Transcript
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This is Polarized Lens with Jennifer Merchan.
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Polarized Lens is a podcast that examines life through the filter of bipolar disorder.
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Created and hosted by a person living with bipolar disorder,
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Polarized Lens aims to explore the challenges of that mode of life in this neurotypical world,
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raise awareness, and help those who want to understand more about bipolar disorder.
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Episode 6, Day Hospital
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On Monday I had been released from inpatient hospital care.
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It was a bright, clear February morning and the familiarity of being home was invigorating.
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That afternoon I picked up all my new prescriptions from the pharmacy a block away.
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Walking outside unimpeded by a group of fellow patients was a pleasure,
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but being inside the pharmacy with the glare of its lights and the crowded spaces was a bit overwhelming.
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That night though, I reveled in the freedom of being able to take my meds without having to first stand in line to get them.
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My mother and I were staying in the apartment that my now estranged husband and I had shared until recently.
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He had left, but all of his things remained.
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He had agreed to move out of the apartment and was supposed to have moved into his new apartment in the suburb where we both had taught.
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I didn't know what was going on, but in any case all of his belongings were still in the apartment when I came home from the hospital.
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Day Hospital started two days after I was released from inpatient treatment.
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It was group therapy from 9 in the morning until 2 or 3 in the afternoon every weekday.
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That Wednesday morning I drove my mother's big boat of a car
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15 minutes back up the interstate to the mental hospital to enter this new phase of my treatment.
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Driving while adjusting to bipolar meds is not the same as driving while on antidepressants alone.
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It was blissfully anxiety free, but also wild and not exactly safe.
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I drove a little too fast and I was a little too unaware of my surroundings.
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I was lucky I didn't get into an accident that morning.
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Once I arrived at the hospital I checked in and found my group treatment room.
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Some of my former fellow inpatients were there, but among the new faces there was also another teacher from my school district.
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She was having trouble getting the days off she needed to attend Day Hospital from the same administrator I had been dealing with before I quit.
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This was no inner city school with troubled students.
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This was a suburban school district whose trouble stemmed from the inept administration of their privileged students and parents and the poor treatment of their teachers.
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This made two teachers and one student from that school district seeking help from the same mental health facility within two weeks.
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I felt vindicated and not in any petty way, just justified in the knowledge that I had not arrived at this place through my own faults alone.
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The situation in that district had been truly untenable.
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The Day Hospital treatment sessions differed significantly from the inpatient ones.
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On the ward there had been a variety of diagnoses that the therapists had had to address simultaneously,
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and so the information was more general and aimed at basic mental health coping skills.
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In Day Hospital we began to learn specifically about bipolar disorder and how to manage it in ourselves using more sophisticated knowledge-based techniques with a focus on how to prevent relapse.
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Initially I was grateful to have access to expert knowledge about this new diagnosis and therapists who knew how to treat it.
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What I got from that first day is that bipolar disorder destroyed my marriage.
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My notes also say that bipolar disorder causes extremism in our personal lives and a loss of trust.
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That I needed to create space and create trust through actions and behavior.
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The group leader said we needed to look at things from other people's points of view.
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This was difficult for me to hear as the one person it might apply to had skipped out already.
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She then asked us to create a list of things or behaviors that were not helping us.
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My list pretty much centered on my estranged husband.
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At the end of the first day I took another loopy too-fast drive in my mother's big car back down the interstate to my apartment,
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where my mother had spent the day watching TV since there was not much else she could do stuck at the apartment with no car.
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The apartment had six rooms when you included the bathroom, but there was only one bed, so I had been sharing that with her.
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Those same drugs that made me a haphazard driver also made me not care that I had to share a bed with my mother.
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This was just more liminal time, passing from one life to another, from a life with a husband to a life without a husband.
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Thursday found the group therapy leader concentrating on relapse prevention, with early intervention being the most important factor.
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This was presented in three columns, mood management, emotional management, and relationship management.
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Now either we never got to relationship management or I decided I didn't need to write anything down because I was no longer in one.
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I'm not sure which, but I'm betting on the latter. In any case, I did follow along for the others.
