Music. Conversations with. My name is Shaylee Huckendorn and I live with Bipolar 2 disorder. Sharing with others is healing both individually and collectively. Sharing our stories will educate others, bring more understanding, shed more light and smash more stigma. Our voices need to be heard. Our stories aren't over yet. And this is Bipolar. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to This is Bipolar. If it's your first time here, I am Shaili Hugendorn. I'm a mom.
I am a wife. I'm a mental health advocate, speaker, and I substitute for elementary school. I live with bipolar 2 disorder, and I just started the podcast just so that I could help end stigma around it and just show a face. And a voice of someone that's living with it right now. I am so excited about my guest today because my favorite is to interview people that I don't know their whole story. So then it's like exciting for me.
Before we get started, I just want to let you know I have subscriptions on Instagram. So you can subscribe right there on Instagram and you'll get access to extra content. You get to hear some of the Going Deeper episodes. So every person I talk to, they share some of their strategies or we pick a different topic. So people love that. And then the most special thing that I love is that I have a peer support group every month on Zoom.
And so there is a beautiful group of bipolar bears that show up from all over the world and we just connect. And it's just like being with people that truly get it, right? You don't have to mask it all. It's a really beautiful space. and there are new people that come all the time. So you wouldn't just be the new person. And then you share if you're comfortable. We have people sometimes that don't turn their camera on or waiting till they're more comfortable.
Otherwise, you can share as much or as little as you want. So if you have any trouble subscribing, just message me on Instagram at this.is.bipolar and we'll get started. If it's your first time here, I am Shaili Hugendorn. I'm a mom. I am a wife. I'm a mental health advocate, speaker, and I substitute for elementary school.
I live with bipolar 2 disorder and I just started the podcast just so that I could help and stigma around it and just show a face and a voice of someone that's living with it right now. So I'm so excited for my new friend to introduce herself. Thanks, Shaylee. Thanks so much for having me on This Is Bipolar Podcast. So yes, my name's Jade Rose. I'm similar to you. I'm many different things, wearing many different hats in this season of my life. So I'm also a mother of two young kids.
I'm a wife. I am a writer I've got a novel currently querying with agents which is actually about it's a fiction novel but it's about the lived experience of the tumultuous time before receiving a bipolar diagnosis and what that journey looks like so very exciting there I've also work in the corporate space so I'm a talent professional and I run a podcast as well called the Neuro Diaries, which is interviewing people with lived experience of mental health conditions.
Neurodivergence, experiencing mental illness, so a wide range of conditions there. And I'm a mental health advocate. And you might be able to tell from my accent, I'm Australian. So I'm all the way from down in the Snowy Mountains region of, it's a rural place in Australia.
So that's me I'm an avid yogi I'm a big reader I'm addicted to coffee I just did a gut cleanse and my goal was to get off coffee but I have failed that I I need I realized all I realized was that my entire personality runs on caffeine so that's where I am today you're like that is a joy stealer I am not giving that up oh my goodness we're gonna have to have a whole nother time where we talk about books and yoga because me too yes yeah wonderful yeah okay I love it
I love love reading and so yeah we'll have to talk about that and I'm really excited to hear more about your podcast that's so cool it's always fun for me to talk to another podcaster because I don't know about you when you're actually doing the interview it's super fun and there's connection which is what I'm all about, but the rest of it is lonely work.
It yeah and it's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes like my favorite part is definitely doing the interviews and having the conversations and it's the best thing is like breaking the.
Connection because we connect on instagram and in the community and you get to know these people but when you get to do a podcast interview you actually get to break break that third wall and actually have a conversation and find out more about them and who they are and what goes on for them so I love that bit but it is quite solo work I guess the rest of it yeah and I from the very beginning when we first started I had a co-host and she was passionate about editing so we were
like the best team but then she's reading another book and now I edit and it's not my favorite thing it's not my favorite thing but I do it and you do it and we're here amazing here we are I'm excited to hear we'll talk about your book later on I'm excited to hear about that too because often I get a lot of memoirs sent to me but there's not a lot of of fiction books from people with lived experience so that's really exciting yeah
yeah cool I would love to hear I would love to hear right the build-up or what was going on before your diagnosis that led to your diagnosis what did your life look like? Yeah, great question. So I was 24 when I received my diagnosis and this time of my life I was in my first serious relationship with my now husband and this is going back about nine years ago.
So at that point in time we'd been together for maybe two years and I had been on a uni exchange in that time so we'd done a bit of long distance but I'd been through a period of about 18 months where I was really low and I just wasn't getting, any better and it was a really confusing time because in any given week I would spend about three or four days very debilitated like very much I don't want to say like that stereotype of can't get out of bed like
I can usually get myself out of bed but it's just that I probably shouldn't like I'm not good for anything I'm very teary so I struggle to actually pull it together enough to get out into the world and even when I do like my eyes get so red and puffy from just days of crying that it makes it very hard to actually go out in public and I just, had tried everything in my toolbox to try and get better and it just wasn't
working my relationship was really suffering and he didn't know how to help me and it was. It wasn't really put as an ultimatum, but I guess you could call it that, where it was like, I don't know how to help you anymore. If you're not going to get help and try and fix this, I don't know what more I can do. I then decided to go and see a psychologist. And I guess the reason I hadn't gone beforehand is that psychology.
