Values of Friendship

I have been struggling about what to write about given the over arching theme of friendship lately and have come to a point of looking at what I value in a friendship.  I value commitment, love, acceptance, compassion, understanding, sympathy and empathy.  I hope that I am a friend that also brings these values to each relationship that I am in.

What I found quite interesting is, I went on wikipedia and there was quite a long entry for "Friendship".  It was interesting to find the following entry on the values found in friendships:

Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating the following on a consistent basis:

• The tendency to desire what is best for the other
• Sympathy and empathy
• Honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart
• Mutual understanding and compassion
• Trust in one another (able to express feelings - including in relation to the other's actions - without the fear of being judged); able to go to each other for emotional support
• Positive reciprocity - a relationship is based on equal give and take between the two parties.

I will continue to focus on trying to be a better friend and living up to the values outlined above.

Sometimes Friendship is Best Seen in a Picture

Finding friends in the most mysterious places

Today is the second Monday of the month and that means that is the also the day that I go to a random church in the middle of Toronto and meet with a group of other people who are also bipolar who all found each other on the internet through a meetup group.  I never thought that I would seek out comfort, understanding and least of all friendship through a website entitled "Bipolar meetup".  About 25 people come to each group and it has a very lose agenda.  We spend about 10 minutes at the beginning introducing ourselves and saying what sort of things we are dealing with.  Examples include if we are changing meds, starting work, going through a stresor etc.  We then break up and have a chance to just "chat".  This format has allowed me to make some friends with some of the other peoples in the group, but more importantly to delve into some deeper areas of the illness.

The last time I was there, I had a good conversation about one of the drugs that I take called Seroquel and all of the side effects that it has.  Chatting with the other people in the group opened my eyes to the extensive weight gain, the sleepiness, the memory loss etc. from a first hand account.  It also is a huge relief for me to see that other people dealing with "bipolar disorder" are normal everyday people, just like me.  We look just like every one on the street.  Lastly, it is really wonderful to be around people that I like, that understand what I'm going through, that don't look at me like I am "bat shit crazy" and that like me, just the way I am.

For more information on The Toronto Bipolar Disorder Meetup Group, please visit up at http://www.meetup.com/bipolar-8/

Loneliness - the secret friend of Mental Illness

I have written recently about friendships and the work that I have been, or need to do on the friendships that I have or had.  As I have been looking at my own life I realize that I am desperately lonely and I am not the only one.  Many of the people that I interact with who are mentally ill or dealing with mental health  issues are also lonely, both for friendships and intimate relationships.  I've been thinking a lot about the reasons that all of these wonderful people are not surrounded by caring and fabulous friends and lovers and I realize that many times we do it to ourselves.  3 of a number of theories that I have:

• The search for solitude - The vicious circle of mental illness and loneliness begins with the desire to be alone and alienate oneself from everyone else.  To be alone. To not burden family or friends with the illness or sadness.  To not e-mail, see, talk to or interact with even the closest of friends.  Unless your friends understand mental illness well, it is difficult for them to understand that "fall off the face of the earth".  I am finding that it is also difficult to rebuild these relationships.  No matter how sick you are or were, mental health is not easily explained.  I was able to e-mail, speak on the phone, go for coffee, walk to a movie etc. but I could not because I was ill, is a hard thing to understand, even for me and I am the one with the mental illness.
• Sabotaging current relationships - I have single handedly ruined a number of relationships, due in part to my mental illness and my personality.  I was very angry before I understood that I was bipolar, and I had medication that worked and helped me to be more level headed.  My father used to say that I "was so controlling and domineering in relationships, it was a wonder they continued to be my friends".  My sister in Toronto recently told me that I seem much less angry which is a great thing.  Beyond anger, the truth in the past, has been a very difficult thing for me.  I think I feel that perhaps people really aren't going to like the real me.  Surprisingly, after taking part in a number of Bipolar support groups and speaking to a number of people to have mental illnesses, I am not the only one who struggles with this.  I do not blame my un-integritous life as being because of my mental illness, but I do know that it has impacted some of my relationships.  I am working everyday on leading a life of integrity. 
• Challenges of Loving a Crazy Person -"I can barely stand to spend time with myself, how can I expect others to spend time with me" tends to be a common sentiment for me these days.  I wonder how anyone is going to be willing to take this on, this whole mess of a person.  Telling someone that you are mentally ill is not exactly an endearing trait.  That you are going to be mentally ill for the rest of your life does not help either.  I am a lot to take on.  Between the bipolar manic ups and chronic depression downs, the medication that makes me gain weight, not be myself, throws my sex drive up and down, makes my creativity disappear and ohh just in case that isn't fun enough I can be manic and depressed all in the span of 12 hours, just so that you can stay entertained.  I can understand how I might be lonely forever, can't you?

