she was very sensitive warm and giving and had a good sense of humor and she was bright. that says a lot doesn't it. she also said she had a passion for what she did. boy that says a lot.
i have no idea who conducts the meditation. i might try it next thursday. i am ambivalent about going there for lunch today. i woke up feeling so sad i don't know if i can get my act together.
last night i spoke with Margery, the volunteer who calls me every thursday. we are so connected. I got high even though we talk about serious stuff such as feelings of emptiness. then i plunge after the phone call.
bobby

Dear Bobby,

Keep going to the center when you are up to it. You could start to see it fit into the patterns in your life.

What i like about the exercise person is that she is going to be encouraging and gentle and professional. Her goal is probably to get you to move when you would not otherwise. I'm impressed that you did some work with the class --even if you were not totally able on the first day.

I wish there were some way for you to keep up the feeling for the rest of the day that you get from M's phone call.

Going to the center was a big new step and you did it.

M.

thank you so much Mari
today i have spent much of it just in bed wishing i were dead. i seem to be stuck in this depression. you are right. i have good things in my life but i can't seem to snap out this depression. I feel like a spoiled child. Yesterday I spoke with my oldest friend. She is married to somebody wonderful. They are both muscians. they lost their daughter at the age of two or three to cancer and they do have a son who just had a daughter. He was older than Sarah by a few years. Kathy had a melanoma on her leg I think three times and her skin doctor saved her life three times. Her mother died of cancer when we were freshmen in college. She just lost her dog who lived to an old age. She always sounds positive and cheery. I will have to ask her how she does it.
She sounds as if everything has always gone her way but as you can see it hasn't.
bobby

Dear Bobby,

i am sorry you are feeling so rotten. i know that feeling of wishing i was dead. i also know that weird psychological backlash that happens after a positive social interaction... where i feel good during but afterwards i plummet worse than before.

i don't know how your friend does it. i wonder if she just puts on a happy face. i am sure i don't sound down most of the time even though i feel that way. i have a social skin that goes on automatically. it is draining too. but i think some people may be genetically "gifted" moodwise, while others were nurtured in their childhood in a way that taught them to feel good about themselves and life. these folks have a kind of emotional wholeness ... an inner glow... that carries them through even the worst of times.

sigh.

~ waves ~

Dear Bobby,

I think you can allow yourself to be ok with being depressed. Give yourself permission to not fight the depression. When you can, interact with people, go to the center, and so on, knowing that people can only get bipolar if they have the genetic material for it.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11113
Charlie Rose had a good segment on the brain. I especially appreciated Helen Mayberg, a neurologis,t who discussed imagining of the brain.

Kay Redfield Jamison and Ely Saks spoke about how important psyho-social support has been for them throughout their lives. They said that having a good long term supportive therapist is vital.

Redfield discussed the difference between her grief over her husband's death and the depression that comes with bipolar. She said that grieving is supported our society whereas depression is not.


I tried to take notes when they were talking, especially Helen Mayberg. I hope to see the show repeated, although I think it was already a repeat.


M.

thanks waves
it is nice to feel that i am not alone. yes you have a wonderful social skin. i read your posts and think that this bipolar isn't getting to you. you are so amusing besides so bright that you seem to be functioning on all cylinders.
I know things get to you but they don't seem to run you over. I don't know what is with Kathy. She has a very happy marriage which I think is part of it and they behave not like old married couple. They still tease each other.
She also seems to like to talk about illnesses. I don't know what she does block. I thought she would talk a lot about her granddaughter. She didn't mention her once during the half an hour phone call. She also was sent away early when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She went to a prep school and then spent summers away to to Europe etc.
Love
Bobby

Thanks Mari for not running away from my comment. I heard the Charlie Rose show with Kay jamison about how people can deal with other's grief but that they can't deal with other's depression. How there is a disconnect and I think she said they are afraid of a contagion. I wonder how many of us tend to isolate and make things a lot worse.
I hope i can force myself to go to the religious place on tuesday morning. Maybe I can meet people who are seekers like me.
I don't give myself permission to be depressed. I tend to beat myself up.
Last night was strange. I finally turned on the tv and didn't watch Cnn but some dumb show and was able to relax and not be depressed. Maybe i should watch more dumb tv shows.
thanks again for your support.
bobby

that "social skin" is a double-edged sword... very useful most of the time because i don't want people to be able to read me. but it's involuntary. so it's a PITA with pdoc. because even though i told him... he is going to look at how i act. the social skin does cease to function at some point... but by the time that happens i'm already in deep doodoo depression-wise.

it's true about grief and depression. at work when i was depressed bad, and you could tell - people would stop me in the hall to ask me what was wrong... i used to just tell people i was tired because i wasn't getting enough sleep. they'd say why and i'd just shrug. they would conclude i was over worked. only one person, ever, in another work situation, didn't buy it. and she actually gave me a heart to heart lecture about depression, and that there are meds, etc etc etc haa. but she and i were already becoming friends by then, so she was perhaps more concerned than most. and she is one who thinks outside of the box.

~ waves ~

permission to be depressed is hard for me too. i can do it one day, or a week. but when it keeps going...

let's hear it for dumb tv shows!!! i watch - or used to - watch a good few dumb tv shows! and every now and then i will watch something silly nowadays too. especially "light" comedy movies. and i avoid news reports. occasionally i will make a guerrilla attack on web news or a particular section of the news if i want to know about something specific. get in, get what i need, and get out!

when i was gawwwfully depressed - in bed in dark every day wanted to die every waking minute depressed - i started turning on the tv, just to try and make the time go by without feeling its ominous presence oozing by. and i watched whatever was on - provided it was fiction. watched some very silly shows geared at teenagers. oddly i didn't find them annoying. (i didn't find them much of anything i guess... i was apathetic to everything.) but they did, effectively, "kill" time.

love

~ waves ~

Dear Bobby,
You did a better job writing about the Charlie Rose show than I did. I think Jamison's comment was helpful for me to remind myself first of all that grief is normal and that people can survive it. People can help others through it. It is not as isolating as bipolar.
My work friend has been fighting cancer a little over a year now. About two weeks ago when I spoke to him on the phone about work stuff, I asked him how he was doing. He said, "Great." He said "great" twice. I learned latter that he is starting another round of chemo. Throughout his treatments he has seemed to be in good spirits. One difference is he has a greater distaste for pettiness and bureaucratic stupidity. He stays focused on the job at hand.

I don't want to compare his struggles with mine, so I won't. I see that they are very different.
I've known him for more than 20 years (not close, but I've known him) and I think he is mostly an upbeat guy -- that his saying "great" is not just for show. I think he is real.

=-=-=-
You might like being with the folks in the religious group. I'm hoping so. The folks in the Buddhist group I went to off and on for a year (mostly off) were nice people and were seekers as you say. I stopped going because I didn't click with them or their practice or discussion about it or really anything. I think I gave myself enough chances to "try" and I didn't think I needed to keep trying.
In spite of my not "clicking" with them, I was happy to be around genuine, good people who meet to help each other find meaning in their lives.

After reading you and Waves talk about TV, I realized that I am probably still too low on my Wellbutrin -- not able to focus or pay attention or care much about anything. I can't even sit through a tv show. I was hoping to stop at 100 mgs but I need to soon go up to 150mg according to the plan pdoc laid out.

M.