Mental illness was not something that was really ever spoken about in my family. If it was, I'd heard a lot of comments from my parents that it's not real or how stupid or just go for a walk sort of thing. So in my mind, I thought that that can't be it or I'm not that bad. It's got to be a lot worse to actually go and get help for it. But I realised at this point that it would be worth it to go and see what happened. So that was the lead up to what took me to get help.
I went into this great organisation in Australia called Headspace.
So they're actually a free resource for youth so under 25 so everything I did with them was free they did a full physical screening to check if there wasn't any sort of underlying hormone hormonal or physical problem causing the imbalances and she said to me in one of the first sessions when I described what I was feeling that sometimes I'm really articulate and I'm really charismatic I think very clearly and everything's fine and then other times I just can't think I
get very confused and I have these periods where I can't stop crying and she's she very quickly said to me okay but have you ever had periods of quite the opposite where you might have a racing mind or you might have trouble sleeping or you feel great and euphoric and invincible and I was like yeah. Yeah I do yeah and if I was going to categorize the period of my life prior to that low time Like that is how I would describe it. I was early 20s. I was going out a lot. I was drinking heavily.
I was taking drugs. I was just out. I was excited. I was out of control, I guess. That's what my friends would have said. I was the wild one. And that's how I categorized that time of my life. And then looking back even further, I can see this pattern going back into high school. I have a year where I barely spoke to anyone. I have a year where I didn't really sleep and just exercised all the time. I can identify this going back to probably mid-teen years.
Yeah, same. And I find it so interesting that for the longest time, it's not common to diagnose younger than 20s. But I'm interviewing more people and I'm hearing more people get diagnosed earlier. Because same, I can look back and I can be like, oh, that's what it was. And I'm actually feeling quite encouraged by that because I just think about, I was diagnosed when I was 32, so it was a long time to live with it, right? Yeah.
I look back and I'm just like, how did I don't know? How did you do that? I didn't know. I didn't know. And that's amazing that they asked that right away because I was repeatedly diagnosed with depression, like every time.
Yeah. Yeah. never asked me if there was other periods because i don't know about you but i thought the other part was like quote unquote like normal shaley and then the madness part yeah wasn't me yeah wow i get that because you want that to be the like when you feel energy and you feel good and you're productive and you're charismatic yeah you want that to be the normal that's not yeah it's not necessarily an issue until it goes too far so it's like it and it's
a very different frame of reference from the the depressive episodes yeah and in Australia when you went to this could you get an appointment right away was it quite easy to get an appointment it was fairly easy to get in with the the physical screening and the psychologist as part of their sort of treatment I saw her for about six months every two weeks or so that to get the official diagnosis you have to see a psychiatrist. And that appointment took months and then it kept getting pushed back.
And I remember one day they called me and said, oh, the psychiatrist that you finally have the appointment with tomorrow is now away. So we're going to push it back another five weeks. And I just burst into tears and I'm like, I'm trying to get help. Help me.
Yeah. Here in Canada, my listeners are probably like shaley you say this every time but it's like a year and a half wait and i'm just oh my god and there's no in between not even you can see like a registered counselor or whatever but same they can't give you the meds so you have two two options and i had to take the one option where you have to go to emerge emergency or you wait on the list yeah and It's just wild to me because I wasn't, it wasn't an emergency yet.
It probably led to one, but I had to go through that to even be a psychiatrist. There's no middle ground. So that's just wild to me. But yeah, and then talk to other people. And in the States, if you have money, of course, or coverage, you can go and get like right away. So it's always interesting to me how it is in countries. Yeah. I don't know how it works here for like more adults because I was 24, so I got to go through a youth program.
So I think that had its advantages. So I'm actually not too sure what the lay of the land looks like for adults. I'm curious though, so if you went down the emergency route and have to present to hospital, does that carry its own risks in a way? Are they going to section you? Are you going to retain your rights to leave? Are you just taking a gamble there? Yeah, yeah. So at that point, I didn't care if I was like, I wasn't even scared because I was so desperate.
And if you need to, but I would suggest like bringing someone with you because I think because I brought my husband and they talked to us separately and saw that I had support and I wasn't a harm to, they asked me repeatedly if I was a harm to myself or others and they asked him. And so luckily like I wasn't sectioned I didn't and at one point because I basically went in because I hadn't slept for two weeks I went in and was like I just could I have a volume.
They don't just give out value surprise and so then we had to go through the whole thing so eventually they sent me home with one after hours and but I had to my husband had to be like bring me back the next day. And I remember being actually in the moment being disappointed that they didn't because I knew that there wasn't much help out there and I didn't want to leave until I got help because I knew as soon as I got out there that I'd be on my own again.
