Symptoms, part 4: Flight of ideas and Distractibility

Clear eyes.   This is a look a person has when experiencing being centered,  even if only briefly.     A person is willing to "just be" in the moment and the eyes tell us that s/he is confident to be in that moment.   S/he doesn't have to rush to get anywhere.   S/he doesn't have to do anything other than what s/he's doing.   The mind is relatively still.   S/he comes across as grounded.

I don't remember my mom ever being there.    My experience of her is always moving along towards another idea,  another perception,  another explanation of something from her life.   Pushing with some urgency from one topic to another.   When talking with me she has never,  in my memory,  stayed on the same subject for more than a few thoughts,  before moving on to the next one.     We have never really delved into a topic;   rather we skim along and hop from one relatively surface aspect to the next.  And then to something unrelated to the previous subject.

This skipping from lilly pad to lilly pad is a strong element of how my mom thinks.      It's how she approaches any situation she faces in life.   Her way of thinking seems to me to intertwine very closely with the bipolar symptoms of "racing thoughts",    "flight of ideas"  and "distractibility".   And because her model of thinking is the one which formed the basis of my thinking,   the symptoms are part of my approach as well.

Here are some descriptions from bipolardisordersymptoms.info

What are racing thoughts & flight of ideas?

Racing thoughts literally mean that thoughts race, or go very fast. Racing thoughts usually present with flight of ideas.

In flight of ideas, the subject of thought changes very quickly. A person suffering from this bipolar symptom will change the topic of conversation frequently.

What does it feel like to have racing thoughts & flight of ideas?

Racing thoughts and flight of ideas leave the person feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.

Although the person may feel worn and tired, the inability to fall asleep can result in feelings of frustration.

How do I know if someone suffers from racing thoughts and flight of ideas?

The person may be highly distracted and change the subject of the conversation constantly.

Pressured speech is common. The words may sound rushed and sentences are scrambled. He or she is unable to talk fast enough to keep up with their thoughts and ideas.

The person may share with you that their thoughts are going very fast, feeling uncomfortable and annoyed by their incessant thinking.

How does this bipolar disorder symptom impact life?

Racing thoughts may trigger insomnia or interfere with a person's ability to work, study, or to enjoy leisure activities. It is difficult to fully interact with the external environment when the mind is active and draws attention inward.

The person may be busy, but unable to accomplish a great deal. Their attention shifts consistently and the person begins to work on other things without finishing tasks in progress.

Bipolar mania sufferers often report they have no control over their thoughts and are unable to slow them down. This may prevent them from falling asleep at night.

What is distractibility?

Distractibility is an inability to maintain focus or attention. Minimal stimuli cause the mind's attention to divert and wander.

The person may be distracted internally (thoughts, feelings, ideas or emotions) and externally (environmental events and physical stimuli).

What does distractibility feel like?

The person may feel frustrated by their inability to pay attention. The mind may feel out of control.

How can I recognize distractibility?

The person's productivity decreases. He or she may seem 'lost'.

New projects are started prior to completion of current or old ones. The person is unable to maintain attention on simple and short activities.

The person changes the subject of the conversation frequently.

He or she seems busy and occupied, while at the same time, not getting much done.

How does distractibility impact life?

Tasks of daily living such as work, studying, or leisure activities become difficult. For example, a student may be unable to stay attentive in class and find it difficult to submit assignments on respective deadlines.

Distractibility, by itself, is a cognitive challenge. When present with other symptoms of bipolar disorder, distractibility is debilitating. It makes the success of already unrealistic and manic goals and activities even less likely.

Distractibility usually presents simultaneously with other bipolar mania symptoms. The combined effect of these symptoms can leave the person unable to perform activities of daily living

The symptoms of flight of ideas and distractibility are basic parts of of the mental environment I grew up with.   I dealt with them in different ways.     

One response I had was to become more quiet as a person.   My mom was almost always getting a new idea in her head and she wanted to share it.     I learned how to listen.   But my listening had two modes.  One was that I would more or less pretend to listen but took very little interest in the content of what she was saying.    There was often such a stream of information and it was jumping to a variety of topics which may or may not have much to do with each other.     

