"It seemed to me that I was chosen": Sasha Boyarskaya about life with bipolar disorder
On the topic of mental health began to talk more: celebrities talk about combating depression, and flashmobs like #FaceOfDepression are in social networks. Even to those who never went to the doctor, the information is beneficial: sometimes the symptoms that can be corrected with a specialist seem to us to be character traits, and emotional falls and rises are black and white stripes of life. Nike creative consultant Sasha Boyarskaya told how, after many years of her life with such ups and downs, she learned about her diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder.
Olga Lukinskaya
Mental health is something very immeasurable. It seems to me that I am not quite entitled to talk about this, because I myself hardly understand where I am in my diagnosis and how I can cope with it, but there is something that makes me tell it. I went to a psychiatrist six months ago, after numerous trips to various (there were five of them in my life) psychotherapists, including family, and I realized that it was the psychiatrist who became the person who understands me. I signed up to him from a state of apathy and anxiety (remember these two words). The first reception took three hours. The first few questions about me led to the story that I hadn’t really finished school - he was interested in it, and he began to ask very specific questions about different periods of my life and draw timelines on sheets of paper. It was a temporary curve of my life, from the age of fourteen until the “now” - all those periods of ups and downs that seemed ordinary and unpredictable to me.
On sheets of paper, they lined up in a completely slender picture of mania, or manic periods, and depressive phases with brief intermissions and the resulting diagnosis: bipolar-affective disorder type I. This timeline became my straw in the subsequent months of studying the diagnosis, quite often, especially among my friends. This diagnosis is made to about two people out of a hundred, in one form or another, but not everyone is aware of their condition. Now I often listen to the stories of acquaintances, colleagues or those I encounter at work — creative, bright people — and I find myself analyzing their stories, laying out periods of mania and depression and trying not to give advice to go to a psychiatrist when This is inappropriate because the person is not too close. That's why I decided to share my experience: it is too difficult to tell about it in three words to an unfamiliar girl or boyfriend, and going to a psychiatrist is something that can put life in order or at least give some stability or predictability.
The biggest question I ask myself now is what I really am and how to evaluate the ups and downs caused by my personal biochemistry. Four days ago, I was at a psychiatrist, and he shook his head with regret at my story about the reaction to the first three months with antidepressants. I rather optimistically told him that I spent the whole autumn “normally”: I worked, moved, enjoyed the weather and communication, made plans and behaved as it seemed to me, like an ordinary person. It turned out not - even lithium could not hold back the manic phase. By themselves, these phases are beautiful, as can be seen from the description. But they have several significant drawbacks, which I try to remind myself more often.
Manic phases are the brightest moments of my life. My keen, magical in love, special creative experiences, new journeys with a sense of fullness, the importance of each moment. New ideas and incredible ability to work. A feeling of joy and confidence. Enjoying food, alcohol, sex, jogging, books, theater, music. No doubt, drowsiness, anxiety. It all sounds wonderful - and I experienced such periods so many times in my life! I wrote guides, articles and notes, took pictures, came up with advertising campaigns, inspired people to the beautiful. I moved from country to country, met new people and disposed of potential employers.
And I did not bring the projects to the end, but the worthwhile ideas remained ideas. I started doing something alone and completely immersed in it, forgetting everything else: parents, family, work. I obsessively bought tickets to distant countries, where the one I wanted to see could be. I spent the money that I did not have, and borrowed, without thinking about how I would give it. I changed without a trace of critical thinking. I did not evaluate myself from the outside, I did not realize that I was doing something wrong. Often these periods were accompanied by one or two bottles of wine per day and absolute immersion in, for example, the Pulp group or the English poetry of Edward Estlin Cummings.
Mania leads to depression always, and getting just a lot of energy and joy without a black hole after will not work
And then darkness always came. Unbeknownst to me, the ascent itself ended in a precipice into the abyss, and there was a depression. In depression, I was much more critical to myself. Found friends and started affairs disappeared from the radar. I just wanted to lie in bed and look at the wall. Sometimes I scrolled the tape for days on end and could not respond to a simple working SMS. I remember one winter, when this drop fell on a relationship with a guy from New York: I let down thousands of dollars on this relationship, and then I ended up in a rented apartment in Moscow and with panic attacks fell in February snow on the street. Sometimes my brother pulled me out: he came, brought rolls, made me eat what I like, take a shower and go out. I made him - and in his care I always found the support that helped me somehow to swim out of the hole.