So they had a different way of helping. And if the listeners are interested, I talk ad nauseum about it. I talk a lot about it in the other episodes but yeah so it but it is and I think that's really scary for a lot of people and I think what I would say to that is I would I know people have had terrible experiences I know people have had okay experiences but if it's going to keep you alive I'd.
Go right and it's it feels like an impossible decision but yeah for sure so you get into the psychiatrist and you present what the psychologist has said and then were you diagnosed immediately yeah pretty much immediately it was just a rehash of everything we'd covered during those sessions and he just said yeah bipolar and then interestingly like I didn't want to take any medicine or start medication at the time.
So again, just the way that I was raised is a bit more like anti-medication and turns everyone to zombies and that sort of thing. So I tried initially, I guess, lifestyle and it's quite funny. I changed my diet because they said fish oil was good for it. So I started taking fish oils every day as if they were like a medicine that was going to help me.
And I did that for about six years. I guess it, it helped me in a way, just having the diagnosis and knowing what was happening for me, because part of what was really increasing my like overwhelm and just exacerbating all my symptoms when I was in those depressive episodes was just this feeling of what's going on, what's happening to me. Something I used to do in a depressive episode that I don't do anymore is try
and fix it. and just try and think my way out of it and look for that cure of I've got to do this, or this will make my mood turn around. So I was constantly doing that and just burning myself out and just ending up a lot worse off than where I was. But having the diagnosis took a lot of that mental stress away and just allowed me to sit with it a bit more and just, I don't need to panic about the way I'm feeling or get overwhelmed about it. It's just bipolar.
So that gave me a lot of grounding in some of the like CBT techniques that they taught me and just overhauling my lifestyle a little bit. It helps me manage my episodes better. When I was 30, so after the birth of my second daughter, she was six months old. I had a very hyperactive, hyperverbal 18-month-old experience.
ADHD and our child as well so it was a hectic time I wasn't really coping we were in lockdown we had no support and I just got to the point where I went to the doctor I was like all right.
Let's try something like maybe it doesn't have to be this hard because it was bloody hard and at that point I actually before I started taking it I did a re-examination with a psychiatrist which was a very simple online appointment that I could do it took about a week to get an appointment and I just reiterated everything I'd experienced to her I just felt like bipolar is a funny thing because it's an invisible illness there's no blood test that says yes you are bipolar so it
is something that you do constantly go over and question it takes a long time to fully accept a diagnosis at least in my experience so I wanted to be really sure I guess that was.
What I was experiencing before I started on a medication for it but in saying that I then went on the medication I've been on it for two and a half years now I fucking love it it makes life easier I immediately started sleeping better I still get episodes but I feel the impacts less so I can I'll still feel a depression but it's rare that it would pull me like down to a point where I can't function or where I can't get myself
out of it and it's almost muted right like it's just a little bit muted and I think what people I think sometimes people get disappointed in medication because we we expect it to be somewhat like a Tylenol or an Advil like I've had people They'll say to me, well, you take medication. So you're okay, right? I'm like, no, it's incurable. And I am still going to have episodes, but the medication...
Almost takes the edge off or it does yeah and also I don't know if you found this but I could it was hard to like when I'm in it it's hard to do the coping mechanism right because you I'm just trying to survive and once I had the medication I was like all right I can actually see outside the tunnel vision of each episode and I can start practicing this or that or the things that seemed impossible before yeah that's so tell me about I'm very curious tell me about
what it was like I was unmedicated with my because I didn't know when I had my children well my eldest is turning 19 this month who even am I but thank you we made it I'm wondering how did your pregnancies go and how about after for each of them I'm so curious about that yeah it's a really good question actually because for my first child I was hyper aware that I was bipolar and it carried extra risks through pregnancy and after the
birth of the child as well I had put a lot of things in place like we lived right near my parents my husband was working part-time like I wasn't working I had put a lot in place to make that as stress-free as possible that worked to an extent Like he was an extremely challenging baby, but I don't know. I feel like we managed. I was aware.
I just was doing all the things to look after it. When my daughter came along, I felt like we were just in a situation where like my husband has a bit of his own like CPTSD and this like becoming a father really flared this up for him. We got to a point where I was pregnant with my second child that his situation became quite dire and it became more important that we figure out a situation that was working for him.
Living near my parents that we had a father figure thing that was really really traumatizing for him and we just had a need to move away to set ourselves up more independently for him to get more aligned with a career path that brought him what he needed and stuff so that became priority like number one and I wasn't thinking about myself and my bipolar when we made those choices right But when we got there, I'd forgotten I'd put it on the back burner and it crept up on me, I would say.
It just felt like it was survival. I felt like I had to cope with this. I had to shove this down because that was our survival focus that I needed to concentrate on. I do think that's why it got quite bad for me in that six months after she was born because that was just.
Yeah so much going on and was that more depressive symptoms or did it put you into more of like a hypomanic or anxious state more depressive I would say and something I experienced a lot of was overwhelm as well and I don't know if that's related to bipolar or something else now that my son has his neurodivergent diagnoses I'm kind of like what's going on there because we present very similarly as well but overwhelm has always been something that comes on quite fast and
sudden for me and is pretty all-encompassing so with two two under two I was getting overwhelmed like pretty much from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep I was just functioning in in overwhelm and that in itself was really debilitating and also fed into the depression as well because it's just no way to live like it's not functional.
