So, as a few of you have noticed, I'm already behind.I'm not sure if it's something to do with some last minute plans that were thrown in my path, taking time out to support a friend, or that I just
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Op-eds
A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
(again, as this is backdated, I’m writing this with the benefit of hindsight).
I did actually have this rather neat post about ‘a day in the life’, but, the last few days led to a bit of an epiphany.
You know there’s an Instagram bubble? I think when we write ‘days in the life’ that we sometimes make ‘blog bubbles’. So, instead of talking about what my ideal day should look like, and what it does when I’ve planned it out, I’m going to write about what my day actually is. And for the first time, I’m even going to include some of the mental health stuff I deal with – so this post could be mildly triggering.
I’ll be possibly alluding to self-harm, definitely talking about psychosis and depression and anxiety and insomnia. And I have a favor to ask at the end of this post.
A day in the disordered
I fell asleep at 11:30pm – a year of training and working with an app called Headspace and other meditation apps (honourable mentions to Digipill and Let’s Mediate (I have them on Android, they may exist on iOs), alongside my partner, which is now 80% of how my sleep works out.
Unfortunately, about 1:30am, I wake up again. I wake up to a voice, that I always hear. She’s my constant companion, and she’s very hurtful. If I’m lucky, I take a sip of water, I go to sleep again, and I might get to stay there for a bit. Most nights lately though, I’ve been waking up and finally falling asleep again at 5am.
The advice is, of course, if you’re not able to sleep in bed, to get up. But if I do that and she starts causing trouble for me. At her worst, she can trap me in the smallest rooms in the house. She’s the reason that I can’t get out of the house alone. She’s the thing I’m fighting back with my favor, but we’ll get there.
If I don’t get to sleep until 5 or 6am, I’ll either stay asleep till 8am, or 11am, or sometimes, I’m asleep till 2pm. And because of that, my day is always harder to plan for. How do I plan to be up at 9am, and exercised and ready to work, if I’m not getting to sleep until 6am? The answer is I don’t.
Insomnia is a difficult and hard to live with disorder – couple it with anxiety and psychosis, and though meditation helps, I’m frequently operating in arrears of sleep.
And that’s why I can’t talk about a day in my life. I have half an hour when I wake up that’s a set routine (get up, unplug and box tech coming downstairs with me, plug in anything, such as my Bluetooth headphones or spare batteries that need charged, wash face, rarely moisturise (I’ll be talking about that in S for skin routine, cause apparently, I’m annoying as all hell about that), meditate for ten minutes after making the bed, then come down. At night, I either go up before Tempus and grab a bath, then make my juice/waterbottle for my bedside, plug everything in, brush my teeth, get my Bluetooth headphones connected so that I can meditate, set up the book we’re listening to on Audible. Depending on how I feel then, I either read for 20 minutes, then meditate, or lately, I’ve just meditated, and used a sleepscape to go to sleep to. And then wake up again at 1:30am.
I can’t talk about this really here, but there is going to be an I for Insomnia over on bi-polarbears (the link won’t work until the post goes live 🙂 )
And that brings me to a favor…
As many of you may or may not know, I’m an author. My major project this year is to talk about the fact that I live with a pretty severe (though not the worst, by a long shot) psychosis. I think I’m probably at the end of the ‘living in the community level of it,’ though, she’s quite hard to deal with. As an author too, it becomes difficult. I ‘hear’ my characters, and I don’t like that I hear and see things as well as part of my mental health.
On my birthday, I’ll be releasing a collection of mental health books. I’m not putting up the pre-orders yet, but I am asking people to subscribe to my newsletter, so I can start talking about the run-up to releasing them.
There may be a Patreon, there may not.
What I want to do though, is to remove some stigma surrounding both hearing voices and other psychosis, but I also want to acknowledge that authors do hear voices, and that *is not* as far as I’m concerned, is a psychosis. But I guess that’s between you and your healthcare team.
