Watch yourself

This is a message to all BP's out there.  Monitor yourself closely.  Look at how you are feeling.  The moment when you want to be alone, when you don't want anyone around, that's the moment you have to run to your family, friends, docs, therapists or whoever. 

I have realized that I almost always have a prelude to my cycles.  I take steps to isolate myself, I spend more and more time alone, or more time withdrawn from others around me. 

You can be alone in a crowded room.  It's line from a country song, but it's still true.  I can isolate myself from my wife even when I am sitting next to her, I can mentally distance myself from everyone around me.  I seem to do this before I have a depressive episode.  I guess it's a kind of masochistic way of making sure my depression with really be a good and intense one.

I am curious if there are others who have experienced this, or others that say it sounds like what they go through once they look back on it.  Any BP's who read this, please let me know if this describes your systems.

Comments

[Judy Fryer]

John,
You know I am not BP but my John had bipolar2. ( well that is what they said,I may ask you about that soon.,don't want to bother you or bog you down)
anyway, as a carer and his mum, I used to know when John was doing this very thing.He was a very sociable loving son and I could tell when something different was happening for him. He would become quiet, distance himself, irritated, irritable, maybe a little anxious at onset, distant, quiet. I would think oh dear, here we go. He 'seemed' to be self engrossed in as much as being unintersted in what was going on around him. Like he was trying to save himself by shutting down kind of thing. It was always obvious if he was having bad time in his head.
I hate the thought of it for you, for him, for anybody.
HOWEVER you have a wonderful attitude and I know that you can give this thing a real good thrashing.
You are working its trickiness and deceptiveness out.
The more tactics you develop the less it will trip you up, don't you think.
I can see that is what you are doing.
I know it is HARD work and seems endless.
A bit like disciplining a child. Hard work to begin with but you get the rewrad when they start behaving!
Slightly simplistic view, as I know how hard this is but maybe you get the drift.l