Yeah that was probably the major thing but immediately that's something that the medication helped was like situations that would have previously just destroyed me with overwhelm I was able to actually manage and calm myself down through and regulate through pretty much immediately. So that was really good. Wow. The opposite happened to me when I had my kids. I got really hyper. It was bizarre. And of course, everyone thinks I'm super mom. I never slept when they slept.
I remember my daughter was asleep and I redid like my entire cupboard situation. I was like, this kitchen isn't working for me. I pulled everything out.
Like she gets up. I'm like, oh no. know but just yes going to every mom's group it was wild and at one point because they're still trying to diagnose or whatever they were like oh it's postpartum anxiety but I wasn't anxious like scared of things I'm not socially anxious at all later I agonize over things I've said when I'm hypomanic because I don't think but I'm not socially anxious and I wasn't worried about the baby getting hurt or anything like that I was more like what are
the best decisions and just wanted to be the best or do the healthiest things I remember when we were potty training my first and I made this like elaborate chart it was out of control of course we followed it for approximately a day and a half but I would just come up with these things I would have. Anxiety and overwhelm say if we went out and I forgot to put something in the diaper bag it was like the end of the world. I'm pissed off. I'm mad at myself. I'm irritable with my husband.
Like I'm just, and I would throw these like elaborate birthday parties. Meanwhile, like right up into it, I'm like yelling at my partner or my mom or whoever's there. And then it's boom, I'm on. Right. That was really confusing for me.
And I think that with each pregnancy, it got more and more so that's really interesting because i do hear more about depression after so i'm always like wondering i had no idea i guess you didn't know what was going on for you at the time so i ended up getting antidepressants which made it full blown right so that's really interesting i'm wondering if you can explain because sometimes a lot of people listening they get the depression part they understand they've they felt that
but what you actually really need for your diagnosis and i think that's why it takes six to ten years especially for bipolar two did you say you're. Which typically has more and deeper depressions. I'm wondering if you could explain what hypomania feels like in your body and also what that looks like in your daily life. Yeah, sure. So I think the way it feels in your body, and for me, it can go between having an extra large coffee to having like full-on ecstasy or cocaine.
Is how I would just if you've ever tried that that would describe like the range of feeling can go between I feel a bit extra energated like energized and everything's really good I feel really productive to like full-blown just climbing the walls basically and feeling euphoric and invincible and a little bit godlike in a way like sometimes you feel like you are connected to like, source you are in alignment and to some extent you are like that's fine you are you're in that state.
But it's can go too far as well so it's something I do is try and be really aware of when I'm starting to feel that way because I think a lot of people you feel this and you're like yeah and you you want to egg it on in a way see where this goes it's awesome it's so much better than being depressed, right? Yeah. At the time, at the beginning. At the beginning, yeah. But if it spirals too far, it can get out of control. But there are,
Other things for me is rapid speech. So I start talking very quickly. I'm thinking very quickly. I'm having a lot of ideas. Logic goes out the window and I think everything is a really good idea and it's also really important and really critical to be done right here and now. And I don't understand why other people don't see that. That gets very frustrating for me. I get less sleep, sometimes no sleep. I forget to eat. I sometimes go days with that.
Really eating i'll just pick at stuff because i'm not feeling hungry and i can't remember when i ate doesn't feel important doesn't feel important at all i forget social cues in a way like i've been into the office before in a hypermetic state and i just talk to everybody and i'm so energetic and charming and they're like who is this and i start really personal conversations before and i realized I probably shouldn't bring up these topics with colleagues and things like
that and it's a lot and the other side of it that people don't hear about very often is there is a very agitative side with it as well so I get a lot of physical agitation which I think it's called psychomotor agitation so I get really restless legs and they just they hurt they burn like I can't stop moving them throughout my body as well like it just gets it's just really running on its own motor and it needs to move and it
feels like it can feel like you're burning alive from the inside out like it is physically very uncomfortable and that also feeds into the lack of sleep it's really hard to sleep when your body is that intense so that actually sometimes keeps me awake it drives me to a point of it's maddening, like it's a really maddening feeling when you can't get rid of it for days. So there's that side of it. There's.
A lesser known side of it the anger is not talked about as often so for me it starts off just being a little bit extra irritable and things that normally don't bother me like really piss me off and I'll be quite snappy I have a very short temper so like I'll snap up my husband more I'll snap up my kids more and it's it's not grounded in anything it's just that my fuse has has shortened so I think those are like for me those are probably the main things that I experience,
I guess I get really into like in a good way I've learned to channel them into creative projects if I can like my writing and my podcast my content creation it feels a lot more productive so for instance the lack of sleep like I've spent so many nights I'm sure you have as well just tossing and turning unable to go to sleep it gets really maddening now I just get up and I'm like If I'm going to sit here and ruminate and like replay old conversations or have
imaginary fights or whatever in my head, I'm going to get up and channel this into my novel or something. So at least it feels a bit more fulfilling and productive. Yeah, you brought up a really important point. I had never heard anybody talk about it before. And also sometimes it takes me a bit to recognize experiences, but I call them my spidey senses when I'm hypomanic. I'm hot and then cold. And then I'm like feeling anything, but okay.
