Bipolar Disorder Support Group
Bipolar disorder is not just a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders marked by periods of abnormally high energy and euphoria, often accompanied by bouts of clinical depression. This is the place to talk about your experience with bipolar disorder, learn from others' experiences, and find support.
Part VIII...Visitng New Zealand after being away for 18 years has been a rewarding and healing experience for me. Seeing family and friends again after all this time, who got to know me before mental health problems caused havoc in my life. Its good to know that no matter how much adversity I have been through since, essentially who I am has not changed and they remember me as I use to be, all be it almost two decades later.
This proves to me we will never really change who we are or what we are about no matter what happens from when we are born. I believe when most of us come to the age of realizing this we get distracted due to the usual growing pains we all go through, leading us to forget what our actual realization was. I believe their are so many options for people in life and when your are born, all doors are open for you to go through, but more often than not, when looking for guidance you will find its a matter of closing most of the doors, in order for you to find what door is the right one for you to enter.
I learnt in my adolescence that in the modern world if you were career minded the way to be successful was to specialize in a certain field and if you had a natural talent for something then you should work on that to master your art. What I didn't realize at the time is that there may be a time where you will find there actually can be too much of a good thing, that what you were doing was not meant to be a life ling commitment, and you were not intended to limit yourself to just one purpose. This can be a confronting issue much like when a writer experiences writer's block, or a mathematician gets stuck on an equation, and the only solution may be is to stop what you are doing and go do something else, either returning to it again one day, or simply to go onto something else or, like what happened to me, have a complete mental breakdown.
When I was younger, what I explained above, was a natural order of things. I didn't have to think about it, I just naturally did it. Please don't get me wrong here, but the advantage of youth is in fact ignorance, an ignorance to what things may go wrong, and it really is a blissful state. Its not until later in life when time passes that something unexpected is sure to happen, and without guidance this may lead you into a deep hole. Its true that things do not always turn out how you expect them to in life, heck, you don't even think that far ahead, your just happy satisfying your immediate needs. Being aware of what may go wrong and being prepared for that is the key, but how are you to know what you simply don't know?
Well my friends the, knowledge for that can be found with anyone that has spent more time on this planet than you. That older lady crossing the street, that old man feeding the ducks at the local pond, they may have the answer for you. Because they have something you will have to wait years for, simply put...life experience.
It is easy to find the information you are looking for when you know what questions to ask. But what happens when you have more complex questions that simply do not come down to a yes or no answer? When you think about it, life was so simple when you simply obeyed your parents and accepted a simple yes or no answer. But as with most people, you start thinking more for yourself, and you want to know why they have come to their decisions, and believe me your parents would have been frustrated with you as well when you stopped and questioned them. I myself always find it easier to tell someone what to do, other than having to explain to them why I told them to do it. But I guess this is why I never really cut it as a manager especially when time was not on my side.
Its important to be open to knowledge and no, this can't always be found in a text book or on the internet for you may not even know what information you are looking for and not know what questions to ask. Life's important questions are only answered when you live it and are patient with the journey you embarked on when you were born. There have been times when I was in ecstasy when I had fleeting moments that I had a general knowing of all things, its meaning and purpose, only to wake up the next morning for all of it to have left me, lost again in that deep hole. Even though I was in that deep hole and wanted the world to stop, I eventually realized it didn't. and life simply went on, and although I thought I had stopped, I was really just getting ready to start on the next chapter of my life.
This proves to me we will never really change who we are or what we are about no matter what happens from when we are born. I believe when most of us come to the age of realizing this we get distracted due to the usual growing pains we all go through, leading us to forget what our actual realization was. I believe their are so many options for people in life and when your are born, all doors are open for you to go through, but more often than not, when looking for guidance you will find its a matter of closing most of the doors, in order for you to find what door is the right one for you to enter.
I learnt in my adolescence that in the modern world if you were career minded the way to be successful was to specialize in a certain field and if you had a natural talent for something then you should work on that to master your art. What I didn't realize at the time is that there may be a time where you will find there actually can be too much of a good thing, that what you were doing was not meant to be a life ling commitment, and you were not intended to limit yourself to just one purpose. This can be a confronting issue much like when a writer experiences writer's block, or a mathematician gets stuck on an equation, and the only solution may be is to stop what you are doing and go do something else, either returning to it again one day, or simply to go onto something else or, like what happened to me, have a complete mental breakdown.
When I was younger, what I explained above, was a natural order of things. I didn't have to think about it, I just naturally did it. Please don't get me wrong here, but the advantage of youth is in fact ignorance, an ignorance to what things may go wrong, and it really is a blissful state. Its not until later in life when time passes that something unexpected is sure to happen, and without guidance this may lead you into a deep hole. Its true that things do not always turn out how you expect them to in life, heck, you don't even think that far ahead, your just happy satisfying your immediate needs. Being aware of what may go wrong and being prepared for that is the key, but how are you to know what you simply don't know?
Well my friends the, knowledge for that can be found with anyone that has spent more time on this planet than you. That older lady crossing the street, that old man feeding the ducks at the local pond, they may have the answer for you. Because they have something you will have to wait years for, simply put...life experience.
It is easy to find the information you are looking for when you know what questions to ask. But what happens when you have more complex questions that simply do not come down to a yes or no answer? When you think about it, life was so simple when you simply obeyed your parents and accepted a simple yes or no answer. But as with most people, you start thinking more for yourself, and you want to know why they have come to their decisions, and believe me your parents would have been frustrated with you as well when you stopped and questioned them. I myself always find it easier to tell someone what to do, other than having to explain to them why I told them to do it. But I guess this is why I never really cut it as a manager especially when time was not on my side.
Its important to be open to knowledge and no, this can't always be found in a text book or on the internet for you may not even know what information you are looking for and not know what questions to ask. Life's important questions are only answered when you live it and are patient with the journey you embarked on when you were born. There have been times when I was in ecstasy when I had fleeting moments that I had a general knowing of all things, its meaning and purpose, only to wake up the next morning for all of it to have left me, lost again in that deep hole. Even though I was in that deep hole and wanted the world to stop, I eventually realized it didn't. and life simply went on, and although I thought I had stopped, I was really just getting ready to start on the next chapter of my life.
I can relate to one's focus on Childhood Dreams going pear-shaped and then having no coping mechanism for the big wide world. IT was my thing growing up, but couldn't get a job after graduation and gave up on life for so long.
Life has thrown several spanners in my works, but out of it I have become stronger and more determined to overcome.
Jenn, yes I think people on this site should be encouraged to do more when it comes to sharing their story, its definitely helped me, and I love getting feed back where I can. You can get people's different perspectives about it and see things from a different point of view. When writing it coming form the inside looking out, but the reader is from the outside looking in, quite often becoming objective to the whole thing, not so emotionally involved and offer quite intriguing feedback that the writer often wouldn't be able to communicate, or realise with their own story.