I still do this on the phone fairly often with my mom.  When she's in a manic state and needs someone to talk to.   I half-listen and "skim" for relevant information.   

My other way of listening was when part of me feared that she was escalating.   Then I would listen to the meta-message behind the stream of words.   I would get indications about whether I needed to go into a protective or "alert" status.      When I went into alert I would feel like I was the adult and she was a teenager I needed to look out for.    A big problem with that,  of course,  is that I did not have the resources of an adult,  just the feeling of being responsible.

An example of this recurred when she and I were on trips.   It seems the symptom of distractibility is relevant in this case.   A typical scenario unfolded as follows:   We would fly into a city and get a room at a motel or hotel.    She would be very excited about a variety of things she could do in the city and would want to drive the rental car off to explore these ideas of hers.    I was not interested in said adventures and told her I would sit in the room and watch TV.    She would say she'd be "back in an hour"  and that we'd do something together after that.

After about 2-3 hours I would start to worry.   Scenarios of what could be happening began to run through my head.   She was dead.   She was in the hospital.   What was going to happen to me,  I wonder?   Would I live with my grandparents?     After four hours I would start pacing the room.   This was in the time before cell phones.   You couldn't just call someone if they were out and about.   And she never called me.

Finally,  she arrived back at the room.   The light and excited mood she was in when she left  has been replaced by stress,   upset,  tension.   She got lost.   Someone cut her off on the road.   She couldn't find the place she was looking for.   She was going around in circles for hours.   It was a disaster.   I need to sleep.

So then,   by hour five or six in the motel room,   I am watching her sleep.   Part of me is relieved I don't have to figure out how to call the police and report a missing person.     Part of me is very irritated because this is not the first time it's gone like this.   

Finally,  she's slept and is ready to get up and go get some supper.    By now her mood is on the upswing and she's sharing the thoughts that are coming to her.    I listen.    If I ever do share something she finds something in her experience which is like what I said and continues talking.    Did she ever listen to me?    Has she ever listened to me?   I can't really say she has.

It seems to me a truism that to parent well one has to give attention to the child for sustained periods of time.  A parent has to be present with the child even when it's hard or if there is something else that might seem more interesting in the moment.   One has to be able to focus on being with the child and noticing what his needs are.   One has to be interested in the child's thoughts.   A more advanced level would be to not only be interested in the child's thoughts but to help him develop his thinking through listening deeply and offering helpful feedback.

My mom's frequent distraction and the stream of ideas she had coming to her much of the time meant that she was not able to focus on me.   She was with me physically but her attention was somewhere else.  The constant surge of thoughts coming into her mind made empathy very difficult.

Beyond the obvious self-esteem issues that come along with not having been listened to,   there are other challenges I find in myself.    The fact that mom was often distracted and had bursts of ideas coming through her a lot of the time means that my own thinking and ability to plan and follow through are diminished.     I have a natural intelligence that can make me seem pretty capable.   But often I find that it is very hard for me to get into the details of something,   track it all the way through a process,  and follow through to the ending point.     My mind starts to scatter at a certain point.   I lose focus.  I forget the previous details and lose track of how to pick up the process where it left off and move it forward.      I tend to look for processes that I can wrap up in one session,  because it can be very hard for me to effectively track more long-term projects.

One place this impacted me was in getting my footing with education.   I never really oriented to what higher education was about.   I was taking classes.  I was getting good grades,  getting a degree.   It was just what I was supposed to do.   But I was not oriented in how one translates that into a job.    My mom was not able to orient me to any of the issues beyond "get a college degree".   

Now one could say,   "If your family couldn't do that for you,  why not just ask someone else to do it?"   The thing is,  I didn't have the consciousness to ask for help.   I didn't admit to myself that my mom's thinking was off.   I pretended like I knew what I was doing,  even though I didn't.     When I graduated college I was stuck.   I did not know what to do.   So I went home.   My mom had recently divorced her husband and so the mood of the household felt much safer to me.   I could be clueless in a place where I didn't need to pay rent.