Like my temperature doesn't regulate if I'm itchy or sometimes it was like people used to think that I cared and I do, I love clothes and fashion and stuff. But if I was wearing the wrong shoes, it wasn't about looking bad. It's just like nothing felt right. Nothing felt right. If the shoe wasn't going or the, do you know what I mean? I would change a bunch of times and then lights felt brighter. I would get, I get nauseous a lot.
Like I feel nauseous. I remember- like clockwork every year because I have quite a not so much now but I used to have quite a. Predictable cycle for sure and every spring when I would start becoming hypomanic I would take a pregnancy test every time and you'd think after so many that I'd be like because I was not because one of the things is nausea nauseous yeah and the less I slept the more nauseous so luckily my medication now it's I'm out sometime if I'm hypomatic it
takes two and a half hours to work if I'm not it's 30 minutes and I'm done so that I am so grateful for side effects not fun I'm exhausted but it's worth it yeah I'm grateful that you spoke to that and I remember when the first another person spoke about it I was like yes and I'm always saying to my husband when I'm do you smell that like smell like smells like sensory awareness yeah I love that you're saying this as well because it's something that it gets talked a lot about with
like autism and ADHD and when you're in the mental health space you see this everywhere and you're like oh god I experienced that does that mean I'm that or I'm that but I think it's not talked about so much as bipolar but sensory struggles is a real thing I had an episode during our winter so a couple of months back and it was my husband and I were going skiing so we lived in a ski town and we had a, day to ourselves where we were going up the hill together and.
We'd done the same thing a week or two ago and had the best day and like flying down mountains. I was riling him up. Like we were just having a great time. But this day, like I was so like physically like uncomfortable, like trying to wear ski clothes and ski jacket and carry my skis. And like, also my body just felt wrong, like trying to ski down the mountain and it's not working. Like my body is not working the way it's meant to. Like I was just struggling to make a turn.
And I just I couldn't cope I couldn't deal with it and I was like I have to get off the mountain like I just I can't like previously I would have started drinking and done things to mask those discomfort anything to feel better yeah yeah yeah but being in a I guess a better place where I make more accommodations for myself I was just like let's go I can't do this today we did a bushwalk for set like instead and the quiet and being away from the crowds and away from people it was like and just
not having to wear clothes and yeah it was just so much better for me still resulted in a full-blown crying spell that lasted for for two days but yeah it happens it happens. I love that like you that you brought that up because I think that's what I meant about being once I medicated being able to like even take a breath and change things before I would have pushed through or like you said I knew that I had an addictive personality so I didn't drink or do drugs or anything in my 20s but.
I can absolutely see why someone would do that. I can absolutely, you just want to feel better. It's, I'll eat something salty and then sweet and then this, and then maybe it will help. And you're just anything because it feels so awful. Yeah. It's like grasping at straws. Yeah. Maybe this will fix me. Maybe this will fix me. It's very, it's quite desperate.
And like I say this, I use the word desperate when I've been in a bad place for a while And I start to feel like I just want, I just need to come out of this. I just need to feel better. And you start feeling quite, yeah, this awful, like desperate feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm the double whammy of it all. Then I would judge myself. What's the matter with you? For example, before Medicaid, if I was on that ski hill, I would have made myself.
Be like, you have to do what you're going to, you're ruining everything. Like I, I have this thing where it's, I would never expect this of anything else, but if anything goes wrong, like that thing about not packing the right, every, I should be prepared because I think so fast. I should be prepared for every situation. And if I'm not, what's wrong with you? And nobody would have thought of that. Right? Yeah. Like I have one of those purses that have like dental floss. Got it.
Would you be the bobby pin? I'm your gal. Right? I bring everything. I'm always like over preparing for situations. So, yeah, that's interesting. Did you, before medication or after medication, I'd love for you to speak to both. Do you have a predictable cycle? Yeah, so I feel like I did.
In the sort of six years and even up until this year, I had a very predictable cycle where I would say probably four times a year I would have a depressive episode that would be probably span the length of two weeks. But within that, there's sort of this feeling of going down where I might start to lack, lose a sense of meaning of the world. I might start to dissociate. I get a very stuck feeling in the body and movement's very hard to move. I'm just very slow. I feel very confused.
And then there's generally like a peak or what's the opposite of a peak? Yeah. The low in the middle where I might have two or three days where I'm very teary. I'm having crying spells. Like I'm really not functioning very well at all. And then I'll start to come out the other side of that, but still be a bit vulnerable and a bit fragile for like a couple of days afterwards.
