What's in a name?

Throughout this whole ordeal I've made a point of paying very little attention to the specific diagnoses i'm being given. I know what I left the hospital with (PTSD, depression, alcohol dependence) but since then I've really cared little what they come up with. For one, I think with mental health issues the symptoms are so much more important than what you call them...at least as far as my perspective is concerned. Second, with my natural manipulation abilities, if I start thinking too much about one diagnosis i'm more likely to shape my thoughts and answers around it. Already, when the doctor asks me a question my first thought goes to what is the "right" answer. And these are questions about what's going on in my life...nothing complicated...but my brain still jumps to what I think he might want to hear. I already overthink everything the drs and therapists too (guess that therapy technique...lol) but imagine if I was researching possible dx's along with it. Then I'd be trying to match my symptoms and phrase things in WebMD terms. Yeah not good. lol

Anyway...I bring this up now because I saw my dr. today. He thinks that my lack of sleep and crazy racing thoughts of two weeks ago was a manic episode and that this is bipolar. For some reason this hit me really hard. I'm not really sure why it bothers me so much...it just seems big. I was dx'ed with bipolar years ago and put on lithium, which really messed with me. I was taken off of that and "undiagnosed" soon after by the less than bright psychiatrist that worked at the school I went to for college part 1. I was so relieved to be off of lithium that I didn't really give it a 2nd thought. (I'm on depakote this time...if you're wondering).

Back to now...I'm not sure why the bipolar dx is bothering me so much. Maybe because I have a couple of friends who are bipolar who have had some major issues to battle. Not that I'm not struggling myself, but I've watched their struggles from the outside and seen their pain. It's weird because I don't think bipolar is really much "bigger" than the other dx's that have been floating around, but i'm struggling to accept it. Really I don't even need to accept it. We're trying depakote this week and going from there. The good news is that if this is what it is the new meds should help me sleep better and help the anxiety with fewer meds. The bad news (besides what's been mentioned) is that I have to wait an additional week at least before re-starting antabuse. My dr. wants to make sure that we can see the changes just from depakote without wondering if maybe it could be the antabuse. For now the lack of antabuse doesn't bother me...I've been off it for a week now waiting for this appt. I'm feeling pretty strong in sobriety for the moment but of course I can't just decide to schedule potential relapse thoughts for next week when I'm back on it. It just means I'm going to need to focus even more on taking care of my sobriety. Clearly the antabuse doesn't work as much as I'd thought it would, but it did keep me from being able to drink till passing out, which in my eyes is the only way to drink. :P Maybe I'll just pretend i'm still on it.

It's really exhausting to be changing meds around so much, but I really really want to believe that there are meds out there that will really work for me. I'm just trying to hold on to that hope and just keep swimming...or treading water...depending on the metaphor you're using...or cartoon character you're quoting.

Tonight I'm grateful for my groups I've been going to. As much as I hate them sometimes it's amazing to hear people say the exact things that I've been thinking/feeling...sometimes before I've even realized I'm thinking them! I had a really good DBT group today. First, I connected with a girl that I have a lot more in common with than I realized. (We even exchanged phone numbers afterwards though we're both super shy about calling anyone..."maybe just text..." were her words. lol) I also had another light bulb moment. We were talking about times when we get overly emotional or mishandle situations. He wrote out a circle on the white board with the words Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Outcomes in that order. The idea is that that's how things cycle...first we have a thought, then we react to it with feelings, we take action, and either have a positive or negative outcome. The idea is that usually we try to fix the feeling part of the cycle but that's really where we have very little control. The two spots where we can have an impact are the thoughts and the actions. When something goes wrong, it means we either need to reshape the way we're thinking about it or how we respond to it. That just clicked and made soooo much sense to me for the times when I get overwhelmed and react by shutting down rather than taking action on the bits that I can control. After all, an itty bitty baby step is far, far, better than no action! So yeah...grateful for that. :)