I began working retail and substitute teaching.   A friend of the family approached me with a Myers-Briggs type indicator and told me I should be an elementary school teacher.   I did not know what else I would do so I enrolled in the program at the local college.     My sense of planning and intentionality about that decision was very low.    "Well,  I might as well do something" I said to myself and plowed into more schooling.    As it's turned out being a teacher has been a very rewarding path for me, though not without it's ups and downs (see blog posting for April 1).   

In something as important as my vocational path I had almost no process for figuring out what to do.    "Throw yourself into life and wing it"  is the message I got from mom.    I am only gradually finding my way out of that attitude and into one which is more plan-ful.

A question for me as I talk about these kinds of deficits is:   which of them are skills which I can improve and which are processing issues which I just have to adjust to?    I'd like to think that I can improve the places where I have deficits.    I guess a first step is to acknowledge that I've got them.   Then work to change them.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Empathy

Inside Mental Illness:   The inner battle of someone with Mania

From NAMI "Family to Family" materials

Inner feelings of power and self-importance expand to awesome heights;  ideas burst forth brightly;  everything is deliriously possible;  thoughts race with the speed of light;  the center flies apart,  unhinged;  feverish activity churns,  goes nowhere;  "brilliant revelations" get a startled response from others.

In a lightening shift,  exuberance disintegrates into hostility,  paranoia;  sudden rebellion flares;  intense resentment against authority calls up rage,  stubbornness and rejection of counsel; all appeals are repelled with fierce and haughty righteousness;  others draw back out of range,  unable to withstand this relentless manic antagonism.

The mind is spinning,  flying away;  excitement demolishes all control;  reckless abandon and sexual misadventure will be protected by magical invincibility.  Nothing will stop me now!  Why are you putting me in restraints?  I am superhuman,  uniquely gifted,  divinely inspired.  You are nothing.  I will destroy you.

Humiliation, shame,  disgrace,  mortification crush the soul as the mind reassembles the pieces of the outrageous,  unthinkable folly of the manic seizure;  the self must hide,  concealed,  never to come out;  guilt, embarrassment overwhelms;  feelings of failure and resignation to soiled identity are intense;  redemption,  restitution restoration are impossible.  I am doomed.

The fear floods in;  when will the tempest return?  When will all I hold dear be swept away again?  I have no way to control this mind-storm;  I am terrified it will overrun my weakened fortress.  I must hold on tightly so I will not crack.  People shrink from me.  I think they fear me;  I dread discovery;  I avoid contact.  This vigilance is exhausting.

I am lost.  How can I rekindle my life?

Joyce Burland, PhD (creator and director of NAMI's "Family to Family" program)

When I read this description of what it's like to be in a highly manic state I feel a sense of empathy.  Empathy for my mom.  Empathy for myself.   I am amazed that she did as good a job as she did given what she was up against.   I give myself kudos for being able to get through a childhood which had plenty of storms.  And neglect.

I am grateful that I have as stable a life as I do,  given my primary parent and model has suffered from the illness described above,  untreated until I was fifteen years old.   I feel grateful.   It could have turned out a lot worse for both of us.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Symptoms part 3: Pressured Speech

Going down the list of bipolar symptoms (see "Symptoms part 1") we come to "decreased need for sleep"  and "pressured speech".    I don't have a strong sense of the former in my mom.   I know sleep issues have been there and that when she is rising up into a manic state her psychiatrist tells her "take an extra pill and get more sleep".   When I was a kid I didn't really notice if my mom was up late.  I have for most of my life slept like a log.    These days she usually sleeps a good nine hours every night,  from what I can tell.   When I was a kid she probably slept less,  but I can't really say for sure.

So I will focus this post on the "pressured speech" symptom,  of which I have a very strong sense.

My mom has a mostly one-way speech pattern.   She can talk and talk and talk and,  well,  you get the idea.    I speak to her over the phone once a week on average and most of our conversations consist of me listening to her talk.   This is something I am very good at.     When she is on a manic swing the volume of her speech goes up and I have to have the phone volume set on "low" and hold the receiver away from my ear.    

