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What I do when my mental health goes down [2024-10-22]

I was diagnosed with Bipolar Type 2 and Social Anxiety disorder when I was 17 years old. I remember when I was doing High school, the 2 years I did, my disorder became intense, and I succumbed to psychosis heavily. I remember that I could not wake up from my bed and particularly could not go outside of home. It is very hard to think about those happenings again now. I felt that everybody was acting against me and at one point I thought my mother was poisoning me with my food.

I’m very lucky, I got a treatment from a psychiatrist at the end of my 2nd year of high school. My mother noticed and took me for the treatment.

We can name many disorders in a patient by doctors and till now to be honest I do not know whether I’m diagnosed correctly including the meds I’m taking continuously for the last 9 years. It does help to some extent where my mood swings are not very worse. The anxiety I have when I go outside is a bit tricky to handle though.

Again, being on medications does help and ease certain things. And as always there are side-effects to this. My nerves seem to be getting weirder, and I’m noticing that my fingers start twitching now and then.

But I worry less about this, and the reason is why below content.

This is one part of me living with Mental health disorder and I know that this is certain that I cannot get a cure but that doesn’t mean that I cannot live. I will now come to the other part, which is a portion of mine, I see as a good thing, which is handling when I know when I get into it. Because I know when you are living with this sort of disorder for a longer period, you can predict and feel when you are down and depressed. In my case, I can do that, and I often be conscious about that. I never hesitate to share what I want to share with others, because there is nothing there to hide and nothing there that is non-universal. Everything has its own purpose.

So, in those words I feel that life is not alone. Because I feel we are not alone here and after and more so, I can go ahead and say - the universe is not alone. Everything is an embodiment not one of either but both. There is both good and bad, there is both negativity and positivity, there is both silence and sound. Thus, there is both presence and absence. The presence when you are in the comfort of a person can also be felt in their absence if you seek it.

I feel this understanding and it is there to move further and keep breathing, that I am not alone here and after. This is not just a thought that I keep motivating myself. I do not want to motivate and get motivated; I just want to live and walk the walk. If I do this, life will take care of it by itself. It is very simple, keep breathing. How worser can it get, I do not know – I just need to keep on breathing and that’s all.

My master “Fr. Korko Moses” who is a Christian Priest but teaches from all the religious texts and embrace the self-experience of oneself. He is more of a seeker than a religious person I would say. He told me this quotation quite strongly when I was with him. He did not put God in it although the original quotation has it; maybe because he might have thought that we didn’t come to that point and likely our interactions were lasting only for few years till he became ill with Parkison and moved to a place farther away where I could not travel to see him up until this point neither speak with him on Phone because his voice had become weak and he is feeble. And the quotation is:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. It is here in detail.

This is a beautiful one and the trickier thing is the wisdom to see and understand the difference, particularly for a person with bipolar disorder, I would say.

All those 3 things come through practice and practicing is what life is about. I take one step at a time: Acceptance is what when you realize that in life certain things are the way as it is. Courage is when I see that I can help make the difference in others’ lives and do it by helping; by sharing. Wisdom? I let it come by itself.

The last thing I need to share here is “Training your mind”. There is a Tibetan traditional teaching called “Lojong”. It basically means, “Mind Training”. And I saw a speech online from one of the people who does this teaching. And that person is “Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo”, if I recall now – on all her sayings in the talk, she calls it and portrays the Mind training, a Jewel. And I say here and now that this is the Jewel I am seeking for by practicing and I hope you too!