I've been reading up more on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. And now?

A few days ago I shared some cursory thoughts about Lindsay Clancy and her murder trial.  What immediately shocked me was the sheer number of medications that she was on.  As a former mental health professional, as someone with a mental health condition myself who has experienced issues with meds, I was absolutely floored by all the drugs that Clancy was taking.  What I was thinking most was about the very significant probability of drug interactions that would have possibly clouded her senses, including her moral judgement.

Intrigued, I looked into the case further.  One friend alluded that he couldn't believe I had been unaware of this trial going on.  What can I say?  I've been very busy lately: everything from starting a new job to getting a new car, to the past few days when I've been working on a horror story (that will absolutely outrage some people if it ever gets published).  And I'm not really all that much a fan of sensationalism, something the Lindsay Clancy murder trial seems rife with.

But I took a harder look at the case.  And now, what do I think?

Lindsay Clancy needs to be found guilty and sent to prison for the rest of her life.

There are three possibilities that I see going on with her.  There is the notion that she suffered from post-partum psychosis, on which her defense is hanging their chances on.  There is the possibility of a condition like bipolar disorder.  And then there is the possibility that she is a full-blown psychopath: something that there is no cure for and it could perhaps be said there is no hope either.

Folks, mental illness can distort thought.  It certainly has to me, too many times since the onset of manic depression in the winter of 2000.  It suppresses inhibitions.  I've written about it in my book, how being manic led to me doing some horrible things because of an outraged libido that could not be satisfied.  I did other things too, that I am not proud of.

But there was always a choice.  Unfortunately I chose wrong, more times than I can count.

There remained moral choice though.  And that is where Lindsay Clancy went horribly wrong and deviated straight into pure evil.

Clancy, apparently, researched ways on how to kill her children.  She planned this.  Clancy spent an inordinate amount of time looking at methods of ending her children's lives.  That is something that mental illness can never bring about.  Can mental illness lead to murder?  Yes, when passions go out of control.  But to premeditate the harming of others?  That takes free will.  She had every opportunity to pull away.  If she was going through psychiatric issues she could have addressed those.  But she didn't.  If she truly has a mental illness she spent far more time indulging her dark fantasies than she did in doing her damndest to stave off the dark thoughts bedeviling her.

I don't believe that mental illness, including post-partum psychosis, can be used as a viable excuse of what Lindsay Clancy did.  She maintained enough reason to spend time studying how to kill her own children.  That alone invalidates her defense.

Which leaves us with psychopathy.  Something almost entirely removed from the concept of traditional mental illness.  A complete disregard for others.  A detachment from moral restraint that makes anything justifiable in the eyes of the psychopath.

There is no real treatment for such a person.  There is no "getting better" for a psychopath.  Thankfully true psychopathy is a rare condition.  And not all psychopaths are necessarily evil.  It's been suggested that psychopathy is a trait that can be found in many among the executive business community.  It might make them exceedingly cutthroat in their dealings but there seems to be at least some realization that bad things will happen if they go too far.

That isn't common among psychopaths however.  But I'm digressing.

What Lindsay Clancy did in murdering her children involved either a chosen course of action in researching how to kill her offspring and she's trying to hang that on a temporary mental condition.  Or she is a psychopath who did what she did without feeling moral compunction.

However it is, she does not need to be given the opportunity to ever again be a free woman.  She chose her actions.  Or she has no restraining morality at all.  One or the other.

The jury needs to find her guilty.  Send her to prison for the rest of her life.  Not just to hold her accountable for her temporal sins, but as a service to society as a whole.  She is too dangerous to treat with overbearing kindness that does not adequately address the severity of her crimes.

If there is no justice in this case, then there will not be true justice in a lot of other situations that will come about.

I originally expressed the belief that Clancy might not have possessed enough sense to keep from murdering her children.  I see now that I was wrong  in that assessment.  She did what she did of her own volition.

And I hope that the jury in her trial will do the right thing and make damned sure that she never sees an iota of freedom again.  Ever. 

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Drug interactions: My thoughts on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial

Illustrating how out of touch I am with much of current events, this morning I finally educated myself about the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.  Clancy is being prosecuted for the 2023 murders of her three young children.  The defense is arguing that Clancy was suffering from psychiatric issues, including postpartum depression.  If convicted she would get life in prison without parole and if she's found not guilty she's looking at being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for a long, long time.

I guess I should have been keeping up with with this all along, given my background in mental health as both patient and professional.

