How to deal with the aftermath of a relapse?

[mawbroon]

I have a diagnosis of bipolar and had a bit of a relapse a few weeks ago. Nothing major, but it meant increasing my anti psychotic meds, sleeping a lot, feeling depressed and agitated and unable to cope with the everyday demands of the kids and the house.

It was brought on by an extremely stressful situation which has now been resolved, in a very good way, and now I am feeling just fine and have gone back to my previous lower dose.

DH took some time off work, I had others to help with school runs etc, but many of the things I take care of have been left to slide. I don't blame anyone who was offering me support for this happening, obviously the basics of eating/washing/school runs etc have to come first.

But now my house is cluttered and dirty, my intray is piled high. I don't even know what's in there, hopefully nothing important that I've missed, pretty much all the bills are on direct debit, but still I might have missed something.

My response to stress is to eat sugar and junk food. Lots of it, and I have very little control when I am ill, so now I have to shift the stone that I have put on . And I do have to shift it because of my work I need to get back to proper cooking because it's been ready meals and takeaways. I also get annoyed at what that has cost rather than my usual meal planning and budgeting.

Nobody else thought to put the bins out on bin day, so they are overflowing. Nobody else thought to chase ds1 to do his homework so I had to write to his teacher explaining why it wasn't done so he wouldn't get in trouble.

I have to sift through my emails because I know I will have missed some about end of term collections, or parties or whatever, and hope that I don't offend anyone by not RSVPing or whatever.

etc etc etc

It feels like I have a mountain to climb just to get things back in order. And it's not a nice feeling. Just another bloody reminder of this stupid illness.

Does anyone else get like this, and how do you cope?

Yes. And sometimes I don't cope and it causes a relapse. I think you just have to accept help for longer than you think you should.

Sorry to hear this happens to you too Bring and don't imagine we are the only ones.

While I am feeling happy at being well again, I think this is the time for lists and a diet.

I have 3 weeks before the kids finish for the school holidays, so better get cracking...

I'm having my medication re-adjusted too, I have also let things slide a bit at home, so now have a shed-load of ironing and paper work to catch up on, I'm just taking it bit by bit at a time when I can.

Bipolar does truly suck doesn't it?

Sorry you've been unwell OP. I find dealing with the aftermath just as difficult. I have a detailed crisis plan put in place which helps. It includes a list of things I can't manage during an episode and what kind of help/support I need. It might be something that would be helpful for you to try too? I know it doesn't help with your current situation but might be useful in the future.

It's always good to have a plan, as Magpie said. Maybe lists are the way forward, as you said. An idea might be to make a list of what needs to be done, then work out time-scales, and plan it into the diary/calendar. Things that need to be done will not all have the same priority, so you could have 'Soon, not quite as soon, sometime' type priorities. I tend to things that everything needs to be done immediately, which it doesn't, so I have now stopped making lists which have 'car service' and 'replace oven gloves' as the same priority....thankfully :)

I have made my list. I just need to hope that I can chip away at it quicker than I add things.

Arseforelbow it really does suck. When I was first diagnosed, I really wasn't sure if it was the right diagnosis. I had "only" had psychosis and depression and didn't really recognise a lot of the other stuff. This time I experienced that urge to go and do something reckless. It was awful because I was at the point where I wasn't sure how much longer I could stop myself. Horrible.

I get how you feel, I often feel like this in the (small) school playground. There's loads of families and children I don't know and I feel really out of touch- I don't really talk to anyone anymore and I really feel like I've been absent for a couple of years, which I have on and off.