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Mood management entails getting a diagnosis and knowledge of symptoms,
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knowing how do I exhibit these symptoms, especially the first signs. It's acceptance of diagnosis, then outpatient treatment with a psychiatrist, therapist, and support group.
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Last is friends and family. Emotion management has only three bullet points going down the chart. Distraction, deal, and comfort and soothe.
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I can only hope this made more sense to me at the time. Now it feels like they were just trying to orient our shell-shocked brains into a harsh new reality.
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And truly, that's probably exactly what was going on.
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Driving was getting easier and less dangerous. I was getting used to my medicines and my mother's big boat car.
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I had to drive farther that day than before for my appointments with my GP and my therapist I needed to fire.
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As it turns out, I urgently needed to fire the therapist as he had invited my estranged husband to my session without my knowledge.
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A session that should have been focused on me getting out of the hospital with a new diagnosis morphed into a session about how my estranged husband and I ought to go about getting a divorce, complete with unsolicited financial advice.
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It was essentially a session on my estranged husband's behalf on my dime.
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Back at Day Hospital, Friday's notes focus on emotions and feelings, and they're in a much neater handwriting, like someone else wrote them, except I know they're my own.
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A list called Ways to Avoid Feelings dominates the page and ranges from eating to disassociation.
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There's also a very unhelpful spectrum of emotions diagram that goes from numb to mania.
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I can tell that I was still trying to stay engaged at this point, taking notes and writing neatly, hoping for the secret to extracting my estranged husband from my brain so I could get on with recovery from the bipolar disorder episode and try to become a whole person again.
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I talked in group that day about shame, the shame I felt because I couldn't keep a job, the shame I felt because my husband had dumped me, the shame I felt because my life had fallen apart.
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The group leader believed that my responsibility was limited before diagnosis, despite having to live with the consequences now.
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But she said, don't dwell on it. Focus on the present. Well, the present was impending divorce.
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Monday was more relapse and relapse prevention, and Tuesday threw communication into the mix.
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At this point, I just balked.
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I had no one with whom I needed to improve communications. My brain was too bruised to soak this in for future use. There was only my family, and my family understood me all too well.
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So I just stopped taking notes. My journal ended February 24th, a week into day hospital. Group therapy lasted for a bit more than a month and I seem to have gotten very little out of it.
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I don't even remember most of it. I know it started on February 18th for my journal, but I only know that it lasted until March 23rd because my sister, who was living with me at that point, also kept a journal and had noted it.
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According to my sister's journal, the apartment was a biohazard zone because of my estranged husband's neglect of the cats while I was gone.
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My sister and my father, who had arrived during that first week I was home, cleaned my apartment as I attended day hospital.
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In my off hours, I sorted through and packed my estranged husband's belongings, which he had left behind and refused to pick up, much less pack up, himself.
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During that month of day hospital, I discovered the various bills that my estranged husband had not been paying, like the water bill that hadn't been paid since September of the previous year and the rent that was two months behind.
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No wonder he had been so eager to give up the apartment.
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If nothing else, day hospital did give me time to process how my best friend at the time and my then-husband saw me in distress and rather than help me, took advantage of my illness to pursue a relationship with each other.
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Day hospital also gave me immediate purpose and time to get over losing my now estranged husband enough to begin to function independently.
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It was a springboard that launched me, still mostly unwilling, into a new life where all I had left was my family. Everything else I would be starting anew.
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In the end though, without the help of my family, who all lived once stayed over and five and a half hours or more away, the beginning of my road to recovery would not have been possible.
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My mother, even though she initially had reservations, had brought me to the hospital for treatment and then visited me every day despite her disability.
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My sister and my father cleaned my disgusting apartment unasked. My sister babysat me for months until I started to regain real independence.
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And my brother and my father eventually moved me out of state to go to graduate school.
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Next time in episode seven, we're going to explore some of the aspects of the stigma of mental illness.
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If you have comments, suggestions or questions about the podcast or this episode, go to polarized-lens.com/contact or email me at jennifer at polarized-lens.com.
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Thank you for listening. This has been Polarized Lens with Jennifer Merchan.
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Visit polarized-lens.com for bonus content.
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I am not a doctor. This podcast is not medical advice.
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If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, don't hesitate. Call or text 988 and connect with someone who can help.
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Don't go down that road alone.
