I believe most people have their own brand of crazy and mine happens to be Bipolar II with a mix of other lovely things including Ovarian Cysts and Fibromyalgia. Why am I telling you all of my medical problems? Because sometimes the best cure is a really good blog.
After looking around at various male oriented bipolar blogs I decided to see what technorati could find about blogs that included the words "women" and "bipolar" the results? Not much. At this point I turned to Feministing and discovered the joyous wonders of The Trouble with Spikol, a blog by Liz Spikol about her struggles with life, mental illness, bipolar disorder, and mops. Feministing featured one of her YouTube videos in a post about "Mad Pride" several months ago.
I love what Spikol has to say about life and bipolar disorder because it is what I live every day and being bipolar is sometimes a very, very lonely existance. The advantage to having resources like this on the internet is that they allow me stay within the comfortzone of my corner of the couch while allowing me to reach out to the world. Not only does Spikol blog about her own life she also talks about medications, treatment options, and the realities of ECT or electro shock therapy as it's better known.
I particularly appreciated her post on her recent move to a new apartment talking about how she was coping with the massive change: "Dealing With Life? Yes and No". Does it say anything particularly profound? Not really, it's just nice to not feel alone in struggles like this. I also think it's a huge help to have a resource that keeps tabs on the new information that emerges about the effects many of the psych meds used to tread bipolar disorder have such as her post informing people of a new required label for certain meds including Lexapro, Cymbalta, Prozac, Celexa, Paxil, and others.
I've come across blogs about many things such as PTSD and Post-Partum Depression but this was the first really good blog about being a female with bipolar disorder or really any mental illness that I've found yet. It's brilliant.
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Thank you so much for this blog find! I'm a Celexa-gobbling "freak of nature" myself.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, a really good blog sometimes IS the cure. I found that being able to say it was part of feeling better too. Something along the lines of "The first step is admitting that your brain has a problem regulating brain juice (and there isn't anything I can do about it, so stop calling me crazy just because I feel on extreme ends of the emotional spectrum!)."
But coming forward and saying, "Yo. Bipolar 2 here, represent." can be really hard when there is so little information out that about what bipolar is. Thanks for helping bring this message out and about.
Represent!
This is a wonderful post. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking. Fantastic. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Spikol is such an inspirational blogger! I often read her blog and feel like I am not dealing with my bipolar alone. I wanted to share with you a website I came across - http://onlineceucredit.com/edu/social-work-ceus-ba - that offers a lot of great information about bipolar. I hope this is helpful. Keep up with the great blog!
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