mind of gleaming burlap in the night
My head hacked on, off, and into. . .
So . . .
If I were focused, I could make poems of these. I wish I were. I am trying to get there.
OK, depression, I’ve got you in my teeth like a wild warg and I’m slamming you this way and that and you better just lie there, bloodied and broken and submissive, at least through tomorrow.
Uh, does that sound manic? Am I manic, or just excited? How do I tell the difference?
Last night we survived being pulled over, on the way home from my daughter’s 4-H club meeting.
I thought it might be that the officer thought I was drunk because, with a benighted dashboard before me (that will never again illuminate its information) I could not see the speedometer. I was trying to flip down my highbeams, turn on my dome light, stay in my lane, and peer around my own shadow to read the speedometer by the light of the dome, all at the same time. With two squealing teenage girls in the back seat, I fought visceral terror at the flashing lights behind me and pulled over.
I couldn’t open the window on my side for the officer because I hadn’t pulled over far enough for the officer to be safe there, and I couldn’t open the window on the passenger side, where he arrived, because it was broken. So I opened my passenger door, and the officer was treated to the spectacle of my nervous, fumbling hand vainly searching in the glove box among flashlights, dirty napkins, fuses, dirt, and other things that weren’t gloves, for the registration. He watched me move the envelope around for a while, then suggested that that might be it. I handed it to him.
The girls tittered and joked around while the officer retired to his patrol car. They were what kept me sane. Then he returned, offering to check the function of my highbeams. It seemed to him that one of them was out. Sure enough, both headlights worked except on highbeam, the driver’s side didn’t brighten. He issued me a friendly warning.
What a vigilant fellow to notice something like that and then pull them over for it. We all thanked God and went on our merry way, and somehow my mood became elevated…just like that.
So today, before my daughter’s birthday cake and ice cream, I made good on my promise to myself and got my butt out to the barn and took a walk in the sun on the snow and the ice with my horse beside me. We walked for an hour and it felt like 15 minutes. When I got back to the house I discovered we had no birthday candles. My daughter, with perfect teenage nonchalance, blew out fifteen imaginary candles on the lopsided chocolate cake my husband had baked, and the party commenced.
Tomorrow I’m going to a boot camp for writers. I used to be a writer. Yes, it’s true. At least, that’s how I thought of myself. But I haven’t written in years, and now all of a sudden with the fog clearing, I think I want to try to write again. But in a public, structured setting with PEOPLE there??
I guess I’m better off than a painter struggling to re-emerge. At least no one will observe my hesitant strokes while I’m trying to create.
I see this plan to attend boot camp as a positive step against the force of depression, a willful lurch out of paralysis. Unfortunately I cannot say or guess how long this positive surge will last… but I will ride it gladly, toward whatever bright vistas, as if it will never end.
It will take work. There will be things I will have to make myself do: pull on my boots, drive my falling-to-pieces Jeep, step across thresholds, speak with people I know and don’t know and whose names I am mortified I don’t remember, but hopefully it will be worth it. If anyone is reading this, please wish me luck.
Siege of the Spirit 