I know that there are other reasons and theories for loneliness, many of them that I have been bantering around, but I think that these three are a good start.  Being lonely both on a friendship and an intimate level is a horrible feeling.  It is something that sits with you like an anchor.  It plays into depression and mental illness like a drug forcing it to grow and flourish.  The feeling is awful and I am not sure how to make it better, but reaching out to friends bit by bit, will hopefully help.  

Some days I feel like I will be alone forever, I know that this is a possibility and it brings tears to my eyes.  Other days I hope that I will find people who love me, sickness and all.  Realistically, I just hope to feel less lonely than I do today, and to be able to tell people who are lonely like me, it get's better, I promise.

Self care = Being a friend to yourself

Self care is personal health maintenance. It is any activity of an individual, family or community, with the intention of improving or restoring health, or treating or preventing disease.

Self care includes all health decisions people (as individuals or consumers) make for themselves and their families to get and stay physically and mentally fit.

- Self care, Wikipedia, January 6, 2011. 

A big word or notion in the mental health community is "self care".  Essentially self care, is being a very good friend to yourself.  It is making sure that you are looking out for yourself, so that you stay physically and mentally healthy and happy while going through your daily life.  I think that it is one of the hardest things for some people to do, to put yourself first, above others, in the line up for care and love, it certainly is for me.

I see self care as a combination of many things for me, to make sure that the delicate balance is achieved so that I stay physically and mentally healthy is achieved.  It includes, but is not limited to:

• Physical Activity - I learnt while I was away in South America that physical activity/exercise is an important part of my self care program.  I need to get exercise on a regular basis so that I can feel healthy or at least like I am doing everything in my power to try and be healthy.
• Medication - I have written before on this blog about not wanting to take my meds.  I need to take them everyday to ensure that I am both physically healthy and that my neurons in my mind fire in the right direction and the chemicals are somewhat balanced.  I am not mentally ill, because I choose to think that way.  There is actually something wrong in my head, and the drugs help both my mental illness and my chronic migraines, among other things.
• Food and eating - I am trying to eat better and nourish my body so that I can be healthier, loss weight and also have the energy to work for the whole day, manage the stress of both work and mental health and be prepared physically to fight any illnesses that come my way.
• Sleep  - Probably one of the biggest parts of self care for me right now is sleep.  I need it.  I used to think that I could sleep for 4 hours and be ok.  I know now that the realistic time frame is 10-12 hours a night and I need to take medication for that to happen.  If I do not get that, I am not mentally well and physically my body hates me.
• Therapy/Group Sessions/CBT - Managing stress, mental health, bipolar disorder and all sorts of other things can be aided by going to therapy, whether it be in a group or one on one.  I also find that learning tools like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is helping me to take tools and tricks that I learn in therapy and integrate them into my everyday life.

Making all of these bits and pieces fit and work together feels like a full time job most days, but I know that this is important to keep me healthy.  I find it hard to put myself first.  It is much easier to think or write about.  I would much rather look after others, work hard, forget that i have to take drugs, not get much sleep and pretend that i don't need to care for myself, but then I would be very sick and not able to be a member of society.  So for the time being I will focus on being a friend to myself and focusing on self care.

