The symptom I'm talking about this week is
"Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation."
The first half of this sentence seems like one of those symptoms that sounds more like an attribute; something we'd like to add to our behavior repertoire, rather than a function of a disease process. Isn't "goal-directed activity" a good thing? I think this might be where a person is very focussed on a certain goal and does not notice other details of what's going on around them. Like their kid, perhaps....
My mom has pretty much always been involved in goal-directed activity. She always has projects she's working on and wants to share about. Work was an extremely important part of her self image. She identifies very strongly with her role in a professional job that she held for nine years, during the time I was a child. Looking back, I think she was basically "ramped up" during the whole time she held her professional job. A big challenge for me was that she was so focussed on the goals at work that she had very little left over for me. Then the double-whammy of "lack of insight about her illness meant that she was not aware of there being a problem. As long as I did not display symptoms of neglect, any challenges I might be faced with were out of her consciousness. And as I have said before, I fastened my survival hopes on keeping stress OFF of her as much as possible. I reduced my needs to about as low as they could have been.
My mom also has processing issues; cognitive deficits apparently related to her illness which make certain things very difficult for her. I've seem them come out in many different areas. As far as I know she has never acknowledged any of these deficits, at least not to me. I think it is very likely that she used her natural intelligence and ability to "ramp up" to cover these deficits as much as she could in her job. I believe that ultimately, however, these deficits are what caused her to resign from her job when her supervisor let her know she was about to be fired. She just couldn't cover them up over the long term. The swings of of her bipolar plus the cognitive deficits just made the road for her much steeper than had she not suffered from the disease.
When I was eight years old mom decided that she was going to install a lawn and grow a large garden. I was the person who was going to help her do it. Rather than pay someone else to do these projects, or just take on a piece of it, she wanted to do it all. If I wasn't "pulling my weight" she would become angry. It was a tremendous amount of work and she was very focussed on getting it done. This is how we spent many summer weekends when I was seven years old. It's taken me years to feel at all interested in doing things around the garden.
I remember being in tears several times as a child because she wanted me to shovel the snow off the driveway and when I had, it wasn't good enough. At times I had to get the ice-scraper and chip all the ice away down to the bare pavement. Not because it was so necessary; she was just focussed on having all of the driveway cleared and I was going to do it. As far as I could tell I was the only kid on the block whose shoveling was held to this standard.
I naturally learned to keep my space clean and help out with the chores without being asked. My not doing so would have brought the critical and agitated eye.
In my adult life I can "ramp up" just like my mom does. It's happened several times in such a way that my wife gets a bit worried and points it out. She is concerned because it can lead to decisions being made that she is not as much a part of as she'd like. I can "get a head of steam going" and she finds it's hard to get herself understood in that context. What happens is that there is a loss of steady process. Thinking becomes more harried, pressed for time, less grounded. "We have to do this NOW" comes to the fore as the reasoned approach fades.
The second part of this symptom, "psychomotor agitation" is not something I have seen a lot in my mom. According to about.com
"Psychomotor agitation is an increase in activity brought on by mental tension.
Symptoms may take the form of restlessness, pacing, tapping fingers or feet, abruptly starting and stopping tasks, meaninglessly moving objects around, and more. Psychomotor agitation is frequently, though not exclusively, associated with agitated depression."
I don't remember this as being a regular behavior for her.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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