Story Time | Living With Bipolar II

Hello It's Me. This is not related. Hello, good morning or afternoon, or whatever

time

of day you're watching this, it's a little more serious, obviously, I've been releasing a lot of music about mental health. and mental illness, more specifically, like I had a crazy thing that spoke a little bit about mania. I had a hey Dona, whose anhedonia is one of the main symptoms of depression and then more recently I had influence, which is kind of a tug of war between the two. two and I thought it was

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to talk about my experience with mental illness less through the poetry of lyrics and more directly with you because a lot of this is a new development and a lot of things I wish I knew when I was first dealing with it with many of the symptoms and experiences I was dealing with.

I should mention now that it's on my mind. I'm not doctor. None of this should be construed as medical advice. Seek professional help. If you can, I just want to tell my own experiences so that people can learn a little from what I went through, so I won't start from the beginning, but from the most relevant information that I started a couple of years ago. Suspecting that he had some type of mental illness. I was having, you know, panic attacks. I was also experiencing bouts of depression, as well as what I now understand as hypomanic episodes and a hypomanic episode, something that people with

bipolar

disorder traditionally experience as manic. episode is what people probably think of when they think of

bipolar

like Kanye West's Twitter, whenever Kanye West's Twitter starts blowing up it's usually a good example of a manic episode, delusions and sometimes hallucinations, so that's like mania and I don't experience that because people with bipolar one have mania I'm also bipolar, it's called two because it's the most recent diagnosis of bipolar two.

I experienced hypomanic episodes, so hypo just means less intense and to me what it seems like is that I would have my depressive episodes where I was. I wasn't interested in doing anything and I was sad and my life was going nowhere and I didn't feel connected to the world. What I didn't realize were the periods of time when I was really interested in a new hobby or you. I know at one point I wanted to try gymnastic strength training and at another point I started boxing and you know I had all these sudden inspirations to try to fix my depression and I thought they were working so at one point I was trying to take a cold shower every morning, some sort of quack remedies that people are happy to sell you on how to fix your depression and I don't doubt that some of them work for some people with bipolar disorder, although a lot of those little tricks aren't that great.

Helpful bipolar depression does not respond to normal depression treatments and I say this as someone who actually tried everything before investigating a medicated approach. I try to adjust my diet weekly, exercise, meditation, plane. I didn't test the plane, let's wait for that to happen. pass, yeah, so yeah, regulate my sleep schedule. If you follow a fairly regular schedule, it's supposed to help mitigate some of the symptoms and that works very well for most people, so I went to bed at exactly the same time every night and woke up at exactly the same time every morning and I had the same breakfast and I went to work seven two three five days a week and I still had these very intense symptoms, panic attacks, these hypomanic episodes, you know, I was done. with something like $10,000 in credit card debt from having these hypomanic episodes and saying, "oh, you know, what I should do is buy a new guitar and, you know, I had this gym subscription for several hundred dollars a month." which I got on a whim when I was hypomanic and you know all these things that were very expensive, but when I was in this heightened state I was like okay, I'm going to be a famous musician and it's going to happen any day now so I can afford to spend it all. this money because it's going to pay off.

I don't think that's a mentality unique to people with bipolar disorder, but for me it was such an intense feeling that I felt like I could spend any amount of money I needed and I would get it back whenever I wanted. single that topped the charts and when I was rich and famous, obviously that's not a financially sound way to look at money, it's also not a smart way to look at my career, with everything I was facing at the time, it would have been a lot more smart to It allowed me to allocate my time and resources to get help and to my credit I started looking for help.

However, I found that when it comes to psychiatric help, the system, at least here in Colorado, is not really equipped to help people. I started to realize that I was having these intense symptoms these panic attacks at one point I had seizures just from stress. I would call a psychiatrist's office and they would say we don't accept new patients. They were affiliated with a psychiatric hospital, so you can be admitted and find treatment. where we will not accept you as a patient or there would be a waiting list of several months to top it off. I've been very skeptical about diagnoses and medications because I know there are a lot of perverse incentives in medicine in general, but psychiatric medicine in particular, where a lot of it depends on me relaying information about my experiences to a psychiatrist and to tell me what those experiences mean because I did a lot of self-research, which I think is a good thing, but what did it lead me to.

I know all the diagnostic criteria for all of these things, so I am NOT an unbiased reporter of my own experiences. I know what answers will guide the diagnosis towards bipolar disorder towards ADHD because I suspected I had ADHD or bipolar and especially in Men, those two look very similar and are difficult to differentiate diagnostically, so what I did was I I ended up getting tested. You can't test for bipolar the same way, but with ADHD you can do these attention tests that you can do. an IQ test and I would expect to see some variation in your performance on different parts of the test if you had a normal distribution on one, but there was one organizational form where it didn't work, that would be an indicator of ADHD, so I looked up this test, you know, there was a test where I only had one button and I was looking at a screen, if it flashed a certain color dot, I would have to press the button and if it flashed another color dot, I would have to press the button.

I didn't press the button and I did it for about an hour after all these tests, which were actually a lot of fun, they were able to say pretty conclusively that I didn't have ADHD, the only problem was that they didn't say I had bipolar disorder. What I had to do was compare that to a dsm-5 interview where they reference my self-reports with current psychiatric diagnostic criteria. I gave them permission to talk to my therapist who I had been seeing for several years and get his opinion on the matter and with all of that combined, they conclusively gave me a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and I'm glad I did it that way because if you I would have told a psychiatrist that sometimes I feel very happy and sometimes I feel very sad and I don't know. how long but sometimes it's for a week and sometimes it's for longer and the psyche should have been like oh you have bipolar I don't think I would have believed that or I would have always had doubts I would have always had in the back In my opinion, is this a legitimate diagnosis?

Is this just me saying what I want to say so I can get the diagnosis I want? Then you would think you have your diagnosis. Great case closed, not quite. I still needed to see a psychiatrist, which As I already mentioned, is not an easy task, so I looked for a psychiatrist that did not accept insurance with large out-of-pocket costs, which I ended up doing and what I think is a great resource, there is a app called dr. on demand where you can see a doctor or a psychiatrist via telemedicine, like a video call with a psychiatrist, there is basically no waiting list, you don't need to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, they are accepting new patients and that is the psychiatrist.

What I see to this day, what did I learn from my experience? I had the right intuition firstly what I was struggling with, secondly, when I asked my friends, coworkers and family what they thought it was what I was all struggling with. Oh yes, we knew you were bipolar before you received your diagnosis and it's worth mentioning to my therapist that she had been telling me I was probably bipolar for months before seeking out this test. My skepticism about this is a character flaw because I trust my Therapist, I should have trusted his perspective on my mental illness more: there is no substitute for professional help and Rippey in particular has been instrumental in managing my bipolar disorder, although now also I'm on medication, so these are the medications. what I take is lamotrigine which is the generic version of lamictal and I did a lot of research before looking into medication because I wanted to know what the side effects were and what the expected benefits were, which I was initially worried about and then I know a lot of creative people are worried about. if my medications will end up making me less creative and in fact I've found it's quite the opposite and now that I'm more within a manageable range I've actually been writing. more music than ever so I'm pro medication it's not for everyone obviously some people will have very good luck with diet exercise and sleep solutions other people those things won't help as much some people will have very good luck .

With medications other people are going to have a very difficult time finding something that works for them. Everyone's experience is different with mental health more than almost anything else. That is the case. It's about understanding yourself and discovering what you need. I think throughout my life and especially. in recovery and dealing with mental illness therapy has been one of the most instrumental and helpful things I have ever done and I would recommend it to everyone, even if you are just experiencing some anxiety, which is normal in 2019. It is very understandable that If you were anxious and I even went to therapy, even when finances were tough for me, it was one of those non-optional options like food or you know a place to live, so yeah, that's the

story

of how I went. receiving my bipolar diagnosis and I am not sponsored by an on-demand doctor at all, but I highly recommend your service if you need a psychiatrist to help you manage your medications if you have any questions about my diagnosis or what my experience with mental health is like. definitely leave a comment below and I might even do a follow up video if there are some things you're specifically interested in, thanks for watching, be sure to LIKE the comment and subscribe, hit the notification bell because I'll be doing it live. streams I will do fan reviews if you are interested in having your music reviewed by them you can send your music to my email Alden Groves Music at gmail.com and I will review tracks, post clips and give feedback.

Tips and opinions on what you are working on on my YouTube channel very soon, send your music again i.e. Alden Groves music on gmail.com and I will do this fan review soon anyway. I appreciate it very much, thank you. for watching until the end and see you in the next one