Depression and anxiety - lethal combinations of negative emotions that have turned unhealthy.  It's natural for a person to feel sad, or to have worry about an event or situation.  But when that person begins to process those events over and over in his mind, dwell on them, until they become his whole thought process - well, that's the unhealthy part.  I've had a long journey in depression and anxiety recently. 

In May, things came to a head.  Something had to give, and I did.  After a short episode of "snapping", screaming at the 911 operator across the phone and jabbing a knife repeatedly into things that weren't met to meet the point of a knife (not myself), I was led away in handcuffs.  They're coming to take me away ho HO, they're coming to take me away ha HA to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time.  Some of you may remember that song.  Well, it wasn't the funny farm, but Dover Behavioral Health helped save my life and my mind.  I spent 8 days there, receiving much needed rest, some solitude, group therapy, and medications.  Now I'm back.

It's a long journey climbing out a hole like that.  I receive outpatient counseling and see a psychiatrist.  Imagine me, the guy who likes to read people and can intuitively tell who they really are or what they're feeling, needing to get advice on life.  But one gets to the point where he realizes he doesn't know everything about life.  I am happy to say that I don't, not even about my own life.  I need people to tell me things that, quite frankly, are not new to me, but the fact that they apply to me is affirming.  They're things one would usually learn in an AA meeting, like, you cannot control the world or other people - the only person you can exercise control over is yourself.  Wow, what a novel idea!!  But you see, your subconscious mind needs to learn stuff like that.  I'm an intellectual person and I tend to overanalyze and think things through way too thoroughly, which leaves me paralyzed from action.  I have a passive-agressive personality, which holds things in until they explode, then I say things I don't mean in ways I don't mean to say them, and do things I shouldn't do in ways that I don't mean to do them.  I'm working on becoming more assertive in my communication.  If that doesn't ring a bell with anyone, well, look it up on the internet.

To think of myself as having a diagnosable mental disorder is no longer a horror or a crutch.  It is a necessity so that I can receive some help.  Bipolar II disorder, unlike bipolar I, is a little harder to discover, but it is treatable.  I work with people at my job every day who have mental illness themselves and need me to be at my best so I can understand, support, and treat them.  I live with a boy who is (slowly) becoming a young man and who has definitely been diagnosed.  He needs me to be at my best also, and his mother my wife needs someone to lean on and understand her as she continues to receive the brunt of his freqent irrational behavior.  I am slowly returning to that state of being.

I'll be in touch......