Some dangerous self disclosure here. I once thought that I had a serious mental disorder. This was of course when I was younger, and I kept thinking that my reaction to life was somehow just wrong. I kept going through these cycles where I was feeling great, then after a while, not so great. Upon advice from a friend, I kept a notebook where I tracked my mood. I noticed a predictable pattern. I began to think that I might have a chemical imbalance or something mysterious going on in the internal chemistry of my brain. I wanted to figure out the truth behind this phenomena. So I met with a few professionals, with varying degrees of success. I learned that there are a lot of medications out there to treat this type of mood cycle, I also learned that there are clinical names assigned to people that exhibit extreme symptoms of mood cycles and temperament changes.
I finally met with this psychiatrist. He was an interesting character. His primary job was to work with inmates in prison. I have no idea how I got connected with him, I think a referral from a friend. Now that I think back on that referral, what was this friend saying to me that they would refer me to a prison psychiatrist? Anyway, I have never been afraid of a conversation and I was interesting in learning from his perspective so I went to talk to him. The results of the conversation are the point of this blog post. He told me that the cycles of mood in the human brain are absolutely normal. Everyone experiences this, it is part of being human. He then said, what was abnormal was the way that I was dealing with it.
Now I have no idea why we humans have mood cycles. Perhaps it is simply a matter of diet, or sleep patterns, or as one scientific study I read concluded, mood cycles are directly impacted by the “moon’s semi-diurnal gravimetric tide” in patients diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Ha! Perhaps there is some basis in the age old folklore of the wolf man that comes out every full moon! Better watch out everyone, the Full Moon is coming on March 20th at 9:43PM. Get ready, I am going to change into who knows what! Muhahahaha!
Back to the prison psychiatrist. He basically said that my mood cycles, if I even really had any were temperate and normal at best. Nothing was wrong with me, what was wrong with me was that my reaction to these cycles. He then went into a discussion about how most real mental illness exhibits in young adults. After puberty, a young person about the age of 21 or so, begins to demonstrate or show signs of the successful or unsuccessful methods of coping with or dealing with stress, external factors, decision making, and chemical and other hormonal imbalances. Since I was in my 30s at the time of this discussion, he pointed out that I had developed some pre-conditioning on handling changes to my emotional state and that my reactions, coping skills, defense mechanisms are what I needed to look at carefully.
So basically he said to chill out and get over it and just accept the fact that you are not going to feel great and awesome everyday. Some days are going to be roses and other days are going to be dandelions. Black clouds will surround you one day, and the silver lining will break through into brilliant sunshine the next. What I needed to do was recognize that, and stop allowing that to set me off course. Rather – make the decision, make the choice to stay on course. To make correct decisions. Recognize that I was feeling bad today and not allow that to derail my life ambitions. Not allow that temporary feeling of angst or stress to destroy what I was working on. So that brings me to the advice that I now follow.
There are going to be many days in the cycles and tides of habit forming and keeping commitments that just do not work out well. You just do not feel right, you are grumpy, bummed out, discouraged or just plain out of sorts. This is normal, and happens all the time. In fact it is probably a very predictable pattern and you have never actually tracked that pattern to prove it. My advice to myself is to just recognize it. Here is my internal mindset – “Oh, I am feeling like crap today. Everything around me feels dull, my head is foggy and I do not really want to do anything today. My legs feel like lead and my shoulders are sagging again.” I accept that, recognize that is happening again. I make no judgement on this. I do not need to judge myself negatively for having this feeling, it just happens. I am not a failure for feeling bad today. I am not going to collapse into despair and get buried under a mound of anxiety.
Instead, I recognize that I am feeling that way and then I choose to do my commitments anyway. True, I struggle through them. True, I am not as good at them as I would normally be. I might run slower, I might do a worse job then normal. I may not be at my best. However, I do the best I can. I power through it. I make sure that I do not do anything destructive and stupid. Above all – I DO NOT MAKE ANY IMPORTANT LIFE CHANGING DECISIONS in this state. Rather, I wait a few days. Usually, I start feeling better. I am back on track and everything is fine. Then I can make a decision to change something, or make an improvement. As I have kept my commitments over the last 425 days, I have noticed that the downward cycles, the low tide has tended to be farther and farther apart. The low points are less low. My recovery time from the low points is much faster. I do not do destructive things – like eat too much ice cream (kryptonite for me).
So maybe this blog post only applies to me. Perhaps I really do have a mental illness and I am the only one that experiences these temporary setbacks of mood. However, I doubt it. I think we all go though the cycles and tides of emotion and mental state. I just want to say – that you are not alone. We all go through it on some level. What I needed to recognize is not that I can control the tide, or the cycles of the moon. What I can control is how I react.
Guy Reams (425)
365 Alumni
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