This year it's been different. I experienced probably a significant block of hypomania towards the beginning of the year where I, it's when I actually drafted the, I wrote the first draft of my novel Hearts of Glass in about six weeks.
And I don't know if it was like the chicken or the egg, but that definitely brought me to a place where I wasn't sleeping very much and I was just like go on this task and I really I didn't want to lose steam I had all this energy it was flowing and I was just like I have to get this out this story has to come because it's a lived experience story too and it was like it was brewing in my mind for the last 15 years and it was just like get it out of
me so it was an amazing experience but this year's definitely been categorized by a lot more, hyper manic episodes but the other thing I think it's important to mention is that I experience mixed episodes as well so that's where I might be let's say I'm in a depressive episode I might get moments of euphoria where I've suddenly snapped out of it or vice versa I can remember like one.
Explicit time when I was we had the two young kids and I was walking around town with my husband and we were like out on a Saturday got some coffee went to the playground and I'm having racing thoughts and I'm thinking everything's a good idea and I'm saying to him like let's drive here and go to the park and then I had this idea that we needed to go to the pool and have a family swim and it was going to be the best thing ever and he was kind he said to me like oh look I don't
really want to do that and it was like boom like I just that one sentence like I just plummeted to the floor and I was like if we don't gotta go to the pool like life has no meaning it's what is the point of anything what's the purpose now it's just it's from 100 to zero like just like in an instant yeah yeah I think I didn't ever understand that before and I think that I've had that within the last two years, this mixed, because I'll be like. Yeah, same as you, like hopeful or excited.
And then the next something doesn't go right, or even something, nothing happens. And then all of a sudden it's, no, that isn't possible. This world is horrible. What is even, what is even the point? I get that.
I know that I'm going downhill when I get what is the point or this thought over and over things are hard things are never going to get better things are never going to get better if things happen with my kids or things are hard for them both my kids have neurodiversity I just think the world is too hard and and then I start to look at other families or whatever and be like what would it be like for us all to just have not have trouble with brain chemistry, right?
How much easier would that be? And yeah, I go back and forth and I didn't recognize that.
Until a little while ago and I find that like worse because my like the way I deal with things is very different in each episode so it's your it's like whiplash it's what oh I should be doing I get all confused and it's almost like it makes each thing feel even worse than if you were just in one does that make sense yeah I agree with that it does in a way because it's just so confusing and you're like you can't figure out how you feel and you might
think you're starting to feel better but then plummet you're not it's very hard to it's very hard to know what to do for yourself when it's so chaotic like that yeah yeah because my thing lately is we're gonna waste away we watch tv in the evening we're gonna look back on our life and what are we gonna be like oh our legacy is tv watching i'm like we don't have fun anymore and our kids are like launching right yeah yeah So, so it's, we're figuring out what we did before we were like these 18,
19 years of raising them. We have this time. And I'm like, we're not fun. We have, we, we need more friends. We need more of this. And so then I'll get excited about the weekend and then we don't have a plan or whatever. And I'm like, if we don't, if I can't think of it and then I waste it by trying to think what's the best thing we can do. And then I ended up doing nothing. And then I'm like, see, this is, we're not fun.
We're not fun. What's the future like where it's never going to be fun again? My husband's like, hold on. Remember how we did this and this? I'm like, oh, okay. It's a struggle right now. And I can look back right now and I can laugh and I can be like, okay. But when I'm in it, it feels like... Really bizarre because we know bipolar brain doesn't like change, good or bad.
And it's like this whole shift, like I, even though I'm a teacher, I substitute and I didn't work the first whatever years of their life. Like being the CEO of my family, being a mom was like my identity, right?
I'm also a teacher. I work with littles. And so this whole idea that I'm like, what am I. Without that even though I'm not without it they haven't even moved out I'm not empty nesting but there's more room in my nest and I'm very confused about what I should do with that room yeah I'm like I'm not doing enough I'm not I'm this one precious how they have all those posters what are you going to do with your one precious life I'm like I'm ruining my one precious life and then my husband's
remember how like you teach and like you have a podcast and you do this and i'm like yeah but is it enough i get i don't know yeah i so resonate with with this whole feeling maybe that's part of the bipolar brain experience if my husband and i get a red like date to ourselves i get really stressed because i'm like how do we maximize like value during this one hour like this needs to be phenomenal like we need to like that has to be this big thing and then I get really upset if
it's if it doesn't pan out that way now and trying to book any sort of holiday or plan any trip I'm so particular with plans because I have to analyze all of the different options and then I have to have backup options and then I have to cross-reference and cross-analyze them to figure out what is going to be the absolute best combination of plans and then if anything goes wrong or we need to change something in the moment it spins me out completely because I need to do a whole recalculation.
Including a whole data cross analysis of what the best change of plan will be. And I can't work that quickly because my husband's there. Come on, what are we doing? And it just, it's my day, but it is, it's this feeling of, and I experienced the same thing, right? Cause as a mom and I already worked full time and my mom was stay at home mom. And there's a lot of pressure from my family.
