Even with great medical advances and new insight, living with mental 
disorders still sometimes has stigma attached to it, perhaps because of 
the human fear of insanity.  It's not uncommon for some patients to 
turn to addiction in an unconscious attempt to self-medicate.

For me, I try to see living with bipolar mood disorder much like 
managing diabetes, and I try to explain it to people that way.  
Managing mood swings and managing blood sugar levels shouldn't need to 
be all that different.

Right now, however, it is still difficult sometimes to be fully 
functioning.  It is also difficult to shed old habits, addictions I 
acquired when mood swings made me feel a loss of control.  These 
habits, though destructive, were something I could control initially-- 
or at least, I felt I could choose when I was going to be happy or 
sad.  The impulsivity of my hypomania hasn't really helped, either.

10 responses total.

Maybe you need to do steps four through nine again?  Those are the
toughest ones, but seem to be the ones which bear repeating most often.

Actually, I'm helping a friend get a particular 12-step group going.  
My wife has already looked at the organization and she might help us 
out.  She printed out the group's version and additional commentary on 
the original 12-steps.  So.. the time is coming that I'll be looking at 
all of them quite carefully.

As I mentioned in another item, I recently quit a medication that had a 
terrible sedative side effect, and I am doing so much better now.  My 
parents are glowing with praise about the improvement.

I do my best to accept it at face value, most particularly that from my 
mother, as I learn to let go of my anger towards her.  I am beginning 
to accept the fact that she has her own quirks, failings, and whatnot, 
and lack of tact combined with a passionate nature is one of them.

Progressing in treatment here continues to bring new insight.  I am 
learning to submit to my Higher Power, as I have failed on my own.  I 
am learning to stop blaming myself, or my situation.  Good mental 
health is helping to make this possible, moreso because I can see where 
to mend, reconcile, etc.

I am also learning not to be afraid of success, or failure.  Both of 
these extremes have been triggering in the past.  I am also learning 
that I don't need to please everyone.

see item:21 for a related topic

My world is rocked again as I've reviewed the symptoms for Asperger's 
syndrome, which is a form of high-functioning autism.  Many of them 
are just too eerily familiar.

I plan to get a referral to a neurologist and make this an official 
diagnosis.

I'm not looking for another excuse, but I am looking for more 
solutions.  Of course, reading this information brings up a lot of 
unhappy memories; I *did* have problems picking up a lot of social 
cues, and while I've come a long way, there are still problems that 
linger.

I hope you're still out there, void, because I have a feeling I'm 
talking to empty space..

Nope, not empty space.  

   I'm still around, just not as much as I used to be.  Let us know
what the neurologist says.

I will.

I talked to my psychiatrist and he said that if it was a possibility, 
it was very mild.

The problem with most mental illness classifications today, he said, 
is that they are still based on diagnostics, not on actual neurology.  
Instead of focusing on brain chemistry, they are focused on symptoms, 
so the categories overlap a lot-- Asperger's overlaps with bipolar and 
ADD, for example.

Hence, there is a lot of gray area.

The important thing is that they are attacking the problem-- the root 
cause.  My med therapy has been better than it's been it a really long 
time.

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