Living With Mood Swings

As Mental Health Awareness Week was celebrated across the nation recently, in my blog this week, I’ve decided to focus on my own mental well-being and talk about how I’ve managed over the years, to live with my mood swings.

I passionately believe that we heal through sharing our struggles, our wounds, our victories, our hopes and our dreams.

If you have had similar experiences as me, with your mental health - volatile mood swings, depression and anxiety, as a result of childhood abuse, I hope that reading my book, ‘Wearing Red’ or my blogs, is of some value to you and will help you to feel less alone, less odd, less peculiar.

Maybe you, too, will find the courage to speak out, be heard and tell your own story. Write your own story. Name your ghosts. No more hiding.

Trauma and abuse make us feel out of control and powerless. Taking charge of our own recovery path helps to reclaim our authority and improve the quality of our lives. There is no quick fix. Recovery requires practice, repetition, endurance and resilience. Changing destructive patterns takes a strong pulsating will to choose life and find a different way forward.

As a serial mood swinger and sexual abuse survivor, how am I today in my own skin? My answer is simply that I’m doing the best I can, and that has to be good enough.

For my own sanity I had to make sense of all that has happened, learning somehow to own and integrate the parts of myself, that I’ve rejected over the years, that are most definitely not ‘shiny.’  

Having recently discussed my mental health with a Psychiatrist, he suggested that I have bipolar II, which is a milder version than bipolar I. I’m now taking a low dose mood stabiliser, so the down periods have less ability to pole-axe me. I’m not a fan of labels, but today I can perceive a diagnosis as a way of understanding myself better, rather than as a box that defines me and excludes crucial parts of myself.          

I still carry the psychological scars from the sexual abuse but at least today, I’m more aware of them, having become more realistic about how to adapt socially in order to live a more fulfilling life. Falsely trying to cheer myself up rarely works.  

There is merit in becoming more comfortable in my discomfort, and not perceiving the mood swings as a curse I’m stuck with. There are still times when I feel worthless and paranoid that the world is against me.

I no longer abuse myself. I am no longer a victim. I have moved beyond survival.

Slowly I’m realising life doesn’t have to be such a struggle, as I engage with the world on a more nourishing level.

If I had a choice, or a magic wand, would I rather be a person without my emotional volatility? Would I opt for safe sailing, with a steady balance in my life? Probably.      Perhaps.       I don’t know. 

Taking care of my mental health has become paramount for my survival. I’m proud of myself for my recovery and thirst to be well. For the courage I’ve shown in reclaiming a life of my own choosing. I’m unable to totally embrace my mood swings, but I refuse to be defined by them, and do my best to stop fighting the demons.

Most of the time I’m comfortable in my own skin. Today, I can give myself the gift of saying: ‘No.’ ‘No’ to old habits that steal my life’s energy. ‘No’ to the things that rob me of joy. ‘No’ to any form of abuse.

Settling into myself, I’ve concluded that hope is more relevant to life than an elusive pursuit of happiness. Hope carries potential. Without hope where would we be?

I will never allow anyone to steal my hope. 

I am not the labels ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad’. I am uniquely different.

My living with mood swings is a bit like Samuel Beckett described in his novel ‘Unnamable’: “You must go on.  I can't go on.  I'll go on. 

I find myself, lose myself, arrive in a different place and begin all over again.  

St. Frances of Assisi sums up this week’s blog so well:

“Start by doing what’s necessary;

then do what’s possible;

and suddenly

you’re doing the impossible.”