That's what you do that's enough and I'm like no I need to work as well and then even on top of that I'm like what's my purpose beyond working okay like I need to write my book but what else do I need to do like I need to share my messages like I need to keep building like I need to build up more like it's just then I look at someone like my mom and she's so content and this is it this is all you need to do yeah, people who are like content and i just don't i'm like yeah no what is
this content yeah ever i wonder if it's like a bipolar thing or the way our brains work it's just i don't know if it's linked with any i have no idea what it's linked to but this idea that my life has to count that i'm like yeah and it's i don't have the grandiose stuff all the time but just that i just feel.
I don't know because when you're hypomanic you feel like you have so much potential but then you're not when you're not hypomanic it's an unrealistic expectation and so then I just never feel like my full potential this podcast it blew up like my content creation or whatever and it's never I'm just like oh it's just a little or I never feel and I remember my friend the other day she's like okay picture a stadium that like this person just played in that's how many people are
in your community and I was like holy yeah.
Whereas I'm like oh they all hate it I'm boring I should take everything down yeah but and before if I was medicated I would have bailed on the podcast a long time ago but I said it now that I know how to work with things I set it up I've done where I don't do an episode every week because and I don't say drops on my I don't and maybe that might affect my listenership I. Don't know but I would quit I know I would yeah if I had such tight parameters maybe if it
was my I didn't have my other career too but I haven't done that for myself and then surprise if I put an extra one out or whatever yeah I run it very on-brand bipolar and I think that's what's made me not fizzle out after four years right so I literally had this conversation yesterday I'm so glad you said this because I had I've got like a backlog of episodes to put out and I've taken I've done the first season I'm taking a little break but
this two-week break has turned into five weeks six weeks and I'm like the thing is I was running it like okay every Wednesday at this time an episode goes out I've got to have all of this content made to like launch it and it's just that structure and that rigidity is not good for a bipolar brain also for a feminine brain it's just that I'm not having it so I've made the decision that like in order to be sustainable in order to be more consistent I need
to be less consistent and I'm just gonna do a record when I do a record and then I'll quickly wrap it up and I'll launch it out and if I do the next one. 10 days later or three weeks later like it doesn't matter that's when it's going out and like that just feels a lot more aligned like a much more.
Yeah if I made the plan myself and was like every Wednesday I would get there and I would be like you can't tell me what to do self this is I'm not I don't fit in this box and you know what I've had a few people say and it was like so affirming they said the way that you aren't rigid about it and the way that you show up makes me think I could do it because it's not conventional it's not maybe how everyone else runs it and I was like oh so then I was like I I.
Found the little phrase for myself on brand bipolar and I'm like yeah and same with like my guests I'm like I can't tell you when it's going to come out but I'll let you know a few days before and same with like content creation I remember I used to think that I had to make a calendar a monthly calendar but then I it wasn't exciting or fun to me I get the idea when I get the idea and then I do the idea yeah right.
It takes some of that joy additive if you get to wednesday morning or whatever and you're like okay i've got to do that thing today it becomes very like task driven and less like inspiration and creative and i feel like i'm not being authentic i've set up i do well with some rhythms but not schedules it's like i do manic monday or do thankful thursday like i have a few things to keep me on on track and then the rest is like what i feel or what's going on in my life or heart or whatever
yeah interesting I would love to hear I know that there are so many bipolar bears out there that want to write a book I would love if you could just tell us a little bit about your book yeah wonderful I'd love to okay so I started writing this a little bit by accident which is something I never want to hear from a writer because so much effort goes into writing a book that you never want to be the one that sits there and is oh I wrote it by accident
in six weeks that's the experience I had and it was like a that's like a dream come true like I always wanted to be a writer I always wanted to have one of those stories where this book just flew out so that was really cool for me I have written books before I've written.
Like fantasy novels before I wrote one when my son was like a baby when I was on mat leave with him when he was napping I would be writing a story which was very much a lot more effort went into writing that so I always saw myself as a fantasy writer but actually really have found my voice in commercial fiction so that's exciting but this novel is about a protagonist called Cassie so she's 19 she's navigating that stage of life with dating figuring out her career complex family dynamics.
She's battling a secret drug addiction because coping mechanisms. Yeah. Yeah. And she starts to get into a relationship with a young apprentice carpenter called Patrick. And the novel's told through dual perspective. So we flick between his perspective and hers as they start to get to know each other. It all takes place over the course of a month, but we really see her, this relationship is very triggering for her. So she really starts to spiral.
Her moods really start to escalate. and we see her go down this, yeah, this rabbit hole really and just start spiralling out of control. And we also see from the difference between his lens and her lens and little miscommunications that start to play, the audience gets to see that play out and it really builds like tension throughout the novel.
Ultimately, there's a catalystic event and she does end up being hospitalised and for the bipolar community we'll just put it out there she gets a bipolar diagnosis but then we get to walk through digesting that information and processing that and coming to the realization that if she wants to still live a quality life she's going to have to make big lifestyle choices and changes and take that seriously so that's the journey that she goes on it's set in newcastle australia which is
the place where i grew up it's an industrial.
