Moody May: A Quick Check-in

Welcome to Conversations With. My name is Shaili Kukendorn 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. Music. Shed more light and smash more stigma. Our voices need to be heard. Our stories aren't over yet. This is Bipolar. Hi, everyone. Shaylee here, your host of This Is Bipolar. This is a different, really short check-in. In the first time of five years, I haven't posted a new podcast in a month. And even the last one was a birthday best of.

So I just wanted to check in. I know I don't have to, but I wanted to tell you all, why I haven't been here.

It's not a big story. It's just, I am in my first, I think, I thought I had one before, but my first really mixed episode. Y'all, it's really bad. I'm just surviving over here. Yeah, I've been working a lot more. And this season is usually a little bit of hypomania, but I don't know. Things are just really hard and everything feels overwhelming. And so I am coping, I'm doing all my coping things, but it doesn't seem to matter because we know that bipolar disorder.

Is chronic and keeps showing up. And so it's like whiplash going from thing to thing. I am crying and then I'm having slight hypomanic symptoms and then them all at the same time. So I am definitely going to do an episode with our favorite Dr. Andrea Love, otherwise known as my friend Andrea about mixed episodes.

But yeah, everything is overwhelming. And I basically am working on staying alive and working because of course with one of my really big episode I signed a contract for two days a week so I have to go and I already missed two days and I had two sick days and because it's a contract and only goes to the end of the year if I miss I actually like owe them money. Because they have to pay for a TOC or unpaid it has to be unpaid with the doctor's note which I could do.

Anyways, I feel the only time I feel like myself or that I'm good at something right now is being at work, but also it's taking a toll on me. So many symptoms. I would love if you would write in on Instagram or at thisisbipolar.com. Send me a message about your mixed episodes and if you've had them. But yeah, I can't sleep. My doctor has tripled my nighttime meds and then I maybe get six. If only doubled, I only get like four. I can't eat. I feel nauseous. So I bought all these protein bars.

It's just, yeah, it's just a lot right now.

And so I have an amazing podcast that I'm going to try and get out. It's with this amazing TikTok advocate named Brendan Wood. And I plan to get that out. I also plan on doing some best of ones because five years, I need to bring some of them back because they're so good, especially for my new listeners. But I felt like I needed to give an update just because of the nature of this podcast. It's about bipolar disorder and I live with it.

And when my friends, my bipolar besties go MIA, I worry about them. And so I wanted to tell you I'm alive. I may not be flourishing, but I am holding steady as I can. And yeah, I am still active on Instagram because that is just takes less energy and work. And in all honesty, the podcast has gotten so big that I need to figure out how to hire people.

And so right now I have a team and I'm going to hand off some things because you can imagine a podcast like mine usually has at least a team of four to six people. And I know you don't all know this, but it's just me behind here and I do a lot. And so I love it. Yeah, it was one of the things that I had to just step back from. But I haven't stepped back. Like, I'm still making them. I think what the problem is that I could record

all day. It's the editing and the making the images and getting it up and all those little extra things, especially with working, right? I've never worked this much in 21 years. So, yeah. That's my update. It's not that interesting. Yeah.

So my treatment plan was to call my doctor up to my meds we i'm doing everything i can even if i can't sleep i'm trying to lie in a dark room i bought amber glasses for it was very sunny here and so i was starting to get hyped up i'll let you know about that i've been doing dark therapy where you're just in the dark but also dr andrea told me about these amber glasses and i look ridiculous, but keeping that light out can hold back the little highs. But it's the weirdest thing.

I'm used to one or the other. So yeah, and I'm just taking one day, one hour at a time. And my perfectionism and my judgment and my mean side of my brain or illness is really loud. And so I have to do everything I can to quiet it down. So chances are, since I'm putting this up, I'll probably put out the podcast next week. I just couldn't do it. And it's hard because April is my birthday month and my favorite month.

My daughter was away in France and my parents were supposed to come and I'm so pumped about Easter dinner. And then it was just the three of us and we were waiting for my daughter to come back. But now I'm so nauseous. I can't eat. So I haven't even had an Easter dinner. This is my reminder that you can do things whenever you want because I am going to have an Easter dinner in May. 100%. I realized that I can't mourn things that didn't happen when I can just

recreate them. And so those are some of the things that I'm doing. Also, I need to get back in my body. Oh, another thing that was keeping me so busy is I've had a back flare up and I've been in a lot of pain. So going to all my treatments or what I do on my days off.

So I'm at Cairo and physio and massage and it's been really bad. I've, been limping i get these flare-ups from my car accident and soft tissue damage but this one usually they resolve themselves but this one's going on almost a month it and then i'm working lots right so you can imagine it's like a perfect storm so i'm coping best i can but i just wanted to tell you that just because i thought that it would be good to share the amount of messages that I've got

asking or checking in are beautiful. And I know y'all don't expect me to answer each one, but I hold myself to that standard and I started to get overwhelmed with not being able to answer people. My fear would be to worry people. And so that's my little update. Hold tight. I'm still here. Don't leave the podcast. Still come back. Still subscribe and help me get it out there. But I'm excited for the summer too because I'm a teacher and I'm off and I'm hoping to record some new things.

So watch for the episode with Brennan Wood and go follow him on TikTok if you're on TikTok. Also watch for Andrea and I's episode on our mixed episode because we are going to do that. I just love having her on the podcast. It's so cool that she knows the clinical side and that also she is a bipolar bestie. She lives with bipolar and she's just the bestest. So I, yeah, that's me. That's where I'm at. I always love to hear where you're at. Send me a message on Instagram. Go to my website.

I still have subscriptions going. We have a peer support group there. And so we meet on Zoom and we have a chat that is active all the time if you're looking for peer support. And that's on Instagram.

I love you all. Like a lot, because even though we don't know each other and maybe we'll never meet in real life or maybe we'll never even have a direct message together, but knowing that there's other people out there saves me. It really does because I remember all the years that I didn't and all the years that I took this illness on as a personal defect or a personality flaw and knowing that others experience it too brings me so much comfort.

Although I hate it I hate it for you I hate it for me but I'm also glad that we have each other so stay bipolar strong and keep showing up and I will too 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.

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