Katie D. Arnold- Writer

Tag: bipolar-disorder

  • Shopping Habit

    I have a shopping addiction. The dopamine rush I get from purchasing something either online or in-person is as bad as a drug addict. Maybe it is a safer vice than drugs or alcohol but not for my bank account that is for sure. And the amount of needless things that I buy, or that I have duplicates of, or that I just don’t need is unreal.

    I have hoarding tendencies, genetically. I know this from cleaning out my grandmother’s house who passed away in March. Wow the stuff she saved and had tucked away! But she was very frugal and cheap being a depression era person. The problem is that I am not frugal or cheap, I like the finer things in life, but I do not have an endless source of income somewhere. I work very hard for the money I make as a paralegal and I need to budget that being a single mom with a lot of expenses (daycare, mortgage, car payment, health costs etc).

    So there lies the problem- shopping addiction coupled with limited income equals disaster potentially. I am working on my shopping addiction/tendencies in therapy but that can only help so much, I have got to be more disciplined for the safety and wellbeing of me and my daughter’s financial future. There is no “White Knight” or “Sugar Daddy” who is going to ride in and save us if things get really bad. Luckily I have been able to stay within my means so far since the Divorce and I do receive a small amount of child support monthly which helps, and I am good about returning things when I can, but there is no guarantee in life.

    A part of mania and Bipolar that is hard to deal with is reckless behavior and I think that excessive spending on unnecessary items can fall under that reckless behavior. Yes it is safer that drug or alcohol addiction or sex addiction which are all some of the more common forms of reckless behavior in the mental health realm but an excessive shopping addiction can ultimately lead to financial ruin if I don’t watch it. So I need to watch it and budget and be more careful or frugal with my money.

    It is hard though- we live in a “Treat Yo Self” era and the amount of targeted ads that are sent to us daily either through text, email, or social media ads is unreal. And by targeted ads I mean these companies have run algorithms to find data on past purchases and send ads and discounts on things we would possibly particularly like for future or similar purchases. I am a sucker for this unfortunately.

    Through DBT therapy I am going to try to use my skills more to combat my shopping addiction. Stop and Wait, Turn the Mind, and Mindfulness (to name a few) are all helpful tools I can use to combat the urge to needlessly shop for that quick dopamine hit. Hopefully I can get better at this and start to save more money for me and my daughter’s future. Here’s to trying my best!

  • How Important Therapy Is

    I’m back- I took a little sabbatical there from writing, and had a really hard time again in March 2025 following some events that transpired with my sister and my grandmother dying, which pushed me to join an IOP (intensive out-patient) therapy group mid-April 2025. The great thing about IOP is I can maintain my job and mom duties and fit it into my schedule seamlessly which has been great.

    And it has been helping me a lot. We learned that the whole point of IOP – DBT therapy is: “to control our minds so we can better control our emotions and reactions and live a happier more fulfilled life.” DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) has been doing just that for me. I have had some situations come up since starting this therapy that I have handled and managed much better than I would have prior to this therapy.

    The situation I am most proud of handling so well was my EX in-laws (Greg’s parents) coming to town for Pre-K Graduation for Brooklyn with no prior warning or heads up that they would be in town for the weekend from Chicago. I kept my cool and didn’t let it phase me. They came to the T-ball end of the year party too on Sunday and I just talked to different people and I didn’t let Ellen’s (Greg’s mom’s) annoying behavior get to me. I was so proud of myself, but it was mainly due to the skills learned in therapy and the cope-ahead plan I had worked on prior to the weekend and seeing Greg, I just modified it to include his parents in the moment.

    I have also taken some trips in the month of May to Charleston, SC and New Orleans, LA and I think the therapy has really helped me a lot to cope and manage successfully some situations that arose on these trips with friends. Another huge milestone is that I rang in my 40th birthday happy and healthy, mentally and physically, where last year I was so suicidal I thought I may not make it to my 40th birthday alive. That was huge that not only did I have a good time celebrating I also went on two trips and had a family swimming celebration that were all very positive and enjoyable! Usually my birthday month is hard for me- so I am very happy that 40, which is such a milestone itself was a good one for me! 🙂

    2025 also marks 5 years since I officially separated from Greg in August 2020. That has been a huge milestone that this therapy has been helping me work through. I finally feel ready to move on and live my best life with Brooklyn. Next major goal is weight loss and then I am “On my way” (a song from B’s Pre-K Graduation) to a happier and healthier life, and I’m finally ready!!

  • The Road to Recovery

    The road to recovery with a mental illness is hard. Not only is it long and tiring it can be at times very slow with multiple setbacks along the way. Part of the recovery journey that can be so frustrating is that with a chronic illness such as bipolar or a myriad of other mental illnesses is that you never truly recover, it is always a part of you and while managing it can get easier it never goes away. A person diagnosed with severe mental illness is never cured, so to say, like other illnesses. And this can be daunting and frustrating. I know I have felt illness exhaustion having struggled with this for nearly 25 years especially with my illness feeling more severe and less easy to manage in the last 5 years due to extreme amounts of stress.