My mom's pressured speech is like a snow-plow of words,  pushing other people's thoughts and feelings out of the way.     Her speech often contains a free association of ideas and impressions which she is very excited to share.   Typically each sentence makes sense in and of itself,  but taken together,  the conversation is a bit of a jumble.   Occasionally she will ask me something about my life and if I do share something she typically will counter-share  an experience she's had that reminds her of what I've said.   That allows her to take hold of the conversation again and keep going with her free association.   She does not have,  and has never had as long as I've known her,  the habit of delving into something I've shared or looking into it from my point of view.   

My mom loves me.   But she has a very low understanding of what I think and who I am on the inside.   She's just never been able to pay attention for very long to thoughts that weren't her own.   

Something I have to be careful about is figuring out how much of what I experience as her "pressured speech" is a symptom of her bipolar,  and how much is a family habit.   My grandmother also liked to have her thoughts at the center of the conversation and would direct social relationships to that end.   It seems to me that my  mom has the family habit with an illness overlay.    Double whammy.

This speech habit means that my mom is often exhausting to be around.   When someone is talking with her they tend to get more and more tired and then need a break.   Since my mom can be charming,  insightful and fun to be around (in short doses) she has some friends she's maintained for several years and whom she sees on a weekly (or so) basis.   But she has not been in the presence of another person for more than short periods of time.   For a long,  long time.   This is not an accident.   It is because no person,  I believe,  could be around her for longer than a few days without needing to get away.   Being with her is just too intense and one-sided.   She can be fun to be around but one simply does not get one's social needs met in her presence.   Like being listened to.   

So that's why I will call her up and be ready to just listen to her for an hour and then hang up.   I never get mad at her for doing this over and over.  It's such an ingrained pattern that I do it without thinking.     My social needs are met through people other than my mom.   And I know that she feels very supported by the fact that she can depend on me for these weekly "conversations" .   Not that she ever thanks me.      She did say recently,  however,   that she is able to be by herself for long stretches without any problem because of our "talks".   That might be the closest thing to a "thanks" that I will receive.

What gets my resentment up and baring its teeth is the fact that she doesn't think about me in this scenario.   And since she is more high-functioning these days than she's ever been,  I know that her speech,  and my role as listener,  used to be even much more pronounced and one-sided.     In the past year she has even started saying things like,  "you haven't said much--tell me more about what you're doing".    But when I do say something she brings in her thought that reminds her of what I said and she's off to the races again.   Consequently my sharing is often perfunctory.     If I think something is important for her to know I will tell her more.   But otherwise the habit I've had with her for thirty five years marches on.  

She counts on me for emotional support.   The reverse is not true.   If it has ever been true it was only fleetingly.   I deeply craved emotional support from her.   But at a certain point I realized that it was not something she could offer me,  so I stopped holding any expectation.

I believe that the symptom  of "pressured speech" exhibited by my mom is one of the factors behind my low self-esteem.     Ideally,  parents can listen to their children and acknowledge both their ideas and the evolution of their thinking.   Simply put,  my mom did not listen to me.   She was very busy with work and other things.  And for much of my childhood I was her primary confidant.     I was apparently the only one  who could sit and listen to her for long stretches.   She had other friends and family she spoke with but none of them were willing to take her way of communicating for longer than short doses.   I was a captive audience.

In a way,  listening to my mom was one of my principle activities as a child.    Most likely my listening was also tuned into my own alert system.   If she was getting manic I would be there to see how bad it was.   If it was bad,  then I would become active and try to calm her down in some way.   If it wasn't bad I could listen for a few minutes and then go off to play with my friends or be by myself.   

My mom told my wife several years ago,  "Ben is the strong,  silent type."     My wife told me later that she wanted to tell my mom,  "Well,  if you'd listen to him for a minute you might hear that he has something to say!"   Of course she bit her tongue.   But her saying that to me was very helpful.   It made me think that maybe my defined role as "listener" is something I should try to work on and overcome.   The pattern goes so far back into my childhood that I was very unconscious of it until recently.   "She talks and I listen,  and that's just the way of things"  is what I have believed all these years.

And even though I will call her up again this week and listen to her talk for an hour,  my awareness about what I am doing is greater than it was a year ago.  

