Questions from The Depression Workbook by Mary Ellen Copeland, with answers based on personal experience by Portia St. Luke
The Depression Workgroup: Part I, A Clearer Picture, Chapter 4: Experiencing Mania
Personal Note: Thanksgiving Week Delay
My apologies for not getting anything written for Monday or even Tuesday. I’ve found that trying to make a living based on selling anything (in my case, artwork) means the upcoming Christmas season has meant peddling my wares and meeting with people who have public spaces with walls where they can hang (and hopefully sell) my work. Nothing will sell if is still hanging in my studio. This, to me, is the hardest part of my job: the schmooze, the shuck and jive, the handshake. Left to my own devices, I’m a painter, and would much rather be left alone to just let the creative river flow. However, as a one-woman show, it really doesn’t work tat way. I am grateful for the assistance I get from my little Tribe of Joined Hearts, but there are parts of the business that nobody can really do but me. Meeting with shop keepers and gallery owners is, unfortunately one of them. Take a deep breath and keep going.
So where were this week? Yes, mania, also called bi-polar disorder (as opposed to just depression, or mono-polar disorder.). For me, it’s a good week to discuss this, so let’s go with it.
This time, I have decided to break from the question-and-answer style of the book and simply use it as a stepping-off point to write a personal narrative. It’s more fun for me to write and, hopefully, more readable for you. I would still strongly encourage you, if you are experiencing symptoms and would like to follow along, to pick up a copy of the book.
Part I, A Clearer Picture, Chapter 4: Experiencing Mania
What is Mania?
Just as with depression, mania can be dangerous and debilitating. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, 1994 (American Psychiatric Association, 1400 K Street NW, Suite 1101, Washington, DC 20005-2403 USA) (DSM-IV, p. 332)
A. A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least 1 week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary).
B. During the period of mood disturbance, three (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted (four if the mood is only irritable) and have been present to a significant degree
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inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
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decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep)
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more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
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flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
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distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)
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increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation
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excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments)
Personal experiences with mania:
“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.”
While the author of this quote has been lost to time, the sentiment rings just as true for me as the day I first heard it. After nearly 20 years of battling this illness, I can not speak as a doctor or a mental health professional, but I can speak as one who’s been there, and done a fair share of “research” (ie: made the mistakes and lived to tell the tale) that I would like to share with you, in the hopes that it may help someone who sees themselves or someone they love in these lines.
It’s been widely recognized throughout the medical community that mood disorders (ie: depression/ mono-polar and manic depression/ bipolar) run in families. Some very convincing arguments have been put forward theorizing genetics may be the single most common cause of the organic brain disorder that leads to chronic mood disorders. (If, like me, you’re tired of riding that tired old hobby-horse that blames “bad parenting” or “something naughty you did,” please get off of the “organic disorder as sin and punishment” idea. As science, it is outdated, and clings to ancient Judeo-Christian concepts of sin and redemption over hard science and legitimate resesearch. I have found it has very little likelihood of serving your greater sense of self in the long-run.)
Almost on cue, once I finished last week’s entry on depression, I got a manic rush of energy and was suddenly very aggravated over the general state of disorder in my house. Now, the house is never “immaculate,” (“Martha Stewart does not live here.”) but depression has made housework even less possible. I look at the still unpacked boxes from our move-in last May, artwork from con season, then life exploding, Samhein decorations from last month… and now we can count layers of debris. Charming.
Suddenly, I wasn’t depressed anymore. After all, how long, really, will it take to hang that stack of pictures? What about tidying the front porch, or sorting through a long-forgotten cardboard box that hasn’t been touched since the move? Suddenly, I’m closer to the meth-popping 1950’s housewife: I want to get everything done right now, including the thousand half finished projects from years of previous depressions. I want to vacuum and dust the entire house, and put away every last stitch of clutter. I am a juggernaut, and, I strongly suspect, I am probably scaring the blue hell out of the people and animals who share my household. I remember a high-school boyfriend’s grandmother one said, “She talks like a machine-gun.”
