• The General Mental Health Forum is now a Read Only Forum. As we had two large areas making it difficult for many to find, we decided to combine the Mental Health & the Recovery sections of the forum into Mental Health & Recovery as a whole. Physical Health still remains as it's own area within the entire Recovery area.

    If you are having struggles, need support in a particular area that you aren't finding a specific recovery area forum, you may find the General Struggles forum a great place to post. Any any that is related to emotions, self-esteem, insomnia, anger, relationship dynamics due to mental health and recovery and other issues that don't fit better in another forum would be examples of topics that might go there.

    If you have spiritual issues related to a mental health and recovery issue, please use the Recovery Related Spiritual Advice forum. This forum is designed to be like Christian Advice, only for recovery type of issues. Recovery being like a family in many ways, allows us to support one another together. May you be blessed today and each day.

    Kristen.NewCreation and FreeinChrist

Like Rip van Winkle

mothcorrupteth

Old Whig Monarchist, Classically Realpolitik
Jun 3, 2017
498
439
38
Huntsville, AL
✟42,344.00
Country
United States
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Constitution
I recently had an episode in connection with my new job that resulted in my being fired.

I went into a paranoid depression. My shrink made the recommendation to bump my Risperdal up from 0.5 mg to 1.0. While it's only been a few days, I'm really starting to experience the world in a different way, a way that's both familiar and strange. On the one hand, it's familiar because it feels more like how the world was when I was a child--I recall fairly vividly that I noticed something different about my thoughts after I was about 13. But on the other hand, it's very, very strange. I think it may be the first time I am experiencing the world as an adult should experience it. It feels like... like I've been asleep for 20 years. When I reflect back on the last two decades, I cannot recall a time I have not felt either a hopelessness combined with disinterest in my hobbies, or an overbearing passion and obsession for whatever interests me at the time.

It is especially disorienting to experience ordinary confusion for what I think may be the first time. I've experienced existential confusion, a kind of radical uncertainty about what is real. I've had trouble grasping a handful of concepts I've read in academic textbooks. But I don't think I've ever experienced, that I can remember, the emotions that come when you don't know what someone else means. And so you could say, I'm confused over the experience of being confused. And I imagine that without my meds, this experience would make me horribly sad, but I actually only feel curious over the philosophical side of it all.

But even more than that, I don't feel any of the terrible anxiety over literally everything. It's kind of nice, even if I don't actually have work right now.
 

anna ~ grace

Newbie
Supporter
May 9, 2010
9,071
11,925
✟108,146.93
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
God be with you on your journey, Moth. Been following your thoughts and recent events on TAW. Hope you can get some down time spiritually, and maybe, get to a monastery, too, if that is where God is calling you. Pax Christi, Sir.
 
Upvote 0

mothcorrupteth

Old Whig Monarchist, Classically Realpolitik
Jun 3, 2017
498
439
38
Huntsville, AL
✟42,344.00
Country
United States
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Constitution
God be with you on your journey, Moth. Been following your thoughts and recent events on TAW. Hope you can get some down time spiritually, and maybe, get to a monastery, too, if that is where God is calling you. Pax Christi, Sir.
Thanks.

I mean, it just really hurts that anyone would accuse me of what they did. It honestly sends me spiraling into questions of whether I said or did things I wasn't even aware of. And even if I could explain to my employer that I've been hypomanic, what proof do I have? My (previous?) baseline is so obsessive and hyper to begin with that even my parents have a hard time telling when I go hypomanic. I have a feel for it, but whenever I ask trusted people at the time whether I'm manic, they say no. Then, to my frustration, when I let the hypomania continue under the notion that I'm actually finding a new normal, people change their tune: "Oh. Oh, yeah. You were really hyper." It leaves me really vulnerable to gaslighting, which is what I think my employer is trying to do. I don't know. But now I'm leaning away from monasticism and toward private tutoring or ESL work. I'll probably change my mind a dozen more times while I'm trying to get stable, but who knows?
 
  • Prayers
Reactions: anna ~ grace
Upvote 0

anna ~ grace

Newbie
Supporter
May 9, 2010
9,071
11,925
✟108,146.93
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Thanks.

I mean, it just really hurts that anyone would accuse me of what they did. It honestly sends me spiraling into questions of whether I said or did things I wasn't even aware of. And even if I could explain to my employer that I've been hypomanic, what proof do I have? My (previous?) baseline is so obsessive and hyper to begin with that even my parents have a hard time telling when I go hypomanic. I have a feel for it, but whenever I ask trusted people at the time whether I'm manic, they say no. Then, to my frustration, when I let the hypomania continue under the notion that I'm actually finding a new normal, people change their tune: "Oh. Oh, yeah. You were really hyper." It leaves me really vulnerable to gaslighting, which is what I think my employer is trying to do. I don't know. But now I'm leaning away from monasticism and toward private tutoring or ESL work. I'll probably change my mind a dozen more times while I'm trying to get stable, but who knows?