Sometimes it helps to mark progress incrementally.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Symptoms part 2: Grandiosity

First,  a disclaimer:   my purpose in writing this blog is not to vent on my mom or anyone else.   Rather,  it is an attempt to discover the many threads of my upbringing that currently act  as a sticky web,  holding me away from my own growth and development.     I am trying to know myself,  my drives,  the ways I see things at a basic level,  whether I'd like to cop to them or not.

The first bipolar symptom I'd like to talk about is grandiosity.    My understanding of this trait is that of an inflated and ungrounded view of one's place in the world.     Now,  my spiritual understanding would tell me that each of us is a much more radiant and beautiful being than most of us are able to perceive due to our eyes choosing to connect to flesh more than to spiritual reality.   Grandiosity is different in my view because it often puts other people down.   "I'm so great and the others are less than"  is a meta message I have heard from my mom many times.     The spiritual perspective,  on the other hand,  holds that the Truth is true for me,  and for you too,  by the way.

My mom walks on a very different planet than that of a person who does not have bipolar.   Where she lives is a place oft covered with a magical dust.   It is a place of fairy tales where the moral of the story is what she is interested in during that particular moment.    There is a very different kind of relationship with the past,  because the past is filled with impressions she covers with fairy dust.  When she feels wronged in some way the dust turns to acid and she sees the person or situation as all bad.     Because she is the only one seeing this reality she by definition is at the center of the show and has to share to others what's playing.   This takes a lot of effort.   It means that she hasn't much left to listen to what other people are saying.   

She is the star of her show and other people aren't able to perceive at the depth she does.   Her career she describes in grand and noble brush strokes.  Her opinions are connected with the high march of history towards the good and noble.     Sooner or later other people will see that she was right all along.   The thing is,   her opinions can change fairly quickly,  and it's not the idea itself, but her opinion which needs to be defended as being intrinsically transcendent.   

Mom has,   as long as I can remember,  looked down on her family of origin.   She was smarter than they.  She achieved more.  She was more ambitious.   They were regular fodder for her criticisms.   Rarely did she point out their good points,  the exception being her father,  who passed away when she was just over thirty years old.   She described him in expansive terms now that he was dead and she could shape his image to her liking.    He couldn't get in the way of how she wanted to think of him.   Now that her mother is gone there is more and more lionizing of her.  Less and less does she reference the almost constant sense of conflict she experienced in the presence of her mother.   

One class she taught at age thirty at the local college becomes the grand sweep of "When I was teaching at the University".   When I was eight and nine years old I remember how she received a mailing from the company "Who's Who in the West".   The letter told her that she had qualified to be listed among the elite achievers of the region.   Her father had also sent the money in and been listed in the book.   To mom this was a sign that she was making it in the world.   She was noticed!   For about a year she talked about being listed in the book and kept the volume proudly on the bookshelf.    By the time the dog chewed the cover to shreds several years had passed and the thrill had worn off.   

As far as I know she very rarely goes back and reviews her past perceptions and questions her judgement at the time.     Her connection with her own memories is tenuous.   The past is a jumble and needs to be remade in the present time according to her present mood.     I suppose such a process is somewhat true for all humans;   methinks it is considerably more so for my mom.

Mom's expression of the symptom of grandiosity  has worked on me in at least two ways I can think of.   First,   As a child my self esteem was harmed by it during the times when she looked down on me.   She still looks down on me today,  but the affect of that is less than it was when I was a child.   "Don't you get that/ aren't you able to do something so simple,    you idiot?"  her tone told me time and time again when I was a kid.   As I look back I can answer back to her "How can I know how to do something if no one has shown me?"   She expected me frequently to be ABLE without ever teaching me the skills to be so.  

This translated into a some traits that I carry today:    I have low self-esteem.   I tell myself that I am stupid if I don't understand something.   I assume that another person can do something better than I can.    I feel responsible.    Though I can tell myself not to have such a feeling,   I feel responsible,  at a basic level,   for my mom's well being.  

She is a grand lady and I am supposed to blend in with the wallpaper except where I am there to serve her in some way.

