mood swings Archive

Tracking Bipolar Mood States and the Herbs that Love Them

I decided to track my moods intensely and also experiment on myself quite a bit with certain herbs and diets. I have written a couple of times before how a gluten-free vegan diet, and how reducing my refined sugar intake have drastically aided in helping me stabilize my mood rollercoaster. Another thing that greatly helped me was tracking my moods over time in a journal. I was able to take a few months and track my mania, depression, mixed states of every variety, as well as social, environmental, hormonal, and physical triggers for said mood shifts. I found that many of my mood changes are triggered by certain things (sexual assault triggers, social conflicts, hormonal shifts, dietary changes, etc) and behind those triggers is a larger more independent cycle of ups and downs lasting a couple of months at a time. In tracking the triggered ups and downs existing along the larger up and down shift of my mood over time, I can now identify when a mood state is changing and can identify where I am at.

Two Months Later

Editor’s note: this is a continuation of Fuck. Schizoaffective?

It’s been two months since my diagnosis. Two months to process the psychosis, the diagnosis. Two months to adjust to new medication.

My Partner With Borderline Personality Disorder (Hanners)

It is my pleasure to introduce the newest series, “My Partner With…” to QueerMentalHealth.org. Relationships can be a challenge for anyone, though they can be especially difficult when they are impacted by mental health issues. It is my hope that we can help others understand how to approach a partner’s mental health concerns. I’m starting this series off by talking about the issues that come up for myself and my partner, who has Borderline Personality Disorder.

If you were to get all your information about Borderline Personality Disorder by going to online support groups for partners of people with this condition, you would learn the following:

  • Borderlines are always abusive
  • Borderlines are always in denial
  • Borderlines never take responsibility for their actions
  • Borderlines will love you one minute, and hate you the next
  • Relationships with borderlines are notoriously unstable

First Therapy Session

In late June of 2010 our last child, a boy, was born. I could sense the distance between my wife and myself growing even further. Intimacy was non-existent, and she could barely stand to touch me now that I clearly had breasts. I had been blaming it on the pregnancy, but the gulf was widening, and I had no idea how much she really knew (which was in reality almost all of it). I was careless, barely even hiding it because she was so conspicuously ignoring it. At home, I was short fused and out of control, although less so since I quit the reserves.

My Experience with “Bipolar Disorder” (Corvus)

I have the innate human longing for community and love, and also decades of experience that teaches me about group dynamics and human behavior and interaction. I know what I am susceptible to, who and what can trigger me, and who can lead me in the direction of becoming someone I am not, or someone I do not wish to be. I have embraced the autonomous individual from a social species. And that is who I am.

For me, being “bipolar” is about my environment as much as it is about my mind. Almost 30 years of experience to put into words… It is impossible. So I am spitting out the feelings instead.

Gluten-Freedom, Down with Dairy, Up the Health

I have been vegan for over 6 years. Being vegan definitely evened out a lot of things for me including mood swings and a lot of health problems. All of those extra animal hormones, and if you believe in that sort of thing, all of that suffering from their treatment, was no longer entering my body.

I’m back!

Hi readers (and writers), I apologize for my lengthy absence. As you know, the people who contribute to this website are people who live with mental health issues and/or mental illness. I am no exception. I live with bipolar II disorder, and in the last month, my moods have swung from a hypomanic high to […]

Mixed States and Dangerous Gifts

Triggers: suicide, massive mood swings, depression, mixed states, angry rantings of a crazy person, premonitions that would likely be labeled psychosis by a psychiatrist, raw unedited emotional writing, car accidents

I clicked on the suicide prevention link at the top of the home page before beginning to write here. I am not close. I know too well what close is. But I have every thought listed on that page. I wanted to write about the horrors of mixed states. I am in one. But how can I write about one when I am in one without broken fragments or run on sentences that won’t make sense to anyone.

My Experience with Bipolar II Disorder (Hanners)

Trigger warning for description of a suicide attempt, and discussion of sexual assault.

All my life, I’ve been told by those around me that I am highly intelligent, and could do just about anything I set my mind to. I got good grades in school, for the most part (though they dropped a fair bit close to graduating high school), and was known as a happy-go-lucky kid that always found the positive side of just about anything (or anyone).

World AIDS Day, 2011

Today is the day we pause to recognize those who live with, and have passed away from, HIV and AIDS. This is an issue that is close to the heart of the LGBTQ community. Though more and more people are living longer with HIV, we have a long way to go still. HIV affects millions of people worldwide, both queer and straight.