So I just finished reading about Clancy's medical history.  And two words come to mind...

Sweet Jesus.

This woman was on WAY too many medications.  With that wild variety of drugs in her system, it's no wonder that things were going to go bad.  It really is completely possible that Clancy was screwed up, entirely disregarding postpartum depression and perhaps bipolar disorder altogether.  She may have had only the vaguest notion of what she was doing when she murdered her kids, doing so robbed of conscience.

The doctors and nurses attending to her made a very serious mistake, having her being on all those meds.  The interactions could not have been adequately predicted.  Anything at all could have gone wrong in her mind.

I'm not making excuses for her.  I believe that she needs to be put into a psychiatric facility for a long time.  But having had some troubling experiences with being overly-medicated myself, I can understand how Clancy could have become unhinged from reality because of being on too many meds.

I'm going to be tuned in to the verdict when the jury hands it down, likely this coming week.  This could establish a significant legal precedent, one that might impact mental health care in this country enormously.

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EMDR, Part 3 (only six years later!)

There are quite a few people who've told me that they appreciate when I share about my experiences with bipolar disorder.  Doing so has helped them better understand what it is to have a condition like this.  I suppose it helps me too.  Writing about it gives me that much more strength over something that really should have killed me years ago already.  So here is another report from the wacky world of manic depression!

This morning I saw my counselor for the first time in several months.  Getting as much substitute teaching in as I can has prevented me from adequately addressing my overall mental health as much as I really should have been doing.  Controlling my bipolar disorder involves many things.  Medication and counseling are two of those, and they work hand in hand.  The meds restore a measure of control and the counseling helps me develop tools that the meds can't provide.

I went in today with especially fresh issues to confront: the depressive episode that's been dragging on since at least the holidays, that only in the past few weeks have I realized has been happening.  Dovetailing with that is my inability to be able to write like I need to.  Those were the two biggest things that I sought to address with my counselor.

What came about during that time was something I had been looking forward to returning to for some time now: I underwent a session of EMDR therapy.  Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a technique I had been treated with for two sessions before COVID hit.  My counselor at the time and I tried another session over Zoom during the lockdown but that proved to be infeasible.  Today was the first time in six years that I had the opportunity to undergo EMDR in the presence of a trained professional.

At the time, six years ago, I was being treated with EMDR in an effort to aggressively counter the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from abuse I received as a child many years earlier.  Because of COVID bringing everything to a screeching halt my treatment of that was interrupted.  But in the time that I had it I was able to find some ways to counter the PTSD.  If you read my book Keeping the Tryst it will probably give you some insight into how I was able to overcome that particular monster.  The abuse from my mother is something that no longer troubles me.  I've come to a place at last where I'm not being constantly haunted by that any more.  So that's good.

When I went at length this morning describing how I've lost my writing capacity, my counselor suggested we have an EMDR session.  I readily accepted the offer.  She has many of the tools that are used in the typical round of therapy.  Today we used these hand-held buzzers that the counselor can adjust the rate and severity of buzzing.  My job was to hold the buzzers and close my eyes and engage with the counselor in conversation.  Sounds weird, but it does help to peel back the layers and bring definition to some things that evade ready description.

We did EMDR for the better part of half an hour.  What was the result?

I think that it might have had some effect.  None to immediately impact my writing ability, but it did help me narrow down my expectations of myself and put my abilities into focus.  My counselor suggested that I'm in a place right now where I'm not compromising my ethics when it comes to what I choose to write and HOW to write.  The issue of artificial intelligence came up, something that I am 100% sure is being used for a LOT of the writing that I'm seeing lately.  I can't use that, I told her.  It would violate my integrity as a writer.  She said that it's good that I know what I can and can't do in that regard.  And that probably sooner than later there would be a swing away from using AI in everything and that there will come new appreciation for those who do not embrace AI in their work.  Hearing that made me feel much better.

I'm also visualizing my "writer's block" in a new way.  Every time I've felt stopped from writing, I have literally envisioned a solid block of concrete or hard stone standing in the way of where I am and where I long to be.  I keep hammering at the block with my fists and all that it achieves is that my hands become ragged and scraped and nothing has yielded.  After this morning I'm seeing it differently.  I'm now seeing it as a block of marble, the kind that Michelangelo had standing in his studio.  And just as Michelangelo came to see David trapped in the marble waiting to be freed, so I now also can see my own block as something to work at freeing a sculpture from.  I can stop hammering with my fists and try addressing it as an artist chiseling away at it with finer tools.

