Experience Mental Illness

I do not have bi-polar. But I do have some insight on how mentally and physically tiring it can be for those who do have it. And you, too, can gain this insight. Here's how.

Sign up to live for a week with a person who is cycling. Cycling is the psychiatric term for moving from one mood level to another. Not all who have bi-polar cycle to the extreme ends of the mood spectrum, but they swing farther and faster than those who do not have bi-polar. There's also differences in how long each cycle is. For some, each cycle can be weeks or months, for others, there can be several cycles in one day.

In my house, my husband's cycling tends to scoop me up and carry me with it. When he cycles, he sort of clings to me, I assume for some hope of stabilization to prevent himself from taking destructive actions when he's not fit to be making decisions, but by demanding my attention I am forced to respond, at least to some degree, to his own mood, which often takes me through extreme emotions as I struggle to respond to the panic in his own behaviour and mood. It often is like the reaction you would have when you recieve tragic news - a loved seriously injured, a crisis pending, family members arrested, you know the type of thing. For a person without bi-polar, that is the type of event that can cause an uncharacteristically sudden change in mood and thought. Those times cause stress and fatigue.

So when my husband is cycling, and I am forced to respond to his out-of-proportion reactions to events or words, the same type of sudden change is induced in me, along with the stress and fatigue that follow. And it intereferes with my ability to go on about my normal daily activities. Which, I believe, gives me a tiny taste of the toll that mental illness takes on those who live with it.

It ain't pretty.