Explanation Letters

I have had a need to explain my behaviour and mental health over the last year/18 months to some people that used to be very important to my life and have struggled with how I should do that.  Part of my mental illness has been my complete lack of sociability.  I have chosen to stay secluded and not talk to friends even when they reach out to me.  This has lead to those closest to me not being a part of what I have been going through or understanding why I have not been active/social this year.  I think what I will do, is to write a letter to each of them explaining what has occurred over the last little while.  On the list so far:

• old Psychotherapist who "fired" me in January 2010 because she knew my problems were bigger than she could handle
• my businsess mentor, who I let down on a project we were working on and I have not spoken to in over 14 monhs
• my old CEO, who was so wonderful when I was in the process of having my melt down and who I still really love and respect to this day

I plan on writing the first letter and perhaps coping some of it here.  I am not sure if I will or not, but that is the plan for now.  They are going to be very difficult letters to write, but in the interest of friendship, they must be written.

Caring for someone you have never met - The weirdness of online relationships

I think that one of the most amazing things about social media forums, such as twitter, is that I have truly come to love and care about some of my "online" friends which I have never met in person.  It is so odd, and I think that people who are not forming relationships online cannot understand it. I can barely understand it myself as I come to care for some people more than I care for people I know in person.

I am very open about nearly everything online, very different than I am in person.  I speak about my mental health, migraines, chronic illness, family, fashion, friends, food and much more openly and honestly.  The people that I communicate with online, through twitter, for the most part have a common link to me.  We have a common interest or else we would not follow or interact with one another.

Where it has become very evident is with people that I interact with regularly, everyday, on twitter.  I miss them terribly and worry about them when I do not hear from them for a day or when I see that they are having a bad day.  It becomes particularly evident with my "Mental Health" crew.  I care about many of them as if they are my family.  When we have bad days, it can lead to things like suicide, harming ourselves and seclusion....this is when I get nervous and motherly and worried.  I feel like I have no control over helping the person at the other end of the tweets and no way of checking in.  A very weird feeling, patiently waiting for them to check in and let me know that they are ok, so I can breath a breathe of fresh air.

I am thankful for all these new and wonderful "virtual" friends.  They are closer to me now than some of the friends I have known IRL (in real life) my whole life.  They know more about what has been going on in the in the last little while and they are able to tolerate the fact that I am bat shit crazy.  I owe them a lot. Thank you one and all.

I will continue to seek out opportunities to meet them in person and to find out who really is the man/woman behind the funky picture of a sea monkey on their avatar.  I believe they are fabulous in person too.  For the mean time, I will continue to send virtual hugs, kisses and worry when you say you are having a bad day, going to seclude yourself for days and choose to ignore me, that's just what friends do.

The inequity of friendship when dealing with Physical and Mental illness

I have been living a wonderful social experiment on the reaction of social groups/friends to mental illness versus physical illness.

I have been part of a group of friends where it has been very interesting to see the difference of reaction to physical versus mental illness is with a girl's group that I am a member of.  This group meets every month and I have not been to one of the meetings for 18months.  There are 12 girls that are a part of this group, that are all good friends, that are all caring, wonderful women.  All the girls are well educated, all went to University, all fabulous.

One of the girls is a good friend and has outreached over the last year and I can never tell her enough how much I appreciate it.  The other girls have not reached out at all.  No e-mails, no phone calls, no invitations for coffee, nothing.  What I find interesting, is that 3-4 years ago, one of the group had breast cancer, and the group rallied.  I am by no means relating the gravity of my mental illness to having cancer, but I am relating the experience of having an illness take over your life as being similar.  Now granted the girl with cancer had two little kids and cancer is a horrible disease, but this group of wonderful girls, set up a calling tree, brought her meals, shuffled her too and from appointments, sent out updates, etcetera etcetera......  You name it we did it, and if you weren't doing something to help her and her family, the wrath of the group was on you.  I should point out that I am thrilled that we helped her and her family.  She is one of my favourite people and I would not have not urged us to do anything differently.  She needed our support, and we as a group, needed to support her.

