It’s Been a Year Already?
So you might have noticed that I’ve been gone for a while. The past year has been just one thing after another. I was under a lot of stress and starting to feel very overwhelmed.
First, I lost what I thought at the time was my dream job. I had a great boss, amazing coworkers, and a creative outlet. It was a career I’d worked toward for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, the market for such work just isn’t great in my area, and my company didn’t have enough work to support my position.
Then I was rear-ended by a semi. I was physically fine, but it totaled my car. I was down to only two payments left, so I had to start completely over.
On top of that, I chose to file for unemployment while I was searching for a new job. It turns out that the state had never updated their records from when I was adopted, so they didn’t think that I existed.
Within a month, I went from being a well-functioning adult with a great job and a reliable vehicle to having no job, no car, and being investigated by the state. I was working out all the time. I was journaling and meditating, but it wasn’t enough. The stress was getting so bad that I started hallucinating. This wasn’t the first time that had happened to me, so J. R. talked me into seeing a psychiatrist.
My Diagnosis
At first, I was terrified to talk to someone else about everything that had been going on. Only it wasn’t so much the idea of verbalizing everything that bothered me. I wasn’t afraid of being judged or anything like that. I was afraid that the psychiatrist would tell me that everything I was experiencing was completely normal and I was just bad at coping with it. That I just couldn’t handle the stress of being an adult.
As it turns out, what I was experiencing was not normal. After meeting with first a psychologist and then a psychiatrist, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and PTSD, as well as bipolar disorder.
I guess a lot of people are shocked by a bipolar diagnosis, but honestly, I was relieved. I have a family history of the disorder and recognized the symptoms in myself when I was still in high school. However, after years of being told that I was over-dramatic and just needed to learn to manage my hormones better, it was nice to hear that I wasn’t just irresponsible and bad at adulting. I had a condition that nearly always requires medication to manage.
Where Do We Go Now?
I now take both antipsychotics and anxiety medication to manage my mental health. It’s helped me tremendously, but it left me wondering, “What do I do now? How can I still write a blog about holistic health while taking these medications?” For a while, I didn’t think I was going to come back. I felt like a fraud.
But after spending the past couple of months working on a treatment plan, I’ve realized that I’m still doing all of the holistic things too. I’m in therapy a few times a month. I’m still journaling and exercising to deal with my stress. My anxiety medication helps me sleep, but I still drink my passionflower tea to help me unwind on nights when I’m feeling particularly wired.
I make a point to refer to herbalism as “complementary”, rather than “alternative”, medicine for a reason. Herbs are great, but they’re not always the solution. They can’t fix everything. Sometimes we need medications to help us.
I started this blog with the goal of taking a balanced approach to wellness. And bipolar disorder isn’t something that can be treated with just a pill. The medication stops me from becoming psychotic and helps me sleep, but I still have to practice good sleep hygiene. It takes the edge off of the anxiety and depression, but I still have to go to therapy and eat properly.
If anything, I think having an official diagnosis has actually given me more to write about. My thoughts are also a lot quieter now, so I have a much easier time focusing. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Mystical Moxie is back. And we plan to post more consistently from here on out. Talk to you again soon!
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