Weight is falling off of me without my trying, but I don’t mind; it’s within healthy limits (2 lbs a week) and I was heavy to begin with. However, the ease with which it’s happening is a little disturbing. Without pride, I admit I’m of no stronger willpower than anyone else, possibly weaker, and have never been very good at weight loss. At my heaviest, I tipped the scales at over 400 lbs. I have slowly lost about 100 lbs since then (and I say “about” since we have no exact idea how high above 400 I was. A triple-beam scale stops at 400, but a freight scale had me as 450, which would put it as 150 lbs, all told. Again, that’s an estimate.) I got that large because I simply love food. I lost the weight slowly. However, suddenly, I simply have no interest in food. Odd for me? You bet it is.
When my brain flipped over from depression to mania, I suddenly found myself with the energy, the “inner fire,” to WANT to finish every old unfinished piece, where before I wanted only to sleep and be left alone. I check email about once a week (sorry folks) simply because I have so much else to do that I don’t have time. I’m the kid on Christmas morning who simply can’t sleep, and all the world is my Cracker-Jack box, just waiting for me to find the treasure.
Granted, the timing couldn’t be better: this week is crucial if I am to get anything off of the Christmas season (if there even is a Christmas season this year: times are hard all around.) I’ve said before that the mono-polars (depressives) are the ones who really get the short end of the stick. At last I have mania interspersed between my depressive episodes, so the house does get cleaned from time to time. Artwork does get finished. Business is transacted. My depressive friends don’t get to enjoy any such luxury.
However, I also understand (all too well) that the feelings of invincibility that come from a high mania can land me in just as much trouble as a bad depressive episode. Mania can be just as damaging as depression.
The mental health professionals I’ve spoken with almost always cite “lack of medication compliance” as the biggest problem with their manic-depressive clients. After all, if patient feels this good, why would they want it to stop? Forget those meds that stabilize you mood, they only bring you down, right? So, the client stops, and just like the way that depression spirals downward and further downward, mania spirals upward and further upward until you’re Mr. Toad in the Wind in the Willows (classic book, adapted by Disney studios, and in my layman’s opinion, a great look at mania.) your friends are worried about you, acquaintances are afraid of you, when you speak you sound like a strung-out meth addict, talking at a thousand words per minute. Eating and sleeping may be for pikers, but you’re getting so much done!!!
Most commonly, once the mania is whipping about at a tornado pace, either the mania crashes (owie) or concerned friends and family intervene and make sure the correct meds get back in place. If too much damage has been done, a trip to the psychiatric emergency ward may be in order. Either way, all that wild energy has become a bonfire that’s raged out of control for long enough, and it needs to be put out one way or another.
Medication compliance, just as with depression, can be such life saver. Just as it saves the brain from spiraling into the dark places of depression, it can bank the fires of mania into coals that can be useful, steadily warming and longer lasting, but safe enough not to destroy lives. After all, the lift in energy is lovely, but a wild-fire is not.
Next Week:
Part I, A Clearer Picture, Chapter 5: Taking Responsibility for Your Own Wellness
The above comments are expressed in the hopes of becoming a tool for healing others. Portia is part of “The Depression Workgroup,” a small group within the Church of the Ancient Paths formed with the intent of working with one of our church’s senior ministers, Rt. Rev. Adrian Tremayne on depression (revauntieadrian on livejournal, email is adrian@churchofancientpaths.org), using The Depression Workbook, A Guide for Living with Depression and Manic Depression, by Mary Ellen Copeland, M.S., M.A. As a tool towards healing Depression and Manic Depression. The version we have is the second edition, so that’s what ’s forming the background of this work. Please feel free to follow along. (Picking up a new or used copy is advised, as I’m typing only brief excerpts and the questions themselves.) The answers provided here are based solely on the opinions of Portia St. Luke. They are not necessarily the opinions of the Church of the Ancient Paths.
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