Like I said, there is going to be no immediately seeing the impact that today's session had.  But I think it was a great step in the right direction.  There was some very real movement, the kind that I needed to have happen.  I prefer to believe that it's going to soon prove to have been time well spent with my counselor, that there is legitimate fruit that will be borne from it.

How well will it work?  We'll come to find out, I imagine sooner than later.

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part Ten: Anatomy of a Depressive Episode

Being Bipolar is a series that began in the winter of 2011.  It's an occasional attempt to explore aspects of the life of a person with manic-depression, or bipolar disorder if you will.  It's never meant to be a regular feature of The Knight Shift.  It comes along whenever "the time is nigh" for another installment is called for.  In this series I do my best to be as honest and forthcoming about this condition as possible, within reason.  As with anything else of this kind of subject matter, it should be noted that I am not a medical professional.  So don't take anything written here as solid medical advice in the way of drugs etc.  If you need immediate assistance, please go to the emergency rom of the nearest hospital, or call 911 on your phone.  You may also find a great deal of assistance from a local support group, such as those sponsored by National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org).

 

For the past three years and nearly four months I have been a peer support specialist employed by a state department of mental health.  That's supposed to mean that as someone "in recovery" from mental illness, that I'm in a unique position to help others who likewise must deal with having emotional and behavioral disorders.

I wish that I could tell you that this means that I have a handle on my own diagnosis.  But over the course of nearly a year now that assumption has been solidly put to rest.  Because I've discovered that in many ways I'm the same way I am now that I was six years ago, when I first left my old hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina and began looking for a new home.  That was supposed to have been a fresh start for me (and my dog Tammy).  And for awhile, when we initially set out, there was that breath of fresh air that comes with expanding one's horizons.  With casting destiny to the winds of the Lord.  And then came a year after setting out, and a situation that triggered my bipolar disorder as it had never had been before and what led to friends having me live with them until I could get my mind situated again. That was five years ago and I'm no less thankful for them and what they did for me.

Maybe it was "the plague" that triggered me this time.  Nothing has been the same since COVID-19 came (and I was hit with it this past December, I'm pretty sure I caught it when some friends and I went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home because they came down with COVID also).  I worked from home for more than six months and it changed me.  Made me consider and reconsider my life.  I got the "vaccine" early on, because my job puts me at the forefront of public health (namely visiting patients at their homes among other things) and in the year and a half since then I've come to wonder if that was such a wise thing to have done (it's not being called the "clot shot" for nothing, but I digress).

Back to being a peer support specialist and being in recovery.  The more I have recovered, the more I have found that I still have a long way to go toward that.  It's a lot like "the Hell Curve" that I first described in 2011: I'm forever getting closer to that Y line of total recovery, but never going to cross it or even touch it.  I realized that even before last September, and the day my neighbors found me dancing in the rain in my sweatsuit and socks and trying to open other people's car doors.  I don't remember that at all.  Neither do I remember the next day and being found lying face-down next to the road beside my house, my face beaten up like hamburger from the fall onto the asphalt.  Eleven months later and I still can't wink my right eye without feeling some residual pain.  None of that, I remember transpiring.  It was all because of a medication reaction between my "current" meds and one that I have since stopped using.

I lost very nearly a solid month of work because of that incident, which encompassed one week spent in a mental health facility while I was detoxing.  It led to some changes of my work: changes I haven't been crazy about (no pun intended, or is it?).

Long story short, this past week and a half or so I've had a depressive episode that wrecked havoc with me in nearly every aspect.  Were it not for taking care of Tammy, my miniature dachshund, there is no telling what I would have been compelled to do during this time.  Depression sucks the vigor and vitality out of a person.  Takes away nearly every interest including the desire for eating (and sometimes not even getting up to use the restroom, which is no problem if you're not ingesting food anyway).

Today the episode finally began to abate.  I must thank many friends on Facebook who I reached out to, who have been lifting me up in their prayers.  I hope that I can be just as much there for them when they need my own prayers.  I have pretty much wasted an entire weekend except for this afternoon.  So I thought, maybe since it's fresh in mind I could do another Being Bipolar installment (it's only been THREE YEARS since the last one!).