Prayers for you, Moth. Sometimes employers will do little, crummy, passive-aggressive things to push a good guy out, and this may have been what happened to you. You sound bright, aware of your own struggles, objective, and compassionate, too. All good qualities.

Wherever God wants you, take it one step at a time. Maybe talk to your priest, or spiritual father? You're clearly gifted. And smart.
 
Upvote 0

mothcorrupteth

Old Whig Monarchist, Classically Realpolitik
Jun 3, 2017
498
439
38
Huntsville, AL
✟42,344.00
Country
United States
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Constitution
Prayers for you, Moth. Sometimes employers will do little, crummy, passive-aggressive things to push a good guy out, and this may have been what happened to you. You sound bright, aware of your own struggles, objective, and compassionate, too. All good qualities.

Wherever God wants you, take it one step at a time. Maybe talk to your priest, or spiritual father? You're clearly gifted. And smart.
I would gladly trade being "gifted" for just knowing without any doubt what's real and what's just one of my delusions. (I thought until the night before last that the FBI was tracking me as what they believed was a Russian spy--they probably are, but why worry about it?) But thanks. I think I will reach out by email to my priest here, once my morning nervousness subsides from my L-theanine and Risperdal. Man, I feel so messed up. Not at all like last night. It makes me wonder how anybody never figures it out until I do something stupid.
 
  • Prayers
Reactions: anna ~ grace
Upvote 0

anna ~ grace

Newbie
Supporter
May 9, 2010
9,071
11,925
✟108,146.93
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
I would gladly trade being "gifted" for just knowing without any doubt what's real and what's just one of my delusions. (I thought until the night before last that the FBI was tracking me as what they believed was a Russian spy--they probably are, but why worry about it?) But thanks. I think I will reach out by email to my priest here, once my morning nervousness subsides from my L-theanine and Risperdal. Man, I feel so messed up. Not at all like last night. It makes me wonder how anybody never figures it out until I do something stupid.

Talk to your priest. You're struggling with a lot right now, Sir. Talk to your priest. Don't try to go at this alone. You're a decent guy who's got a lot on his shoulders. Prayers for you, friend.
 
Upvote 0

mothcorrupteth

Old Whig Monarchist, Classically Realpolitik
Jun 3, 2017
498
439
38
Huntsville, AL
✟42,344.00
Country
United States
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Constitution
Talk to your priest. You're struggling with a lot right now, Sir. Talk to your priest. Don't try to go at this alone. You're a decent guy who's got a lot on his shoulders. Prayers for you, friend.
I made an appointment with him for tomorrow. But I'm starting to feel a whole lot better about everything after watching Band of Brothers and thinking over things in that context. It clicked with me: My (now former) boss's business is surviving because she has rich parents. Her husband will tired of her micromanaging within a couple years and divorce her. The business will never really succeed. It's on me to time my next job in the window between the interval where she's still mad at me and when everything finally falls apart. Then she'll probably turn out like my ex and do something silly in a different field so that she no longer presents an obstacle. I'm actually very optimistic in light of that, and although I'm certainly going to give myself more time to get stable, I think I stand a fighting chance.
 
  • Friendly
Reactions: anna ~ grace
Upvote 0

mothcorrupteth

Old Whig Monarchist, Classically Realpolitik
Jun 3, 2017
498
439
38
Huntsville, AL
✟42,344.00
Country
United States
Faith
Eastern Orthodox
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Constitution
After talking to my priest today, after telling him my life experience, I realized that every psychologist I have ever seen has missed something that my old Bible Methodist pastor caught, implicitly. I'm not just bipolar. I'm comorbid borderline personality. I don't just have the discrete episodes of intense mood. I'm always in some intense mood or another. And the only reason I never realized it earlier, in spite of my psychology education, is that I thought that was just the experience of growing up. But the double dose of antipsychotics is helping me figure out what my normal experience is supposed to be.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: anna ~ grace
Upvote 0

anna ~ grace

Newbie
Supporter
May 9, 2010
9,071
11,925
✟108,146.93
Country
United States
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Married
After talking to my priest today, after telling him my life experience, I realized that every psychologist I have ever seen has missed something that my old Bible Methodist pastor did, implicitly. I'm not just bipolar. I'm comorbid borderline personality. I don't just have the discrete episodes of intense mood. I'm always in some intense mood or another. And the only reason I never realized it earlier, in spite of my psychology education, is that I thought that was just the experience of growing up. But the double dose of antipsychotics is helping me figure out what my normal experience is supposed to be.

I'm glad you're able to figure some of this out. It sounds like a combination of spiritual and psychological self-analysis. And complicated. The brain is incredibly complicated. The soul is complicated. I'm thankful talking to your priest has helped you, Moth. I hope over the next weeks and months, you can continue to sort things out, and get focus. And peace.
 
Upvote 0