What I do know is that she’s stolen five years of my life. I’ll never get them back, and while I’ve done some things in there, I’ve not gotten everything that I wanted to do, done. There are other things, of course, that got in the way, it’s not just been mental health, but if I can remove from the whole concept of ‘we don’t talk about this, we’ll get into trouble’, then I will.
And I hope you’ll help me.
If you’d like to, ALL I need you to do is to sign up for my newsletter and join my mental health street team. That’s it. If you also want to share this post or the post about the project, I’d be delighted.
I’ll be talking about about this at P for Psychosis, because it’s important to me. Here, and at Bi-polarbears. I’ve avoided telling people I have issues such as psychosis for so many years, that it’s a bit uncomfortable for me, but I also know I’m in a good community, that accepts me for who I am, and knows me as I am, psychosis or otherwise. I hope to help others like me – because I think in the coming years, as we come out of lockdowns and the shadows of what we did to deal with the pandemic, that mental health is going to be a major issue – more major than even now, and I want to help people that need help. So I am.
It’s a Lockdown in the U-K
While AuthorInterrupted and other blogs will be talking about writing and stuff, Kaiberie.com has always, and traditionally been about everything – writing, artwork, photography, and life. And it’s life today that I’m addressing.
Corona, Lockdown, my government
I don’t hold a positive view, really, on my current government in the UK. I’ve seen exactly one action that seems to be in advance of everything else (cause last year, exams were stressful, and not worked out until June – so, props for that), but we’ve gone from ‘you can go home for Christmas,’ to ‘no, you can’t,’ to ‘and you’re in tier 4, to ‘hey, national lockdown’. Except….that’s a misnomer.
Takeaways are still open, essential services (and those have extended, thankfully) are still open, schools are closed, ans basically, it feels like a bitty solution to something really serious. We’re locking down until February, but I’m currently seeing reports that suggest we may be in it until the new tax year, which is April 1st.
What would I do differently…?
That’s the rub. I can’t really work out what that answer really is. I’m not a politician, I don’t know everything about all of the statistics that are being used to decide, but what I will say is that once again, it feels like mental health has become not just an afterthought, and that’s not pleasant at the best of times, but quite honestly, there’s been a total disregard for mental health entirely in this conversation with most people. Newspapers literally focussed on the impact of closing betting shops and pubs (hello addictive behaviour – of all the examples they could choose…) and talking about how terrible this lockdown is. I can’t really say I’m happy or comfortable with that, and the complete non-response from the government about how they’re addressing mental health and isolation, but if the NHS only has a finite pool of resources, and mental health was already cut down to bare bones and little else, it’s not surprising that this (and cancer and other life-threatening issues) are being put on the backburner. And critically, for that, I don’t blame the NHS at all – I blame the government. I blame Boris for a lot and while I try not to go overly political, I guess this is one of those times I am kinda.
So…what I’d do differently. I’d listen to the advice of the people I was asking to be my experts, I’d be leading by example, and I guess I’d accept my tenure wasn’t popular. Can we expect that of Boris Johnstone?
No.
Not at all.
What we can expect is non-lockdown, Lockdown.
What I’m actually doing…
Back again….
🙂
I’ve spent the last few months trying to find my way, and sort out everything, and as ever, because November is Nanowrimo, I’ve discovered that it’s most important to me that I keep writing. So, I’m planning to change a lot of stuff around and work on everything so that I can get to a place where I’m doing everything I’m happy with. Uni is pretty much under control, so I’ll be planning the rest of it, as I can. I’ve also discovered a love for bullet journalling, so I’ve incorporated that too.
I’ll be blogging more once I import everything that belongs here – I’ll be converting everything and moving it back to here – Author Interrupted is staying as my author specific blog, but everything else is coming back onto here. Mostly so I’ve got specific places to post to 🙂
So…how’s everyone doing? Anyone got any big news?