This depressive episode crept up on me.  In hindsight I can see that it was bedeviling me for almost the past two weeks.  It's been so severe, and I was so subconsciously holding it at bay, that I didn't realize it was happening until two days ago.  During this episode I was robbed of any interest apart from the meanest of caring for myself and my dog.  I was eating candy bars for breakfast and nothing else for lunch or dinner.  I fed and watered Tammy but I didn't feel like playing with her.  She "gets" me when I'm like this.  When I curl up on the sofa, unable to move, she curls right up next to me.  Tammy understands me even if no one else does.  I'm pretty sure that I lost some weight during this time.  When I went to see a doctor this past week I had lost seven pounds since the previous visit about two months ago.

My hygiene has suffered.  I went two days without showering for work.  It didn't seem to matter.  I just didn't care.  I brushed my teeth, but that's mostly out of dire habit.  Something ground into me about seven years ago when I realized what depression was doing to my dental care.  I haven't lost any teeth and I don't intend to.  So whenever I eat or drink something I'm inclined to brush immediately afterward or at least as soon as possible (which has become a religious ritual after getting home from work, before I even take Tammy outside).

I have been trying to cook better for myself (thanks in no small part to the encouragement of a good friend, hello Heather!).  A week and a half ago I visited the nearby grocery store and pharmacy to pick up two prescriptions and I had no other interest in shopping for anything else.  Well, I take that back.  I did purchase a box of Froot Loops, and that was "dinner" for a few days.  But again, my overall desire for a good meal had evaporated.

Interest in fun things and activities crashes and burns.  All that's left are the ashen remnants of something that once moved you.  I've been stoked about the current season of Stranger Things lately.  Especially the music.  I had been listening to the soundtrack and reveling in the return of "my kind" of music.  But interest in any music has gone away during this episode.  I've tried to make myself watch stuff like The LEGO Movie, a film that I usually adore, but that failed to move me too.

Depression has caused me to lose interest in my work.  Has led me to seeing it as all a vain effort.  I haven't been able to help others, in the way that I usually can and have loved doing.  I drove a patient to a physician's appointment this past week and I was barely talking at all, when usually we are readily engaged in conversation.  He could sense that there was something wrong, and he told me as much.  It has caused me to forget tasks, has made me indifferent during phone calls to patients.  It's ironic, that I work in a mental health office and my own mental health has caused that work to suffer.  But then again, my life has been filled with a lot of cruel irony.

This coming Wednesday would have been the twentieth anniversary of my getting married.  A marriage that was destroyed in vast part by my bipolar disorder.  I still can't make sense of that.  It was something I was committed to as much as anyone could commit to something.  And it wasn't enough.  Why did God let me have something that was going to wreck such havoc on an institution that He Himself created?  That has been a thought that has run rampant through my mind during this time.  I suppose that no matter how happy I might be, I'm going to forever be running that through my mind.  It hasn't been made any easier because of this latest episode.  And the proximity to the date has only made it worse.

Strangely, my faith in God this time is something I'm not doubting.  A quality that I must ascribe to not only my friends' prayers, but to all the other times I've had depression.  In its lesser moments I can find myself able to pray, and to solicit prayer.  I don't doubt God, even when it seems the depression is something cruel He lets happen.  I have to remind myself that being a Christian does not mean an escape from pain: something I wish I had known during the first few decades as a believer.

I would be remiss if I did not mention, that there have been moments during this latest episode when I have not wanted to be here any more.  When I've actually prayed to God to please let me die.  But that's a different thing from having full-fledged suicidal ideation.  Something I've come to learn increasingly during my work with those with mental illness.  It's almost okay, maybe perfectly "normal", to have thoughts about not wanting to be alive any more.  It becomes something else entirely though, when those thoughts turn toward contemplating getting a knife to open one's veins, or ingest a whole bunch of drugs and hope that they will lull one into an eternal slumber.  I will admit, that I have tried the latter at least twice.  Both times failed, thankfully.

Also thankfully, the episode seems to finally be abating, and maybe writing these words out is aiding toward that.  More irony: I've lamented in the past week or so that I haven't been able to write anymore, and here I am, composing a new blog post.  Not just blogging but really pouring my heart and soul into this new installment of Being Bipolar.  Maybe if I can write this, perhaps other things that I've thought I'd lost will come back.  Writing is a gift that I first realized I had when Mrs. Rutledge in my freshman year of high school told me I had.  I've been trying to use, develop and hone that gift ever since.  Manic depression over the past two decades and more took a LOT out of me toward that.  Maybe writing this post means I still have it.  Maybe I can write more.  Perhaps even work anew on that book that Dad wanted me to write.  Dad was proud of me.  I was very fortunate to have had him in my life.  I want to finish writing that book, and dedicate it to his memory.

And, that's all that I know to write about this latest bout with bipolar depression.  It is my "dark fountain": a term I have been it from the very beginning, when it first erupted in the spring of 2000.  Its black waters trying to swallow and drown me, and I doing everything that can be done to keep my head above its currents.  Maybe writing about it this time will help to stop the fountain, if only for a little while.

Maybe doing this will help others also, who are going through their own times of depression.

If so, please know: you are not alone.  There IS help.  Your local mental health department is one resource.  So are groups like National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI (nami.org).  If you are in a severe crisis, you can call 911.  It's okay, it really IS an emergency.  And as of yesterday there is a simple three digit number - 988 - that you can call to get help from a national suicide help line.

And if you need a friend to talk to, I'll do my best to be here for you.  My e-mail is theknightshift@gmail.com.  I've communicated with quite a few people over the years that Being Bipolar has been a feature on this blog.  I'll do what I can to be here for you, too.

 

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 37

Today's blog post sort of suggested itself, in the wake of events during the past three days.  Maybe what I'm about to say will help others who are finding themselves in the grip of depression, or some other mental health situation.

You see, this week my path has crossed those of two people who I care about: one in my personal life and another who I know from my work as a professional peer support specialist.  Each of them is having an emotional crisis.  Much like the ones I have had at various times over the course of the last twenty-some years.

In each case, I have suggested that inpatient care at a behavioral health facility should be considered.  Checking one's self into a specialized hospital for a few days or a week or so.  Letting trained doctors and staff work with a patient toward reigning in their depressive or schizophrenic episode.  Sometimes - as happened with me several months ago - it's because medication needs balancing out and I had to be monitored for any side effects.  The reasons vary.

One thing that it is NOT, is an "insane asylum".  I have never been inside a real asylum (apart from a haunted one I visited when I was younger).  People are not caged like animals in a behavioral health center.  It is not like The Snake Pit or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  It is almost like a vacation away from it all.  The food tends to be quite good.  I would recommend bringing along a book to read (my most recent stay in inpatient found me reading Bitter Blood, a book that has sucked me in at least half a dozen times over the years).

If you or someone you know is in a mental crisis situation, there is NO shame whatsoever in asking for help.  Including checking yourself in to a behavioral health center.  Sometimes a little help is needed to get back on even keel, and that’s okay.  That’s more than fine. I’ve been in such places no less than five or six times and I’ve always come back out on top.

It’s NOT like it used to be on TV and movies.  Those days of mental health medicine in the western world are gone.  Apart from one place waking me up at 5 every morning to ask if I’d had a bowel movement (I blame the nurse), the care was always with dignity and compassion.

It can be nervous-inducing to think about checking yourself into inpatient care.  But I’d rather “nip it in the bud” (to quote Barney Fife) than let something run amok and out of control.  I know the darkness of which I speak, and I would rather no one else have to go through anything as I have had to endure.

 

 

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EMDR

This blog has been operational for sixteen(!) years now, and it's covered a lot of territory.  Everything from pop culture to weird news to chronicling my run for political office and anything in between.  It's shown readers the inside of a nuclear power plant, to the ancient sanctity of Orthodox Christianity.

But it hasn't depicted everything about my life.  Though there have been times that I've shared glimpses of personal frustration and tragedy, most of what happens on this side of the screen has been shrouded from my audience.  It's been a common lament of mine: how it seems that everyone I know gets to display their blessings and joy over Facebook while I've come up empty in those regards.  And then I'm reminded that people only show the good things on social media, not the bad.  So if that's a crime, then I suppose I'm just as guilty.

However, there are exceptions.  The Being Bipolar series is no doubt the biggest of them.  Hard to believe it'll be ten years later next winter that I began that series, and there is still much more to write about it.  I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder (or manic depression) early in 2004.  By 2009 it had destroyed much of my personal life, including a marriage.  Being Bipolar began as an attempt to take it back.  On that note, it failed.  But I still ended up satisfied that it's documented my thoughts and experiences with a mental illness.

But it's not my only mental illness.

Early in 2018 came another diagnosis.  I now understand that I have Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  The result of numerous horrible experiences across the span of my life, and especially things that happened during my childhood.  That's never really been written about on this blog.  My best friends and circle of close associates though have seen it only too often.  The times when I regress, and have flashbacks and am immobilized by the weight of memories that cannot and will not leave.  My therapists have helped me find a few strategies for dealing with episodes of PTSD: helping me get back into the moment instead of staying thrust toward the past.  And in vast part they do work.

But that's only addressing the symptoms, not the condition itself.

Yesterday I began what we are hoping may be an endeavor to stem the PTSD itself once and for all.  I had the initial appointment of what will be a series of sessions involving a fairly new therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing... or EMDR for short.  It came about during the Nineties as a result of investigations by psychologist Francine Shapiro.  It essentially means that via visual manipulation and use of other stimuli (including the use of a gimmick that I've dubbed "the Walkman") my brain is going to rewire itself to route around the parts of it that the PTSD chiefly operates in.  Or something like that.

Not really EMDR since Alex
can't move his eyeballs around

Yesterday's session was an orientation/familiarization with the technique.  And I'm already very much looking forward to beginning it proper.  EMDR has enjoyed great success in helping others address their own PTSD and we think it holds a lot of promise for my own case.

This was already an exceptional week in regard to my recovery.  I cannot discuss much of what transpired, however.  Maybe someday that will be possible.  Maybe, not ever.  The EMDR though, I can and will be talking about that as the treatment progresses.  So, stay tuned!

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Ed Stetzer on Christians, churches and mental illness

This past weekend Matthew Warren - the son of Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life - took his own life after struggling for years with mental illness.  In the wake of this tragedy there has already been considerable reflection by many among the body of Christ about mental illness and what our reaction should be to it.

Ed Stetzer, the president of LifeWay Research, has a very good guest essay on CNN.com.  Titled "My Take: How churches can respond to mental illness", Stetzer relates his own experiences with Christians plagued with such conditions and how churches should and should not approach it.  From his article...

The first time I dealt with mental illness in church was with a man named Jim. I was young and idealistic - a new pastor serving in upstate New York. Jim was a godsend to us. He wanted to help, and his energy was immeasurable. He'd visit with me, sing spontaneously, pray regularly and was always ready to help.

Until he was gone.

For days and sometimes weeks at a time, he would struggle with darkness and depression. During this time, he would withdraw from societal interaction and do practically nothing but read Psalms and pray for hours on end. I later learned that this behavior is symptomatic of what is often called bipolar disorder or, in years before, manic depression.

I prayed with Jim. We talked often about the need for him to take his medicine, but he kept asking God to fix him. Eventually, at his lowest point and filled with despair, he took his own life.

As a young pastor unacquainted with how to deal with these events, I found myself searching for answers. I realized two things:

First, people with mental illness are often attracted to religion and the church, either to receive help in a safe environment or to live out the worst impulses of their mental illness.

Second, most congregations, sadly, have few resources for help.

Stetzer has much more to say about Christians and mental illness, but you'll have to click on over to read it all :-)

As a Christian with bipolar disorder, I can readily identify with Jim and his story.  In fact, everything he went through is something I have also had to endure except for taking my own life... and believe you me, I have felt like wanting to do that more times than I can count.  I've even been hospitalized more than once because of that. It does not mean that I or anyone else is weak or bad or beyond the forgiveness of God.  What it does mean is that we know a pain that is more excruciating and self-destructive than can be known by anyone without bipolar or other mental illness and we just want the pain to stop.  It IS that horrible a thing to live the rest of your life with.  Sometimes I honestly don't know how I've made it this far but if it's at all within my power, I want to use this blog to encourage others and help them find the strength to keep going.  Followers of Christ have it no easier to endure this than anyone else and sometimes I wonder if the spiritual expectations of ourselves might even make the pain worse.  Stetzer's article is a brief but brilliant resource from which to begin meditating upon being Christian and being affected by mental illness.

(Speaking of bipolar, I currently have four installments of Being Bipolar on the front burners... but I can't figure out which one to run with first!  Maybe the write-up I've been doing about what it's like to have one-on-one counseling.  Or the one about bipolar disorder and loved ones who are affected by your having it.  Or about drugs... yeah maybe the drugs one.  Drugs are cool.  No not like that...)

A very big tip o' the hat to Mark McGinnis for finding this article!  Be sure to visit the blog that Mark and his spousal overunit Dalerie maintain :-)

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BEING BIPOLAR: Video Log 8: Depressive Episode #2, "Stop Thinking About Nothing"

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