Mania Haikus: Using the Heightened Creativity to Process My Episode

This is Part 2 in a 5-Part Series: 

"When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground"

(Read Part 1 Here)

I recently came across the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed. I follow her on Instagram and she posts beautiful, bite-sized poetry. Reading her work makes me want to write poetry, too.

At the beginning of the month (September 2016), I felt the stirrings of mania. There were no spending sprees, nor hypersexuality, or racing thoughts. Those are my typical symptoms. This time I only noticed two changes: disturbances in my sleep and heightened creativity and productivity.

When I was manic in 2015, I incorporated a life coaching company and a social justice curricular consulting company. I was so excited to go into business for myself. I mean, why not? I had all these great ideas until the mania dissipated. After I came down in 2015, I spent months recovering and settling back into my homeostasis. The two businesses were the last things on my mind.

Yet here I find myself, in September 2016, dusting off the life coaching company and developing curricula for workshop presentations. For the first week of September 2016, I feverishly researched and wrote, and consulted, and designed. At first, I thought it was normal creative frenzy, but when I didn’t sleep one night, I knew I was teetering into familiar territory. Mania is defined by excess. I was doing too much.

Here are five haikus I wrote to process the mania.

I

Spano excited.
Just like Spano? Yup, Jessie.*
#ManiaBeLike

*Jessie Spano from Saved By The Bell

II

Wrote a business plan.

Conducted a survey too:

self-care consulting.

III

I’m intentional

about self-care coping skills.

Sleep. Breathe. Eat. Shower.

IV

Be in the moment.

Try to calm the energy.

Breathe, breathe, breathe deeply.

V

Sleep escapes me, {sigh}.

Too many creative thoughts.

Can I just press “pause”?

Tune in tomorrow for part three in the series...

Mania #5: What, How, Why

This is Part 1 in a 5-Part Series: 

"When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground"

This is my fifth mania in the nine years since I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. However, just because this is my fifth mania doesn’t mean that the experience of the mania this time around hasn’t been rough. I have been manic every year since 2013. Yup. 2013. 2014. 2015. And now 2016. My mania manifests pretty similarly each episode. For instance, I typically experience heightened creativity and productivity, a heightened libido, impulsivity, spending sprees, weight loss, loss of appetite, and sleep disturbances.

The creativity and productivity feel incredible. I feel an intense need to create when I am manic. During my third mania (in 2014), I started blogging about my mental health journey. During my fourth (in 2015), I began a memoir and founded two companies. However, this creativity and productivity are not without their share of problems for me. When I first started blogging, I encountered boundary issues with what and whom I wrote about. The two companies I founded set me back about $8,000 in incorporation costs and website creations. I also shop more. Over the life course of my disorder, I have charged around $30,000 on my credit cards. I am currently still in credit card debt. Thus, the temporary nature of my manic episodes have long-lasting consequences for me.

Yet, this is the first manic episode that did not result in a hospitalization. In the past, mania meant being hospitalized. My manias take me so high, so quickly that in order to head it off at the pass, I check myself into the hospital. But for my current manic episode, I am managing with IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) only. I attend IOP two days per week for 3.5 hours each day.

During this current episode, I got the idea to re-brand my life coaching company as a wellness company focused on promoting self-care. I stayed up all night writing feverishly and researching best practices for self-care for the company. I became really excited because I discovered that I could turn what I once perceived as a manic financial blunder – starting a life coaching company in the first place - into a viable source of income. It was almost confirmation that my manic-self knew something my stable-self did not. However, once I was not sleeping through the night, I knew I was in trouble.

I knew the excitement I was experiencing was more than just normal excitement. I was less vigilant than normal about having symptoms of mania because it was not springtime. All of my previous manias occurred between the months of February and June. Now, in September 2016, I exhibited symptoms. I didn’t know what to make of this change to my norm.  

In response to the appearance of symptoms of mania, I increased the number of acupuncture sessions I received from once every three weeks, to two to three sessions per week. I also started taking my medicine consistently once again. Since the summer, I had been inconsistently adhering to my psychiatric medicine routines for various reasons - chief among them, I am just tired of taking pills. I have been a compliant patient ever since I learned of my diagnosis. With the exception of my first mania and my current manic episode, my manias are generally caused by medicine changes my psychiatrist ordered (e.g. one medicine caused liver toxicity so I had to come off it). However, this current mania is my fault and I can definitely say “lesson learned.” As a result of my veering from my medicine routine, I have added an additional year to my graduate schooling since I am currently enrolled less than half-time. There will be no more inconsistent medicine usage on my part.

Tune in tomorrow for part two in the series...

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Creative

I've always been a writer. But only recently have I taken an interest in other types of art. Two summers ago I took a drawing class. It was fun. And a year ago I attended a drawing class at MOCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts) in Brooklyn. The class was taught by artist Shantell Martin.

When I was in DC last summer I bought the following clutch from one of the Smithsonian Museums.

And during one of my hospital stays we had art therapy. We made collages. Here's a collage a fellow patient made. I liked it so much so he let me keep it.

Here's the collage I made. I had both collages framed.

Here's what they looked like on my bedroom wall.