And then she said….follow me :)
I know, I know, I said yesterday I’d post something, but we filmed this, we filmed some other stuff, and then…well, other things got in the way, so we changed the order we did the vids in, and stuff.
I’m writing this from my bed today – I’m not having a great week already, but I’m sure it’ll get better 🙂
So, today, I’m inviting you over to Authorinterrupted, which you, Constant Reader, may or may not know, is my ‘professional’ writer’s blog, but which, for a very long time last year was just ‘my blog’. Â I’m going to split off the personal posts and either mirror or redirect those to here.
For those of you asking how best to keep up with this instead of remembering where I left off the day before, if you go to ByKai, you should find that all the posts mirror there, though they may appear slightly out of synced order to when I post on Facebook to say there’s a new post live. Â But, also as requested, Kai’s Blog Page, or Kai’s Blogging Network as I prefer to call it, has started this week too! Â Exciting stuff.
So, without further ado, my promised freebie, and see you later, over on Authorinterrupted.com – let me know what you think!
If it’s not behaving here, I’m launching my own Youtube Channel too, so please join me over there, or on my page at Facebook, where I’ll load it direct!
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Task lists, 750 words, and routines
I’ve got a very specific routine to my writing day now – one that I thought people might be interested in.
I’ve mentioned in the past that music is really important to me – and up until last week, my morning started with my portable alarm clock (aka my phone) which I would listen to until I went down stairs, then music would go back on at exactly 8am, when the youngest went outside to wait for her taxi.
But the last week, at 8am, I’ve taken the chance to come upstairs with a cup of tea, and I’ve crucially left music off.
So, I write my task list and contemplate my day in silence.  It’s nice because the bedroom/office I’m in is in full sunlight most of the morning, and into the afternoon when I finish up working for the day (if I’m not coming back to work later) so I’m getting plenty of light where I sit, and there is a tree near the window, so even now, as the weather is turning chilly (and man, it’s chilly this morning compared to the last week), I’ve got birdsong.
From there, I social network.  Twitter and Facebook need constant feeding, and I think I put in 750 words there on their own. I’m still trying to find my stride with G+.
And after that, I start work proper. Â Usually about 8:45, but today, as Steve Jobs died (don’t come to this blog for breaking news, I’m always waaaaay behind the curve), Â I’m not starting until nearly 10am. Â With a full docket and email to troubleshoot as it’s randomly stripping attachments, I’m still melancholy. Â I guess it puts life into perspective when someone that achieved so much goes – not even because he was ‘young’ by today’s standards. Â Steve Jobs would have been missed whether we were talking about him dying today or in 20,30, 40 years time. Â That kind of impact will never be lost, even to history. Â And that’s some legacy to leave.
What I do know is that while I’ve been a PC person most of my life (due to expense rather than preference), my first ever laptop was a Mac.  from my adopted brother – I bought it from him and wrote on it for nearly a year, until we moved south and it died.  In that time, I even replaced the screen.  I wouldn’t DARE try that on my PC 😉
Is there an ‘up’ side to bipolar disorder?
I know who you are – you’ve just been diagnosed, and you’re thinking that your life is about to end, either metaphorically, or (please don’t do it), literally.
I know who you are, because I’ve been there. Been there several times.
So, the first thing I want you to do is go grab a soothing cup of *whatever* you love. You can even have a tiny shot of liqueur in it if it helps, but only a tiny bit. Don’t drive after, you’ve had bad news anyway, so you shouldn’t be driving. You’re in shock, and we’re going to fix that.
I’ll wait right here.
You good? Huggin’ the mug? I know I was. For me it was hot, sweet, as strong as I could get it, tea.
Firstly. Your diagnosis isn’t a death sentence. It’s not even a commuted death sentence. Take my word for it when I say that there are some incredibly successful bipolars out there in the world. Dare I say ‘HI!!!’ now and wave enthusiastically.
