You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2007.
How was I to know going into 2007 that I had bipolar? That start of this year was me going in and out of the hospital, stunned that choosing to go on an antidepressant could have gone so horribly wrong. How was I to know that I wasn’t just depressed and anxious, with bouts of feeling good?
This next year – what will it look like? Will I be okay? Will these miracle pills that are helping me feel more “normal” then I have ever felt before keep working? Will I be okay for my family and friends?
I am just praying that everything will improve. That nothing will fall apart. Are you praying that too?
Being an empath, as people with bipolar tend to be, I am drained. My closest friends are going through some incredibly painful times right now and I don’t seem to be able to separate myself from their emotions.
(From Wikipedia…)
Empathy is commonly defined as one’s ability to recognize, perceive and feel directly the emotion of another. Since the states of mind, beliefs, and desires of others are intertwined with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more effectively define another’s mode of thought and mood. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes”, or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.
Empathy is also a concept recognized as “reading” another person, completely translating each movement into understandable conversation. Often, an empath can quite literally feel the emotions of another person or persons.
Having my friends feeling pain makes me hurt deeply. I wish I knew how to shut it off. I don’t feel that I am an effective friend when I can’t separate their pain from my emotions.
Do you have bipolar? Are you reading this?
Sometimes I feel really alone in my struggle against this illness. The people in my life don’t understand. They are compassionate but they also just have no idea what I am talking about.
Today it was about my self loathing. I hate hearing how down I am. I hate hearing the messages going through my head. And all the horrible noise in there. Even with the medication the repetitive sounds just don’t stop. The music clips and the bits of thoughts that just loop around endlessly.
I want to know that I am not alone. Isn’t that what we all need? What we all want? Please let me know that you are out there. Allow me the chance to read your blogs and know that I am not going crazy. (Yes, pun intended.)
I think one of the hardest things about bp for me is that I take on other people’s emotions. I love my friends with all of my heart. I love being there for them when they are sad or hurting. I want to hear how they are and sympathize and find if there are ways I can assist.
But I am like an emotional barometer. I walk in to a room and I “feel” what everyone is feeling. If my friend is hurting I “feel” their pain in a very literal way. It flairs my bp and it actually can cause me more pain then it is causing them. They can feel better after having spoken to me, where I can feel ten times worse, and for days after.
I think that there is a huge difference between sympathizing and empathising. Correct me if I am wrong. I think to sympathize means to have compassion for what someone else is going through but to observe it from more of a distance. I think to empathise means to remember how it felt when it happened to you, or to imagine how it must feel to them. For someone with bipolar I think that means going through an actual emotional trama.
I think about how some say they can see a person’s aura. That they see colors around others. I can’t do that. But I can “feel” a person. I feel what they are feeling. I am profoundly aware when someone is in deep pain. Even from across the room.
My brother once said, without me telling him any of this, that he feels other people’s pain so strongly that he finally had to shut down and turn it off. Can I do that? Can the meds or a particular exercise help me to simple shut the emotions of others out? Can I come to a place where I can simply sympathise? Oh what I wouldn’t give for that.
Would it make me care less? Would it make me less understanding and less available? Would it curb my creativity and flair for the dramatic?