If we talk about the minuses of bipolarity of the first type, then the one described is only the first two points. The behavior itself during the mania somehow leaves the consequences with which it will be necessary to cope. And you have to cope with them when the opposite state comes - depression. Mania leads to depression always, and getting just a lot of energy and joy without a black hole will not work afterwards, even if the magic is remembered better and sometimes brings a breakthrough in creativity and new love.
The third point is that state that I approached once. This psychosis, schizophrenia, paranoia - that grows out of mania, if you do not stop in time. That summer, the ball twisted too much - and unwound, too, so. Dad died. He died in early August - and this is my “dangerous” time, when I am already a little out of my mind. I was already in my summer hyperemotional state, and the death of the pope was the impetus. I suddenly began to really drink a lot — one, two, three bottles of wine — to smoke by a pack of strong cigarettes a day, although I forgot to think about smoking; I hardly slept and constantly led some deep conversation about the meaning of life with everyone around me. I believed that I could do anything. I went to the theater all the time and, stunned, I reread Vyrypayev’s plays with the thought that I was also chosen. At some point, I realized that there is a secret circle of awakened and especially sensitive people in the world. I suspect that Sorokin, who wrote about this book, also suffers from bipolar-affective disorder. At this moment of revelation from above, October came, it became cooler, I began to drink less, offended everyone with my actions and began to depart.
I thought it was a deep experience, but the trip to the psychiatrist put everything in its place. Honestly, it was funny and very painful for me to hear his questions: “Well, did you dream of chocolate? It seemed there was a choice? Sense of peculiarity? There was no need in a dream? Red wine, yes? Creativity has become aggravated?” - and at that moment I already understood that my “deepest experience” is just a psychiatric case, not infrequent and quite ordinary.
This is all the background to the fact that I went to see a doctor from another depression. I did not want to communicate with anyone, I just wanted to sit in a cocoon in the power saving mode. The meaning of psychotherapy was somehow lost, too, I realized that by talking I couldn’t get out. I remember that my goal for the beginning of the year was the phrase "let everything be normal." In the mornings, a babysitter would come, it was as if I was going to work, but actually I sat on the bus and drove to the final one, then I took the tram, rode it and drove home. She let go of the babysitter, hugged Eric, her son, and waited for Andrei to come home from work. Sometimes she turned on cartoons and just hugged the baby, sometimes she even had the strength to go out. It lasted about a month. It seemed to me that everything was in order, I was just lazy and bad, and it was even somehow funny to decide to behave like this instead of sitting down and working. But at some point, at the beginning of the summer, I asked my girlfriend about a psychiatrist; it seemed to be a cry for help. I wanted to tell someone what was happening, but it was not explained to a non-professional: “I ride a bus” - so what? A friend gave me a doctor's contact from the Mental Health Research Institute.
I immediately wrote to a psychiatrist, he answered and asked for a brief description of the situation. Then I just unsuccessfully tried to curtail breastfeeding. The doctor helped to make a decision: he said that GV should be curtailed because he would prescribe medications that were incompatible with him. I immediately felt better - I decided to stop feeding and did not do this anymore, and a week later I came to the reception. Probably, for many people who applied for psychological help, it was like this: I walked with the thought that I would be “caught” and asked not to take the time, that I pretended that I was just lazy and weak and not sick.
The first visit to a psychiatrist lasted three and a half hours. I talked about my life, and it seemed to me that I was carrying some sort of nonsense. And the doctor drew a detailed graph of my life and helped me clearly see all the periods: where is the manic period, where it is calm, where the stress and exacerbation of autoimmune processes (I had retinal detachment, was rheumatoid arthritis), where falling in love, euphoria, running every day for month, where a complete decline, cigarettes and alcohol. I saw how the facts of my life, work, relationships were related to mood, illness, or weight changes. And it turned out that many things could be predicted - and therefore, to avoid them or soften them.
The psychiatrist explained that my bipolar affective disorder, fortunately, is of the first type - with him, depressive episodes are limited in time, and the periods of mania and euphoria are longer and "more fun". To begin with, the doctor assigned me a lithium drug and asked not to read the instructions, so as not to begin to find side effects. We were constantly in touch, the doctor remotely changed the dosage. Lithium with BAR suppresses manic manifestations, but does not cure depression (it only stabilizes it). It became easier for me, and then very sad.