Your meds are possibly going to feel like a death sentence for a while – but there is no medical treatment out there that exists that we take that won’t make you feel a bit lousy, at least some of the time. Unfortunately, the majority of treatments for mental health contain something that makes us dopey. It might be a receptor inhibitor, it might be a flat-out sedative – whatever it is, go with it for a while. Be that zombie. Don’t embrace it because you’ll need to start proactively fighting it soon enough, but it’s perfectly ok to regroup.
Please, remember to drink your comforting drink. Shock’s a nasty thing.
See, still not dead.
I wanted to tell you something though. It’s a secret so lean in close.
There is an up side to bipolar disorder – and it’s not the manic phase. it’s not the fact that we’re treatable and we’re slowly being accepted into society. It’s the fact that….you ready for this….?
This is who YOU are. Bipolar disorder may not seem like it to many, but it’s possibly part of your personality, and it’s definitively part of the way you see the world – good and bad. There’s a reason for feeling the way you do, and it’s not that you’re a dick, a douche, or don’t belong.Â
More tea ALWAYS makes it better by the way.
Look at it this way – you’ve discovered that you are this *person* living a kind of  lie, trying to remain as ‘normal’ as you can, in a world that doesn’t slow down one iota for people who don’t adjust well. You could have felt like your world is out of control. Your world could BE out of control, but it’s not all your fault. I’m not saying some of it isn’t, but you know, sometimes common sense isn’t what we have when we’re going off the rails.
So – no pity parties – not for long anyway – they have a habit of turning into a national day/week/month of mourning if you’re not careful – and don’t mark today as a negative. Be kind to yourself, grab another soothing drink – have that cry if you need it, and then – start learning about the ‘new’ you and how to be kind to yourself.
You’ll thank me – and yourself – for it later.
Mental health and self sabotage
One of the things I’ve noticed about working with people in the mental health community is that most of us are instantly tolerant of the mistakes of others ‘like us’. There’s a lot of outpouring of support, for example, for Charlie Sheen. One of the critical problems with this though is that now, anything we talk about to do with bipolar disorder or anything else – for now at least – will also get lumped into feeds for people watching Mr Sheen’s very public mental breakdown.
Let’s be clear about this – I have personally been saying that I didn’t want to ‘bandwagon’ onto the Charlie Sheen ‘stuff’ because it’s cynical at best to grab traffic from someone else’s misery. It’s also not a cricism of anyone else that has talked about CS on thier blogs, because, lets be honest, smarter minds than me are watching him and have more profound things to say.
What I did want to touch on wasn’t his mental health status (because until he’s diagnosed, he could be detoxing or coming off of some altered mental health state) but how people self sabotage. I’ve seen a lot of it recently – it might be the pressures of the world right now, or it might be that it’s just more evident right now because the ‘hornet’s nest’ has been kicked over with all of the true and false information kicking around, about manic depression and other mental health issues, but what I’m seeing right now is a LOT of reactionary conversations and information that’s entirely contrary to what’s actually evidence led, especially in terms of treatment.
Many of you will know, especially by looking at the archives, that I’m very careful not to advise for or against meds, but instead to advise that you do your own research. I advocate that very strongly actually. Having done both sides of the fence in the last year, it’s important to let people know that both are valid, and depends more on your situation than the opinions of others. While medical opinion shouldn’t be entirely discounted, I’m sure that we’ve all met a professional whose opinion we questioned, doctor or otherwise (for example I don’t buy into much of what Dr Phil said or used to say – simply because tough love isn’t always the answer) so advocating that we make sure that we know exactly what the doctor or other health practiconer is recommending is sensible.
There’s two types of self sabotage – and Mr Sheen seems to be involved in the very public version of one of them – alienation of our support structures and surroundings. It’s of critical importance to understand that these issues are very serious for anyone with mental health issues of any kind – if you lose or alienate anyone that’s around to help you, that’s one less person to turn to when you need support, right?