Blue collar ish australian town so yeah i think it's entertaining there's lots of swear words there's some spicy scenes there's a bit of humor in there so it's yeah it's been a really exciting journey writing it and i really just hope that young people or anyone can read this if they resonate with what that character is going through it might lead them to be able to get seek help and get help themselves but also might shed a little light on because you get
to ride those highs and lows through the lens of the protagonist and they're based on lived experience When I reread it and edit it, I really identify like those waves and those feelings with her. So I think it does shed a good lens on what that experience actually feels like for someone that's not bipolar as well. It just sheds a little light on the experience.
Yeah. And I love that too because I think that someone that doesn't live with bipolar disorder that may love someone, I feel like they might be more likely to read it. Do you know what I mean? Or you can pass it along without actually saying you have bipolar disorder. You might just be like, hey, check out this book, right? Because not everybody's going to sit down and read how to love someone with bipolar disorder. And so I think that it. I don't know, it's like a little bit more safe.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I'm very excited about reading it. It'll be amazing. You'll have to keep us updated. Before we move into a section I call, going deeper for some of my listeners, I do a second episode, shorter episode with my guests. And I'm going to get Jade to tell me all about her coping strategy.
So you're going to want to check that out. is probably going to come anywhere between six to eight weeks after this one so it's really good that you're listening to this first but i would love to know to tell people where they can find you where can they connect with you yeah excellent so i'm on instagram is my main social media platform haven't got my head around the others yet that's daunting enough as it is but you can find me on instagram at jade.rose.writes and
i share a lot of content around i guess the experience of living with bipolar and i make that digestible in like little reels that are a little bit relatable or might just shed a little light on what this experience looks like what it's like to live in a bipolar brain yeah as well as i do give updates on my writing and journey on there as well so i share sort of writing tips inspiration updates from my journey my process.
So it's a lovely way to connect with i've really just enjoyed connecting with the bipolar community as well as the writing community and you can also find if you want to check out my podcast you can come and find me at the neuro diaries podcast and there's links to that from the jade rose rights account as well and that's just it's talk it's people talking about their sort of lived experience with conditions like bipolar i also interview
people with autism adhd multiple personalities trauma stories so a little bit of everything thrown on there and the idea of Similar, it's just to really break stigma through stories of lived experience, which is not all Hollywood portrayals, just actual lived experience. Yeah, because we have like doctors or like really highly educated people that don't live with it, which is important, or we have misrepresentation on television.
And I love that we're on the same path with sharing the lived experience. And I think that, yeah, go check out her podcast. Let's support each other. Go give her some love on her Instagram. I'll also have her in her bio and everything in the show notes to get a hold of Jade. And I am sure that she answers her messages. So send her a message. Yeah, absolutely. If you want to connect or ask questions. And yeah, because we love that. We love that is my greatest joy to connect.
It is. Definitely reach out. I love when people reach out, just asking a question about my experience that might help them in theirs, or it makes it really worthwhile to know that you're making an impact, however small, or making a difference in someone's day. So yeah, definitely come and say hi. Yeah, I know some people are like, oh, you've probably heard it before. I'm like, I will hear it every time.
If it takes a while you cannot praise me enough yeah tell me if you relate I cannot hear enough me too's ever so yeah so it's really nice I remember I I wanted to interview you and I noticed your account because I know you were taught brought up some like kind of controversial things about certain other other like holistic kind of of people and that you're that you're open to talking about all the sides I was like oh I want to talk to her I think we need to be podcast
best friends so now we are so yay now we are I love that yeah I. My degree was in philosophy and I find it really hard to, I just love seeing things from different perspectives before I draw a hard line or if I ever draw a hard line, I'm just like, they're all valid. Like, I want to understand why you think that way or why you think that way. Like, it's all really fascinating to me and no two people's experience is the same.
And I think there's the space for everything. So, I just love hearing all different accounts from all different people. I love it. I love it. That's so cool. My friends, thank you for joining us, Jade. I think you're doing beautiful work in the world. And I think truly your work is life-saving. And I know it's going to touch so many people. And I'm really excited about your book. When you get it all sorted, get me a copy. We will talk about it. We will.
I'm really, really excited about that. So thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast. I'm excited about our next conversation. I want to hear how you cope with everything. I am sure that I will learn from you. So thank you. Thank you, Shailene. This is Bipolar. Thanks again for tuning in. You can find video versions of This is Bipolar on our YouTube channel. We also have all our previous episodes of the podcast on Apple, Podbean, Spotify, and Google Play.
We spend most of our time on Instagram at this.is.bipolar. There is a vibrant community there where we have conversations and post different ideas and different strategies. And we'd just love for you to join us there. It is so helpful if you enjoy our work or think it would be helpful to someone if you could like and share and save and follow us in all or any of those spaces. If you're a listener for the podcast, if you could leave a review, we would be forever grateful.
Again, thank you for being here with us. Let's get the word out. Let's share lived experiences so that we can change the ideas that people have about bipolar and help those of us that live with it feel less alone. This is Bipolar. Music.