    I think the best thing to do, all that any of us can do, is try to stay positive and hopeful and not let ourselves get too overwhelmed. And this is hard to do, I know! Because life is hard, stress is hard to manage, and our illnesses on top of all this are greatly affected by these environmental factors making them even harder to manage. Sleep management can be hard too. Too much when depressed, too little when manic and how to keep the balance of regular good sleep when responsibilities in the morning especially like work and school make it hard to over or under sleep even when or bodies need it.

    This chart above shows the ups and downs of different types of bipolar and includes depression as well. As you can see there is a cyclical pattern of up to down between mania and depression that people with bipolar suffer from. But the goal is stability, flat lining in the middle, as the chart shows, that is the spot, the “sweet spot” where functioning with bipolar becomes the easiest to manage. When the major ups and downs have subsided and and the mood swings are more even and less severe that is the goal for the most successful and productive point of living with a bipolar diagnosis long term.

    So think of it like this- similar to the laws of gravity, what goes up must come down…meaning after a period of mania or an episode of mania usually comes a period of depression or an episode of depression. The goal is to even these out so the swings are not so high and low and evenness/stability can be achieved more easily. This can be achieved, I have found, most successfully with a three prong approach 1) medicine and supervision by a doctor 2) seeing a therapist regularly 3) some sort of group therapy, support group etc. Having supportive friends and family is very helpful too, but it is hard to be open with everyone about struggles like this, at least for me, because there is still such stigma surrounding mental illness. I think finding coping skills to manage and reduce stress and finding coping skills to help regulate sleep help a lot too.

    I am still on the road to recovery and in some sense I always will be unfortunately, but I hope with time and hard work in therapy things will get easier and more manageable in multiple areas of my life. I know I can get there and you can too. It seems impossible now (long-term stability) but I am hopeful it can be achieved and that is a huge first step.

    Good luck to all on their personal road to recovery-just keep going!

  • Searching for Stability

    I think something I have mentioned in earlier posts is that my Bipolar 1 illness has changed as I’ve gotten older, since childbirth, since severe stress of divorce and moving and finding new health professionals. Yes it has changed! My times of having a depressive episode happen more frequently now, with intermittent short spurts of hypo-mania in between. There is no rest for the weary so to speak. I am either high or low, up or down with my moods, and all I crave and seek is stability and some evenness like I experienced years ago in my young adult life and when I was first diagnosed. I would go years in between major episodes, now those previous major episodes would end up getting pretty severe including hospitalization though. But I have only been hospitalized 3 times in 23 years one of those being an outpatient program because I was only 17 years old. In the scheme of things that is pretty good because hospitalization for a mental illness is rough and it takes a while to fully recover from the experience…more on that later if that is an interest to anyone or if you would like to learn more about it, at least my experiences with it.

    Stress is a big factor I believe in this up and down spiral. I have had a very stressful job for a long time as a paralegal and I know it contributes to making my stress unmanageable. Another huge factor is being a single mom. My lovely daughter is 5 so things are getting easier, but having young children even with help from a spouse or other family member like I have is hard and stressful and anxiety producing even for people who don’t struggle with their mental health. My divorce was hard too. It was very contentious and took a huge toll on my mental health leading to a lot of weight gain from emotional eating. Which leads me to the next big stressor in my life which is my weight gain that has caused major confidence issues, contributed a lot to my depression symptoms, and caused other major health issues that I am now struggling with on top of my mental health issues. Woah! That’s a lot of stress I have been under all the time for the last 5 years, not to mention the verbal and emotional abuse I suffered living with my volatile ex-husband the year after my daughter was born before I left when she was 1 year old.

    I should be kinder with myself- we all should. This is hard, life is hard, and especially having a mental illness is hard. Why I mention the stressors above and all I have been through contributing to my stress, is because I believe stress and how I manage it has such a huge factor on my mental health and stability, along with sleep regulation- managing stress and sleep are the big two that determine if I am doing well or not. So making sure I am taking my medicine as prescribed by my doctor is crucial, adding in over-the-counter sleep medication as needed helps, and to manage my stress I find walking, yoga, reading, watching a funny show or movie and participating in a hobby when I have the time is beneficial. Now working full time and having a child along with all the busyness of life does not allow me to do all of these things all of the time like I would hope I could, but when I find the time or make the time to do them, these things help I have found.

    Some hobbies I particularly enjoy are cross-stich and crocheting and journaling. Now I understand it is particularly hard to do anything but eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom when you are truly in the throughs of a major depressive episode, but maybe just even calling a friend or family member and talking about your feelings, your struggles, your worries might help. And of course always call your doctor and therapist in crisis.