There’s another kind of self sabotage – where you believe everything you read, or get angry with people for providing an overwhelming amount of information, then weigh all of that, internally, equally. It’s true, as I’ve said earlier in this post that there are some really smart minds out there, who say some deeply profound things, but it’s also true that there are people, like me, with no formal qualifications that write what we know. Some of those people don’t even read first, they just let thier fingers run 
Not everyone in the mental health community is going to agree with information (and there are a couple of doozies that I’ve got to rebut on here in the next week, because it seems every ‘mental health expert’ with an opinion has come out of the woodwork!) so it’s important to try and limit any of the behaviours that might land us in trouble. Remember – keep reading and researching!
Bipolar disorder doesn’t just ‘go away’
Editor’s note – this post got quite a lot of attention recently, so I brought it forward to today….
A recent study conducted under clinical criteria highlighted something terrifying for those of us who live with, love someone with, or care for people in our community with bipolar disorder.
(extract)
Relapse and impairment in bipolar disorder
MJ Gitlin, J Swendsen, TL Heller and C Hammen
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles 90024- 6968, USA.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcome of bipolar disorder in the context of maintenance pharmacotherapy.
METHOD: Eighty-two bipolar outpatients were followed prospectively for a mean of 4.3 years (minimum of 2 years); symptom rating and psychosocial outcome scales were used, and pharmacotherapy was rated on a 5-point scale.
RESULTS: Despite continual maintenance treatment, survival analysis indicated a 5-year risk of relapse into mania or depression of 73%. Of those who relapsed, two-thirds had multiple relapses. Relapse could not be attributed to inadequate medication. Even for those who did not relapse, considerable affective morbidity was observed. A measure of cumulative affective morbidity appeared to be a more sensitive correlate of psychosocial functioning than was the number of relapses. Poor psychosocial outcome paralleled poor syndromal course. Poor psychosocial functioning, especially occupational disruption, predicted a shorter time to relapse. Depressions were most strongly related to social and family dysfunction.
CONCLUSIONS: Even aggressive pharmacological maintenance treatment does not prevent relatively poor outcome in a significant number of bipolar patients.
(taken from – http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/152/11/1635)
These conclusions are not new – your own Doctor or GP will tell you these things, citing it as the primary reason that you should be placed and stay on medication. Its important however, to note that ‘even aggressive pharmacological mantinence’ doesn’t change this outcome – meds don’t always help. The highest rates of ‘success’ with bipolar disorder come from the patients that understand their mood swings, their reasoning, their reactions – the underlying chemistry that changes their moods, and their investigation into tailoring their own understanding and treatment of their disorder.
Bipolar disorder is debilitating for some people – it can destroy lives, families and support structures that otherwise would survive anything – and its important to ensure that if you, or a loved one, has a mental health issue of any kind, including bipolar disorder, that you are fully informed and can face the consequences, gifts and obstacles of that diagnosis with dignity, pride and preparation.
D Kai Wilson
D Kai Wilson is a writer, artist, and bipolar one businesswoman with an avid interest in bipolar disorder.
Her first book, ‘Pictures in the Dark – a bipolar’s guide to good mental health’ is available today from http://nonfiction.booksbykai.com
Adverts that annoy me and why that’s important
I’ve always thought the most effective adverts are the ones that get you talking – I remember starting at Uni and seeing a ‘New York Deli’ mayonnaise one that caused offence, but was still hilarious. Â And then the ‘Brains’ from the Thunderbirds dancing one for Drench, which was a bottled water, and caused a lot of conversation between our friends.
But there’s a difference between conversation and annoyance.
Tune Out, Turn Off
There’s two adverts right now that really annoy me – the Windows 7 advert, and the ‘And it’s from Glade you know’ adverts.
They’re both obnoxious, pandering and patronizing – which makes it even worse that I’m even giving them attention.
