Tuesday 27 September 2016

Book about BiPolar: Surfing the Edge


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surfing-Edge-survivors-bipolar-disorder-ebook/dp/B0167DQA70

Surfing the Edge, thoughts so far ...........................................

I've read about 40% of the book and have just read the bit about an unexpected friends death. For me this part felt delusional though the person interviewed Alistair says he felt it was very real, he reacted in a way that he had a paranormal experience, obviously a friend dying has a profound affect on you but Alistairs experience to me sounded Psychotic. In fact i was surprised that the Health Professional didnt cover that trauma in his summation of that chapter. I lost my best friend when he was 30 in a Motorcycle accident and Im still sure that from a self esteem point of view that affected me a lot, especially as I had fallen out with him prior to his death and we never got to clear the air.  I should point out that a very engaging element of the book is that a Mental Health Nurse sums up each chapter of the book from a Health Professionals point of view as service provider.

Reading this book Im getting a feeling that with BiPolar as an illness its much less triggered than some other Mental Health conditions, it creeps up on you either as a manic experience or as a depressive experience though i also have tons of associated anxiety as well. I often feel that things for me change without any reason and once again my self critic gets in on the act and regardless of any prior progress with statbility or living well with the condition thats all wiped out very quickly, in fact my BiPolar which doesnt have lots of mania but has plenty of low mood/anxiety just wipes my life aside when it comes on and though i have tools and practices I can try and use it really is normally just frustrating trying to navigate the condition.

At the moment im sitting here having read 40% of the book 'Surfing the Edge' finding it really interesting but Im aware that the three characters are different to each other and to me, their experience of BiPolar is very different to each other though it feels like they have come to terms with their illness better than I have. I have had Mental Health challenges for a long long time where things were marked down as Stress, Depression, Anxiety going back to when I was at Polytechnic where I didnt sleep for 10 days when I have my Finals exams due to my anxiety levels........I would try running every night to quiet the mania in my head ............ I just couldn't and at my first house when I was up in my Dressing Gown at 0630 in the morning in 1990 when I started painting the house for no good reason that morning. It wasn't until last year that my only time with a Psychiatrist ( bar 1 other ) gave me a BiPolar diagnosis as he spent 3 hours going through my episodes through the years.

Im not sure what im saying here but im very aware that our experiences of Mental Health are very different from person to person.

This book is very interesting though as the way it works is that 3 BiPolar sufferers are interviewed chapter by chapter regards topics and their BiPolar experience. I imagine myself being interviewed and my answers having some correlation with the three folks the book looks at but ultimately being very different.


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