Relationships, careers and cyclothymia?

Hi,

Around ten years ago, I was admitted in to a hospital with depression (I was 17-18) and severe anxiety disorder, though I continued therapy until I was 21 and went away to university. The psychiatrist I saw said I have symptoms of cyclothymia, though I didn't really follow it up.... I went on to university, though my mood changes did affect me socially, I could be impulsive and argumentative with lecturers, I had a problem with alcohol and couldn't really 'do' relationships due to either being scatty, or locking away. In some ways, when I read what I wrote, it makes me seem a bit... Um.... Well, not too 'nice', but I am a decent person and hate hurting people....

My mental health has been off and on... I started self-harming after 8 years and had anxiety attacks in 2009, though my situation at home and my mood changed and I pulled out of it. My mood was all over the place, it's hard to explain...

I'm a rational and intelligent woman and I feel like I have a fairly balanced view of the world.... Usually. I have learnt a lot from Buddhism, which helps to balance me and I try to practice mindfulness... I'm not saying it's easy and exercise does help my low moods, but I cope.

However, the past year, my mood changes have gotten more marked. 'Hyper' periods have become hyper, with decreased need for sleep, speech becoming more rapid, decreased appetite... In fact, I've started to notice my appetite and racing thoughts as a sign. It's sometimes lovely (kick back and listen to the trees and feel at one with nature) and I can be extremely productive and creative in my work, or very social and articulate, but it's getting more and more intense... Sometimes it's really frustrating. I may get a stutter, or have no focus. I can't sleep because of my racing mind, or I can't sit still... I can be over-familiar with people, 'too friendly' or playful. I try to recognise this and curb it, but I feel like my skin is crawling and my mind is like a pinball machine!

My depression, I cope with much better... I have really good skills for it. I learn that if I 'hide away', I try to do something positive every day. I also have 'safe friends' and force myself to be social if I feel I can. Otherwise, I try to pamper myself a bit and sleep until it passes...

However, recently my depression crashed to a point where I couldn't function in work and had to take two weeks off work. I went back on to meds, but felt better after two days on them (though fuzzy headed), so dunno if it's my mood shift which has made me better or the meds...

Ugh, look at me rambling! :p

Anyway... I had my first relationship at 27... I always avoided being close to people as I tend to push and pull. I'm a bit unstable with friendships, not in that I'm mean, just that I can be super affectionate and generous, then pull away and withdraw. It lasted 3 months, though the person I was with was controlling anyway, I kinda feel as if all my future relationships are gonna be stress and not going to work...

Also, jobs-wise. I wanna go abroad and teach English... But am worried that as my moods get more polarised, it'll make this an impossible dream.

I don't wanna go on mood stabilisers, as I've heard they cause weight gain (and I've worked hard to lose 40lbs). I'm on the waiting list to see a psychiatrist, but the NHS is slow, so underfunded (that's the UK health service).

Are there many people who have been diagnosed with cyclothymia, who have careers and relationships and don't need medication?

Do I sound like I'll be diagnosed with it? My doctor thinks I may...

As a fellow British person, hello!

It's a shame it's taking you so long to see a psychiatrist, the NHS really is a hit or miss game. I was lucky I got to see one within a few months, but then I'm 17 so I got to use the child services (they care far more about children than they do about adults apparently) and I think I got rushed through because I got a point where I was very near suicidal.

Anyway, I'm rambling about myself now, not good!

Have you thought about a private psychiatrist? If you have the money at your disposal it may very well be worth it for you.

As for relationships, I wouldn't say that all your future ones will be bad at all. There's a lot of people in the world and while it's harder to find people who are understanding of other's difficulties (whether it's mental health or just about anything else really), they are out there and you shouldn't give up hope.

Not all mood stabilisers cause weight gain and those that do only do so for some people. I don't know much else about medication but I'm sure others on here can go into more detail about which ones do and don't have that certain side effect and how common it is.

You may be diagnosed with it, I dunno. Even a psychiatrist would find it hard to judge from an internet post. That said, it certainly sounds like you'd benefit from help either way.

As a side note, a British psychiatrist may very well not use the bipolar I, bipolar II, and cyclothymia labels. I was just diagnosed as having bipolar affective disorder with nothing more specific added on the end and I was told that the subtypes are from the American classification of bipolar which most British psychiatrists don't use. Just a heads up there.

Skipp wrote:Are there many people who have been diagnosed with cyclothymia, who have careers and relationships and don't need medication?

The commonly quoted statistics are that 0.4% to 1% of the population may have cyclothymia and most people who have it don't know it. I certainly didn't. I had those awful depression feelings from time to time, but when I read about depression to see if that's what was wrong with me I read about people who had much worse problems than I did. Finally, I read one day about cyclothymia and yikes, I could have thought the author was spying on me and writing about the way I would stay up late at night sometimes doing things that could have waited and getting only about half as much sleep as I should for several days at a time.

Apparently, lots of people do have relationships and careers that they weave into the fabric of their lives with cyclothymia without using medication because they don't even know they have this problem. Some are better at it than others. I didn't want medication. I was afraid it would be habit forming and it would change some things for the worse. But I finally decided I owed it to myself to see what medication can do for me. It's been about eight months. Combine it with exercise and talking things out with myself, and I have more clarity now than ever before about what I want from my career and what I want to be different in my life.

I can't say the cyclothymia causes all my problems. Maybe it doesn't spur all my successes either. It does change my perspective, however, such that a problem that's nothing one day can be insurmountable the next.

And about my medication, there's something that doesn't make sense. The wisdom is that it takes a mood stabilizer and not an anti-depressant alone to stabilize someone with cyclothymia. But I'm on a mild anti-depressant only and I've mostly stabilized. The ups and downs are still there but I don't swing as much and they take longer. I don't know whether this is evidence that cyclothymia is not really what I have or if it means at least some instances of mood variation disorders have a different underlying mechanism than the common one.

There's no way to know what will happen with your cyclothymia. For me, over the long run, it's produced some pretty good up periods and some down periods that weren't as bad as they could have been. For a while, it seemed like the down times were gone. But they came back. I think the best perspective is that if it gets far worse, I'm forming good habits for dealing with it and learning new self-awareness for catching it happening so I can manage it and get the help I need instead of letting it ruin me.

Good luck.