Windows 7 Â – I’m a PC and Windows 7 was *never* my idea
The ‘I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea’ adverts are probably remotely true in that people have bitched and whined about Vista since before it was released. Â So if you consider the BILLIONS of bug feedbacks ‘thier’ idea, then sure, they created Windows 7. Â The truth of the matter is that Windows 7 was designed around feedback that we all made – alongside some things that Windows 7 may or may not have asked people about.
I’m actually unsure whether the people that say they’ve suggested the features really did – but it feels so fake and so contrived that I doubt it. Â And though I’m now a Windows 7 user (because I felt that it was an improvement on Vista, mainly on the strength of the beta tested product) those adverts are almost enough to make me switch, permanently, to a Mac. (that and the ’switch’ advert is another funny one – done right). Â You’ll see how close they are to the ‘Im a windows 7 adverts.
And it’s from Glade, you know
Oh my god, another advert that I hate because there’s some stupid idea that every stay at home mother does the things that the inane woman does. Â As a SAHM, I can say, flat out, that I don’t care how the house smells when people show up – clean is better than overpowering sweet candles, unless I’m really in the mood for them. Â As for the ‘it’s that clever’ – clearly, Glade aren’t.
A cleaning product or home comfort product shouldn’t focus on patronising anyone – we know it smells good, we know it is worth it if we need that ‘comfort’ – but why not sell the comfort rather than the concept that it’s that clever. Â That phrase doesn’t say ’simplicity, it says ‘you can’t remember when you set it off last, and we need to build in a function that fires it off unless you press the button on the front. Â Personally, the only Glade device I have is facing the wall so it doesn’t go off every time we wander past, and I press the button when I want it.
Why this is Important
You might think that the fact that advert annoy me isn’t important – but in both cases, I’m part of their ‘target’ demographic, at least on the surface. Â My problem with Windows 7 is that they are dumbing down operating systems, and yet expecting people to manage increasingly complex and powerful systems with them – and the two don’t meld well. Â The fact that I’m tech support to my parents tells me that Windows 7 hasn’t helped. Â As for Glade – I’ll only ever buy it when it’s on offer because my house smells clean enough with the polish and all of the sprays that we use to clean glass, and the floor and everything else. Â And none of my friends are so shallow that they care about whether the house smells of Gardenia and Wildflower.
Are bipolar disorder and schizophrenia genetically related?
Since starting to study psychology at University, I’ve discovered a couple of things about my personality, studies and how though lots of them appear to repeat the same things, over and over again, some do actually pull in information of interest.
I’m going to explain my research process in greater depth in another post, because it works for academic, personal and professional projects, but I have google alert emails daily that post information (news and blog posts mostly) that mention my keywords prominently. In the ‘bipolar+disorder’ set, I found this link, and wanted to share the underlying idea with you.
The link was called ‘common causes of schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder’ and talks about a study that was undertaken in Sweden and has recently appeared in the Lancet.
What the study found
Though I’ve not seen this study myself (because I can’t access Aleph, the computer’s library from home), it says that there was a statistical link found between those with bipolar disorder and the incidence of schizophrenia, and vice versa. Net result of the study of 2 million families was interesting, and probably not for the reasons listed in the report.
Of the 2 million studied families, 35,985 (1.7% – or just under 2 in 100) had schizophrenia and 40,487 (2.02%) had bipolar disorder as a confirmed diagnosis. In total, they amount to less than 4% of the studied group, and yet, they found that there was a link of increased incidence between the two diseases if you have one in your family.
I know how convoluted these studies can be, first hand – and my tutors deliberately teach me to question the information in every study to ensure that it meets both scientific, ethical and common sense standards. And the question now arises, having looked at the brief abstract, ‘is there an increased or correlatable percentage between the 96% and their chance of developing bipolar disorder? What diseases make up the ’1 in 4′ percentage that is always so highly vaunted in medical fields, if bipolar and schizophrenia only make up 4% in these studied cases, and most importantly, is there a real world value to this information, other than a statistical link to two diseases that paralyze families?
I’ll let you know what I find out