I have been ill now for over a year.  Not one meal has been offered when i wasn't able to go grocery shopping for months. Not one e-mail sent from this group to check up on why I was not at one of our group meetings.  Not one message left to check if I need anything when i didn't get out of bed for weeks on end.  Is mental health so misunderstood by a seemingly educated wonderful group of women that they can't reach out? or is it that it just is not taken seriously?  Maybe again my expectations of friends is just to high?  Maybe I expect friends to be friends when you need them.

The most disappointing thing about the little insight into this human behavior is that it perfectly demonstrates society as a whole.  People are happy to rally around and support sexy diseases like cancer, that are tangible and they can understand the illness.  People look sick when they have cancer, it is easier to understand.   Throughout their treatment they change and you can see the change and illness. 

People with mental illness do not look sick.  I look sad sometimes, but not sick.  If you look at me, you would not necessarily know that i have been sick for years and very sick for a year.  It is not sexy to be supportive of Crazy People.  I also know that it is difficult.  We are difficult to care for, because we often don't know what we need or want.  We also often want to be alone.  Our illnesses are no less real and no less painful and they affect our lives just as much.  We don't make it easy for you, but if you are friends, you will try and try again, because we are worth it.  

What do they think? I dropped off the earth for 18 months

After writing my post about friends asking "How Are You?", I realized that my lack of understanding of my friends and their reaction to mental health was larger than just that question.  I have been reflecting over the last few days about friendship and friends and what has happened over the last year and a half, and I am disappointed.

I am disappointed that I didn't reach out for help, that I didn't let some friends in when I really needed it, that I didn't open up a bit about what I was going through -  but I couldn`t.  I was too sick.  This is where good friends should have stepped in, and some of them did, I will be forever grateful to those friends and cannot ever tell them how much I love and appreciate them.

It is the other friends that have fallen away, not called, not reached out, that I wonder about.  Do they wonder if I am just such a bitch that I have not called? that I have found a new group of friends? what exactly do they think has happened?  I dropped off the face of the earth for 18 months?

On that note, January is not only the month of "My Body is a Temple" Month, but it is also "Operation Friendship".  I am going to look at friends, their reaction to my mental health, the regrowth of relationships, establishing new friendships etcetera.

Friends

One of my main objectives for this year, both for my mental and physical health, is to improve my sociability.  I use to be very social.  I have a very large group of acquaintances and a good group of friends that I have all but completely ignored this past year.  I would like to re-build these relationships and establish a support network again, that I have lost this past year through mental illness.

The other reason that I think having a strong social life is important is balance.  How can I claim that I need to set limits in my work life, when I do not have anything to set limits for??  By working on relationships I can hope to have support as I strive to continually get better and manage my life in a way that will keep my mental health in balance.

#NextYearIWill

Huffington Post did a who article on resolutions called "Next Year I Will".  I ended up writing a bunch of my own tweet that went with the theme.  Here is the list for 2011:

• #nextyeariwill pack a lunch for work the majority of days in a week #2011
• #nextyeariwill force myself to be more social, even when i don't feel up to it #2011
• #nextyeariwill remember that my illness is not who i am, does not define what i do and is not a label that i wear #mhsm #bipolar
• #nextyeariwill define my boundaries so that i can lead a healthy and successful life under my own rules #mhsm #2011
• #nextyeariwill be a contributing member of society #2011 #mhsm
• #nextyeariwill lead a life of integrity (professionally, physically/health, socially and personally) #2011
• #nextyeariwill not be so hard on myself #2011
• #nextyeariwill go to spend time w #londonsis in London #2011
• #nextyeariwill eat breakfast every week day #2011
• #nextyeariwill be happier #2011
• #nextyeariwill focus on self-care (thanks @johnlepp ) #2011