A second affect is that I have taken up the trait of grandiosity to some degree.   I don't see this as a symptom of a biological illness.  Rather it is what I took in year after year from my primary model.     When I was young mom brought me into her grandiose sphere. At times  I was part of her club.   I'd get a little fairy dust as well.   I could,  through her,  see myself as one endowed with expansive knowledge of the world and all its inhabitants.   I was allowed to see myself as more special,  and better than others.

There were other people who she referred to in this expansive way.   They were like demigods,  though I never met any of them.   They were people she knew of ,  for the most part people involved in state politics and culture.  She also included her dad,  after he was dead.    These were the great titans I could aspire to emulate.   Other people I met along the way were not in the same league.  Not by a long shot.

From the time I was in my mid twenties I have cultivated a spiritual life.   Through my spiritual life I have tried to consciously develop my higher self.    That means that I have had tiny glimpses from time to time of the radiant being that I am essentially.      My ability to see this in myself must have,  in order to be real,  a corresponding capacity to see it in others.   The trait of grandiosity can weasel in there at times,   showing me my radiant self,  but now through the lens of the lower self.   Grandiosity tells me that I'm cool and others aren't.   

So I am careful about seeing my radiance too much.     Luckily,   there are signs that come to me and tell me whether the voice is the angel on my shoulder or the devil.   Sometimes,  or perhaps often,   I miss the signs.   I'd like to raise my awareness about this a lot more than I have to date.   

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Symptoms, part 1

A big part of my inner process with this blog is trying to puzzle out the affects of mental illness on my life today.     I know that the influences are strong.   I also know that they're not always negative.   I just want to sort it out as much as I can.   With more awareness of the patterns which are influencing my thinking,  feeling  and behavior I'll be able to be more conscious.  And more free.

Even though both of my parents had a mental illness I will be focussing on my mom,  as her influence in my life has been far greater.   My dad,  who suffered from severe alcoholism and major depression,  exited my life when I was six years old.   Mom,  on the other hand,  is someone I talk to on the phone every week.

A disclaimer is the fact that I am not entirely sure of my mom's diagnosis.   She has been given a diagnosis of Bipolar II:  Hypomania by her regular psychiatrist and has worked under that assumption for many years now.   Six months ago I was looking at the criteria for that diagnosis and realized that it requires no history of psychosis.   My mom has had at least two episodes of psychosis that I'm aware of (1985 and 2000).   Nevertheless,  the bipolar II criteria seem to fit pretty well for my mom's behavior so I'll use them for this exercise.

For the next several posts I will go over the symptoms of mom's bipolar and look at how their echoes clock into work in my psyche every day.   It looks to me like there are at least two ways the symptoms imprinted on me when I was a kid.   

First is the case where I developed a behavior in response to my mom's bipolar symptom.   For example,  I tend to be fairly quiet in large part because of my mom's pressured speech and extreme talkativeness.

Second is the case where I have bipolar behaviors because I modeled them from my mom.   An example is how manic behaviors can come out in me occasionally when I am under stress.

It is a somewhat disconcerting exercise to draw a direct (or even indirect) line from my current behavior to aspects of an illness.     I think the only reason I can dive happily into such an exercise is that I do not equate my personality (or any quirks therein) as representing my true identity.    Furthermore,  I strongly sense that my higher nature will be steadily empowered by my unflinching look at my childhood influences.    It allows me to see why I am this way.   And rather than beating myself up (or finding a way to self-medicate) to lessen the blow of seeing my quirks and flaws,   this process allows me to stand back from my lower self and have compassion.      Then,  after having some compassion for myself,  it allows me to go to work and change the parts of me which are trying to send little torpedoes into the best parts of my life.

For the sake of getting started I'll use the DSM IV criteria for Bipolar II:  Hypomania,  which includes these aspects:

A) A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least 1 week.

B) And at least three of the following:

1.inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
 

2.decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep)
 

3.more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
 

4.flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
 

5.distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli) 

 

6.increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation 

7.excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g.,  engaging in unrestrained buying spree, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments).

In the next several posts I will take up one or two symptoms at a time and discuss how they relate to me.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben