When does it stop?

Do you ever have periods of feeling normal and stable? How long do they last? Is it possible to find the right treatment and feel ok for most of your life? Or will the ups and downs always be there?

What is your story like?

I’ll start by telling mine. I have bipolar disorder with psychosis. As a child I was abused by my mother, both emotionally and (rarely) physically. My husband and I have many reasons for suspecting she struggles with bipolar disorder herself, but she refuses to speak with a doctor about her mental health. My childhood was extremely toxic, my parents fought nearly every night. The police were called (by me) when they would become physical. I had early exposure to violence and horror through my own life and movies that my parents would put on for me to watch. Often R-rated, extremely horrifying movies that a young child shouldn’t be watching. My mother strongly believed in ghosts and wanted me to believe too so she would take me to see psychics and go ghost hunting. When I started having visual hallucinations, my mother would tell me they were ghosts and my father just simply didn’t care. He hated being a father to me and my brother, so he was very absent in our lives. When I started having auditory hallucinations, my mother didn’t know what to do. She insisted I couldn’t possibly have a mental disorder and convinced me never to tell the doctor because, as she said, they would lock me up. At 12 years old I had my first major depressive episode. I won’t get into details as to not trigger anyone, but it was very hard. My mother was aware of what was going on, but did nothing about it. Throughout the following years I had ups and downs. Sometimes I would be extremely hyper, other times I felt like I could sleep forever. At 18 I said something to my mom that got her to take me in to see a therapist and a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with depression but likely because I hid certain information from them (out of fear of being “locked up” and believing the visual hallucinations were ghosts) they missed the bipolar disorder. I was on an antidepressant for about 6 months and spoke to a therapist during that time. I stopped both when I started feeling better. Later that year, my home life had become so toxic that I moved out. I haven’t lived there since. Oddly enough, the auditory hallucinations stopped when I moved out of my parents house and the visual ones did too for a while.

At 20 years old I had my first major manic episode. I spent all of the money I had and wanted to have sex several times a day. I slept maybe 3 - 5 hours a night for months and partied nearly every night of the week. I quit my job and went without work for 3 months. I ended up losing my apartment because I couldn’t pay the rent anymore and I had trashed it from all the parties so I lost my security deposit. I moved in with my boyfriends parents and began feeling normal for a little while. I managed to get myself to go to college and got a bachelor’s degree in English. I went to the gym regularly for the first time in my life and started eating really healthy foods. I was thriving.

A few years later, at 24 years old, the hallucinations started to come back. I would wake up in the middle of the night and see things. Most frequently, spiders coming down from the ceiling. They became more and more common until I started having them during the day. I would see bugs crawling in my food or figures out of the corner of my eye. I had just gotten married and was getting ready to move into our home together, so there was a lot of stress. One night, I woke up and there was a disturbing looking woman in my bed. She opened her mouth and screamed in my face. I yelled so loud and so painfully that my husband started to scream too and my brother-in-law came running into our room. He said he thought we were being murdered with how intense my scream was. I couldn’t sleep for days after that. I cried most of the time, had to take a break from my teaching job, and was extremely paranoid. I called my doctor and he was amazing. He called in a favor from his friend, a psychiatrist, who met with me on his day off and listened to my whole story. At the end, he told me he suspected I had bipolar disorder with psychosis. He put me on Abilify and a high dose of Zoloft. After about two weeks I became the most manic I have ever been to the point that I was physically shaking from the thrill of it. My doctor said it was triggered by the high dose of Zoloft and lowered my dose. He said this further confirmed to him that I had bipolar disorder and not schizophrenia. I felt normal for a little while after that.

Since then (I am now 26), I have moved to a new state and had to get a new doctor. She is also wonderful and has been very helpful. She ended up switching my Zoloft to Wellbutrin after a depressive period. I way prefer the Wellbutrin but find that I am very up and down. I have had periods where I spent ridiculous amounts of money, I am currently in quite a bit of credit card debt due to this, and also periods where I can’t get out of bed. For the past year I’ve found it difficult to take care of myself. I can’t cook or clean anymore and all I want to do is party, travel, and sleep. I’m lucky if I can get myself to shower more than once a week and brush my teeth more than every few days.

Two weeks ago I crashed, big time. I had been manic for a while without realizing it. I spent quite a bit of money on travel and music festival tickets and was acting impulsive. I seemed happy so I didn’t question it. I loved my job more than nearly anything else in my life. I work as a private ESL teacher for adults and kids, and my students are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. Unfortunately, I hit a major depressive episode two weeks ago and had to take a leave of absence from my work. On my husbands birthday, I was the most depressed I have ever been and was feeling impulsive. I cried the whole day and my husband ended up calling crisis services, who helped so much. I decided to keep fighting but it has been hard. Since that day I have had a difficult time getting out of bed and have not yet returned to work. My doctor changed my mood stabilizer to Caplyta about a week ago. I’m scheduled to return to work tomorrow, and I’m terrified that I will have a breakdown during a lesson. My husband and I decided it would be best to be around friends and his family, so we are staying with his family for the time being. Being around certain people helps a lot, being around others makes things worse. I had a moment of clarity this weekend and felt like life is truly worth the struggles, but that feeling went away when I visited with my best friend who is struggling with postpartum depression. I thought it would be good to talk through things together. I was totally wrong. She was so sad and hopeless that it brought back all of those feelings for me too. I don’t think it helped either of us cope at all.

I am feeling really down again now and am still in bed after sleeping for 15 hours and refusing to get out of bed after waking up (it’s 7pm here). I just feel like I am going to be up and down for the rest of my life. My highs are so high and my lows are so low. Does this ever end? I want to get better. I want to be able to help my husband cook and clean. I want to be able to teach without regularly needing time off for my mental health. I don’t want to put my husband through financial issues for the rest of our lives. He’s such a wonderful, supportive man, who never makes me feel like a burden, but that is what I am. I am a burden. I just want to feel ok. Not manic, not depressive, but normal. I want to be present in conversations instead of constantly spacing off. Will I ever be stable for a long period of time? Or am I destined to be up and down forever?

Thank you to anyone who read my story. Thank you in advance for any advice you give me. Thank you for the support.

— Danielle