Self-Care For Mood Disorders: Preventing Overwhelm

Whether you have a mood disorder or ADHD, having the support of your family can make all the difference in how well you cope with your disorder.  For me, just knowing the fact that my partner is in the other room helps me to feel stabilized.  Living with another person helps us keep to a regular schedule and feel less isolated.

A few years ago, when I was healthy, I was able to enjoy the times my partner was traveling on business (and these times were many).  I used that time to do my own stuff -- write, work on art projects, etc.  I missed him, sure.  But I was fine when he was around.

This past week was not so easy.  The difficulty was compounded by the fact that my partner and I have been having some fairly serious problems.  Even though we finally had a productive discussion the night before he left, I spent most of the week with feelings of shock, grief, anger, and betrayal.  Until three weeks ago, I thought my marriage was healthy and sound, built on a bedrock of honesty.  Oops.

If my partner had been in town, I would have been reassured by his presence.  We could have continued to talk out our issues.  Instead, he was in another country, in a time zone eight hours ahead of me.  I had to cope by myself, and it was damn hard.  The upside is that I learned some important things about protecting myself from being so overwhelmed that I make bad choices in self care.
I mentioned in my last post that one night I coped with my feelings by drinking Way Too Much.  It was half a bottle of wine and about four shots of vodka.  I'm 5'4" and weigh about 145 lbs.  You do the math.

How did this epic self-care fail come about?

In order to answer that question, I need to figure out what I was feeling and thinking.  As it turns out, I was feeling utterly lonely, completely abandoned, with nobody I could turn to for help.  My thoughts kept going down the spiral of my partner says he's committed to our relationship but he's hidden so much from me; I need to prepare myself for the possibility that he's going to leave me; and really who could blame him ... .  This thought spiral, and the feelings that accompanied it, made me think that large quantities of vodka were a good idea.

Next question: why was I feeling so lonely and abandoned?  I have friends -- granted, not too many who live near me, but I can call on those if I need to.  I also have a family who would be there if I needed them.  And to tell the truth, I don't honestly think my partner will abandon me.  So how did I get to this place?

The answer: listening to sad music all day.

Yeah.  I'd decided that since I was sad, and had a lot of pain to process, that I'd get some catharsis by listening to our collection of Wailin' Jennies albums.  If you don't know them, they're a trio of women with wonderful voices, they do an eclectic range of music that ranges from the blues to rock to Appalachian gospel hymns, and you should totally check them out.

The only downside to them, at least in the mood I'm in, is that a lot of their songs are wistful and sad.  They are songs of regret and lost love, of toil and trouble, ofleaving this mortal plane  (in the words of one of the gospel hymns) "for a better world above".  I spent the day playing all their albums on repeat.  By the end of it I was sure my relationship was over, that I was a lone lorn soul, that I would never love or trust anybody ever again.  Thus the depressive spiral and the vodka.

But at least I learned something important: when I'm already sad, I don't need help feeling more sad.  I'm very vulnerable at the moment.  I need to do everything I can to keep my mood up, because I'm going to be feeling a lot of pain regardless.

My solution has been to change the music.  No Wailin' Jennies, no Eva Cassidy.  I'm sticking to the joyful order of Bach, the searching intelligence of Coltrane, the upbeat energies of Charlie Parker, the cheerful good nature of Ella Fitzgerald.  I changed the music the day after the Night of the Vodka, and I've felt tons better ever since.  Still sad, of course, still betrayed.  But, blessedly, in a position where I can sit with these feelings and not be completely overwhelmed.