Balancing work and mental health advocacy

Have you ever sat on the couch at night and wished you could turn off the voice in your head nagging you to finish a few last things before you allow yourself to relax? That was my reality almost daily before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And while sure, some of the voices have been calmed by my medication and increased sleep, most of them have been eliminated by putting an end to multitasking and working to be present throughout my workday. I may not be able to get everything I want to do done, but I can get most things done. Sometimes, very rarely, I wonder if I would be more productive if I let myself run wild. If I didn’t put my brain to sleep at night, and let the ramping just keep going up and up and up. 

March 24th and 25th I hosted a large scale virtual Summit for work, and for weeks leading up to the big day I was working long hours and late nights to get everything done. Whenever I’m overly busy at work, Bipolar Brought Balance takes a back seat. Which makes sense, but also seems to be an excuse. Then, when work slows down, I don’t want to write because I want to relax. Last weekend I spent a lot of time outside, and even spent a little bit of time working on projects that had been sidelined until the Summit was over. What I didn’t do was carve out an hour to write this piece.

I took off work on Monday and Tuesday to ensure that I could have a break from my computer screen, and I planned to actually take it. My out of office message was activated, and there was nothing time sensitive that would need my attention. On Wednesday when I was ‘back in the office,’already half the week was gone and there was no chance of me writing an article after work or during my morning coffee. 

Now here I am, on a Sunday night trying to express the ups and downs I’ve been feeling the past few weeks as I experienced my first large scale event (while still virtual) in over a year. (It’s now taken me an additional week to publish this piece! Just proof that procrastination gets the best of all of us).

Pre hospitalization I would push myself to extreme limits when I had busy weeks at work, and especially when I had large scale events. After my manic episode and diagnosis in 2018, my return to work came with conditions, and one of those big conditions was prioritizing my mental health above all else. Staying up late at night working through every possible thing that could go wrong with an upcoming event was no longer an option. I had to actively take a step back, lower my stress levels, and trust that everything would work out. After a few successful events I realized how much easier it was to not worry, and simply solve if something did come up. 

During the Summit I could feel myself slipping into my old ways. The first sign was losing my cool in a meeting. Snapping back quickly at my close colleagues who were equally stressed and doing their best to pull together a large scale event from each of our cross country living rooms. I could feel myself getting frustrated, and it felt like I was constantly being pulled a million different directions. I started explaining the feelings, and potential triggers to my therapist and quickly realized the cause. 

My days were packed even tighter than normal with meetings, and on top of that, the messaging app that I use for work was constantly pinging with new messages on our ever running thread of questions, comments and concerns our primary planning committee may have. When I was in meetings I was only half present, while also quickly clearing junk messages from my inbox and checking the calendar to see what other meetings I may need to prepare for later in the day. Multitasking is my kiss of death. It used to be what I thought was my differentiating factor - the ability to do it well. Until I realized it was the source of all my anxiety and constant stream of thought. 

I felt a taste of that hypomania day 1 of the Summit. The slight buzz in your body that could be confused as the result of an extra cup of coffee, or event jitters, but someone with my diagnosis knows it’s the chemical reaction to juggling a lot of things at once. It didn’t feel good. Even the thought of enough energy to get everything done and then some, wasn’t appealing enough. I had flashbacks of walking through the lobby of the emergency room barely clothed and out of my mind. That ability to run a mile a minute and never run out of fuel is a foreign concept to me these days. Two and a half years since I had the words to describe how my brain and body work, and now I want nothing to do with it. 

I’m grateful that I can still stay in a job that has high stressors and live events, but it takes work. I have to be aware of my tendencies and my shortcomings. I have to plan to be out for the count for a bit after a big event. Laid up on the couch watching TV and not wanting to write much of anything.  The guilt I put on myself to have a piece out can sometimes ruin the entire moment of celebrating something else being finished. But deadlines are good, and forging ahead towards a larger goal is a great way to keep moving forward. I may have pushed it off to the last minute, but the takeaway is still there. Bipolar Brought Balance is important to me, and so long as I set a goal for myself, I’ll pressure myself to hit it.

I still don’t have a balance completely figured out. I’m proud of myself for setting goals and evaluating how I’m measuring up against them frequently, but this past year has so many asterisks to it. Will writing for Bipolar Brought Balance be easier or harder when the world begins to return to ‘normal’ again? I’m not sure, but that’s ok. While my goal is to help people, this blog is also to help myself, and turning it into a source of stress is not effective. But using it as a vehicle to share my story and express my emotions is my exact goal for 2021. Thanks for being along for the ride!