Everyone says that this summer in Moscow was great: the weather, tourists, the world championship. And I do not remember anything. I didn’t really care - it was only important that Eric, my son, was well. I stopped running, going somewhere, lost interest in everything. I remember that we went on a canoe trip - and this is actually one of the most favorite things in my life - and there I suddenly realized that I absolutely did not care where I was. I wanted to lie in a room with curtains drawn.
I decided to cancel the pills, changed my mind a week later and decided to take them again, and then I realized that it was wrong, and I signed up again for a psychiatrist. At the reception, I burst into tears, I was embarrassed. The doctor said that it is impossible to cancel appointments, that you need to write to him more often, to be in contact, to consult. He explained that lithium stabilized the condition and now it is necessary to prescribe an antidepressant — and since then I have been taking it for three months now. I remember that two days later I had the feeling that I had emerged from the aquarium. Not euphoria, not happiness, but normality. I began to realize again that people could smile.
I know that there is a very long way to go and you need to constantly monitor your condition. There is a prospect to stop taking medication in ten years - but medications do not frighten me. I trust the doctors and my choice of specialist, I know that what my psychiatrist says works. Many people take medicine for life, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But besides drugs, there are other auxiliary methods of treatment, and I have found some that help me.
I started running again. The drug, which I now take, is called an "antidepressant of athletes" - it is often prescribed to those who can not return to training. And now I consciously engage in projects that, among other things, support my health. For example, I have long wanted to create jogging with meditation and could not do it. It is known that both running and meditation are great tools for treating depressions, and I have a new motivation to find people who could lead a meditating run on jogging. It is difficult for me to organize my own time and run alone - but I can participate in the jogs organized by me with others, and this heals me.
In the middle of summer I told a friend what was happening to me, and she replied: "I think you are exaggerating." This is one of the most unfortunate reactions, what are you afraid of?
Another option is the Japanese method of "treating the forest", half an hour or an hour of a conscious walk in the forest. I also did this, and now once a week I do jogging through the forest. For me, this is both work and one more step towards my own health. I cannot make diagnoses and prescribe medications, but I can do something good for my health, including mental health, mine and others.
I will not say that living with a disease is better than without it, but illness helps to prioritize. When health becomes a priority, it makes life a lot easier, you stop taking too much of yourself, you start doing more important things, everything that is unnecessary falls off. I can not sleep a little, otherwise it will be bad. I take pills without question - the same with workouts, I need them for health. Now I understand that the diagnosis will allow me including to be more constant in running.
I want to talk about what is happening to me, not even to raise awareness. I have been blogging and have been writing since I was fourteen years old, and this is an internal process, this is an opportunity to formulate what is happening for myself and recognize this experience. Since I can do it now, it means that the black hole is behind. When I told myself that I could tell about BAR, I felt stronger.
On the other hand, awareness and awareness are also important - after all, mental changes are not visible from the outside, it is not a finger or ear. In the middle of summer I told a friend what was happening to me, and she replied: "I think you are exaggerating." This is one of the most unfortunate reactions, something that you are afraid of, because you yourself think that you are exaggerating. It is very important to explain to people how to react - most do not want evil at all, they just really do not know how to behave. There is one person in my life who will always fully respond to any conversations about mental health — this is my brother.
I first explained to my mom and my partner Andrei what exactly I expect from them: regret, hug, say I'm good. Explained what to say and do not. And only then told about the situation and the diagnosis. These things are very important to pronounce, especially with a partner. Everyone needs different things - it is important for me that they say a thousand times: "How hard it is for you, how well done you are, what you can do about it, everything will be fine." Just so, literally. I am writing this text to Andrey and I ask you to send it to me with a message - and the most amazing thing is that it works. It gives a surge of heat. I am glad that he agrees to play this game with me and understands that I am writing exactly the words I want to hear.
I would advise everyone to draw their lives on a piece of paper and trace the patterns: for some, the process is linear, and for others it is a leap (like mine). The psychiatrist immediately noticed that I had not graduated from school, was married twice and divorced, lived in London and returned. It is very interesting to look at your life and remember the ups and downs. And also, for example, there is a seasonal BAR - and for me it is also partly seasonal, in August and September there is always a rise. In February and March it will be hard for me - and now I know that it will be necessary to watch especially carefully so that I can run, get enough sleep, and not miss the medicine. Awareness helps a lot in life, and you can come to it in different ways, including through a psychiatrist's office.