First week over

Well my first week being off work and in therapy is over. I have gained insight into living with BiPolar. Organizing the house will help reduce my level of stress which should alleviate some of the symptoms. Hulda and I are working hard towards being competition ready and having a lot of fun with that.

Therapy is helping to pinpoint other stressors and ways to counter them. My husband and family have been wonderful throughout this. One problem that I have is seeing when stress is causing me to behave differently. I am actively working on managing my stress better through medication and increasing my understanding of how the disorder affects me. It is easier for Tom to see the beginning changes than it is for me. I have asked him to help me by pointing it out to me. The problem with that is that I tend to get very defensive about it. So what ends up happening is that he tries to help and I get mad at him. This is pretty unfair to him. A topic covered in therapy was giving permission to a few close and trusted people. Since verbal permission has backfired on Tom I think I am going to try written permission. I think written permission has the potential for being less overtly confrontational. It would give me a chance to collect myself and really hear what he's trying to say to me. I have a wonderful SIL who is always very willing to be helpful. She said she would be happy to address behavioral changes. I know that I am asking a lot of these two. I am very lucky to have such supportive people in my life. There are other changes that I need to make. My style of communication needs help. I'm still working on that. The other is creating healthy boundaries. I'm working on that too. That one is harder. I run between extremes either keeping people from affecting me at all or letting them push me around. My job is a great example of that.

Despite being anxious about going back to work in 3 weeks I'm starting to feel genuinely happy. I haven't felt like I could accomplish something in months and months. Maybe even years. My self image tends to be pretty crappy but organizing the pantry, training Hulda and socializing more is helping. I have this really huge fear that at the end of this month I'll actually be organized and feeling great then go back to work and watch it all fall apart. This scares me a lot. I get really tense and then depressed. Somehow I've got to over come this feeling of desperation.

Training Hulda has been really great. In addition to the class we take on Monday and Tuesday nights I've started taking a heeling class on Saturdays. This class focuses heeling in the obedience ring. This involves getting my footwork right, heeling next to the ring enclosures and making sure I'm not giving Hulda the wrong body cues. All in all its going really well and I'm looking forward to showing.

Saturday night I went to the birthday party of SIL's friend. My adorable neice was there. She was full of fun and mischief. This may sound really awful but I LOVE watching her pull the adults puppet strings, myself included. She's cute, really smart and really loves things to go her way. A triple threat. Naturally she has us in the palm of her hand. She's not really in control but she thinks she is. Ah, youth!