    Stability oh how I long for it! I think most people struggling with bipolar, and a myriad of other mental health conditions like anxiety and depression certainly long for stability at times too. So how can we get there? One day at a time, truly it’s the only way for me to manage life when my stress and anxiety get too overwhelming. But it is hard, it is not easy, and I am personally very hard on myself when I start feeling better, that I need to make up for lost time while I was laying in bed feeling my worst during depression. I should not be that way and I am working on being kinder to myself about my struggles and my ability to do my best even when everything seems so hard.

    One thing I struggle the most with my bipolar 1 diagnosis is managing both sides of the coin- the depression, but also the mania. I am someone who truly can not take an anti-depressant because my ability to slip into hypo-mania and then severe mania is too easily reached while taking an anti-depressant medication. But my depression episodes can get pretty severe and that is hard to manage too. And this is where stress factors in, the daily stressors of life, making my illness very hard to manage sometimes, well most of the time. So managing my stress is key-but what is the best way to do that? Writing helps me, and self-care like bubble baths, talk therapy with my mom and therapist, and certainly walking and moving even though it currently hurts my joints a lot right now since my weight gain. So I will try to do those things and honestly just seeing my daughter after a long day at work, picking her up from school, spending time with her in the evenings gives me so much joy, and I need to focus on that and not my struggles or my stressors even though they can be overwhelming at times.

    What are your favorite ways to manage your stress or wind down- I would love to hear your ideas!

  • First Day at my new “job”

    New job or maybe I should say new hobby. My goal is that I am going to write as much as possible using this platform as my first resource and then hopefully land some sort of writing job that I am paid to do to hopefully transition to being a full time writer. My passion and expertise is the Mental Health field not because I am a doctor or nurse but because I myself have struggled with my mental health being diagnosed Bipolar 1 since 2002. I want to help people with their mental health journey and share some tips and tricks that I have discovered myself to help manage it along the way. And trust me I have struggled! This is a hard illness to manage successfully but here is my goal – to help as many people as I can understand their illness and thrive regardless of it.

    One thing is I am a mom and my illness has changed since giving birth to my wonderful daughter 5 years ago. Stress has been a huge contributor to this change- stress of new motherhood, my divorce, and an intensive job, but other factors have come into play too- major weight gain and feeling bad about that, higher levels of anxiety that I have had to deal with in relation to the stress I have been under, needing to find a new psychiatrist and therapist after my divorce, change in my hormones etc… just to name a few. For more on my mental health journey with new motherhood and divorce visit my first blog- https://yogimommi.com/blog-feed/

    In this blog I am going to focus less on new motherhood and divorce and more on my overall mental health journey, understanding the illness, and the here and now of my struggles and successes with managing my illness. I hope too as a history lover to research and share with you the stories of famous people throughout history who have struggled with their mental health and learn more about the development of psychiatry and psychology in the medical field and how it has helped people significantly.

    I commend you if you have found my blog because you yourself struggle with your mental health and just know you are not alone and it is really hard. Daily it is hard and not many people who don’t struggle with this personally understand that. So just know we are out here, we are struggling too, but we are going to make it and find the willpower to not let the stress and difficulties of this illness overtake us – we are going to enjoy our lives in spite of the incredibly hard challenges we face and we are going to thrive vs just survive.

    Now I know I sound more like a motivational speaker vs someone with severe mental illness, but trust me I get it- it’s hard and I have struggled almost everyday for definitely the last 5 years of the 23 years since first diagnosis. Like I said before about my illness changing is that I used to have years of stability in between major episodes but now it is more like a few months. Now these depressive and hypo-manic episodes I am describing that are happening more frequently are more manageable than in the past for sure, at least in the sense that no hospitalization has been necessary and I have been able to continue working and keeping up with my mom duties (with some help from my mom with my daughter). This has been a huge blessing, but it has still been hard. To have the ups and downs of my Bipolar 1 be less like a low bell curve and more like a sharp heartbeat on a monitor has been difficult. The times of stability are so helpful to my recovery and strength and getting my confidence back and being robbed of these long stretches of stability lately has been hard to manage.

    But I am doing ok in general- as of late I did have a hard depressive episode in October 2024 lasting to mid November. I felt better through December and the holidays, getting slightly hypo-manic though (like hard to sleep etc), up until the end of February 2025 and then this March I have struggled again with another hard depressive episode. I am feeling better now but keeping my sleep in check to keep mania at bay has been a struggle as of late. Of course, always talk to your doctor first, but my new psychiatrist’s advice to take as much sleep medicine as needed to help me sleep has been really helpful with that struggle of managing my sleep.

    As always, just a reminder to please subscribe and comment- I would love to hear from you! More to come in the near future, but my hope is to build an online community to help us all learn more about our illnesses and encourage each other- Happy Monday…let’s get to work bettering our lives!