About me and the motivation for blogging.
I have been battling chronic depression pretty much my whole adult life. My diagnosis is Bipolar II. My first really serious depressive episode occurred when I was 28, shortly after my first wife Hamila died of cancer. But, in retrospect, I think I was experiencing hypomanias and depressed periods from about 17 forward.
Things got much worse half a dozen years ago, as I entered my 50s. What had been depressive periods tied reliably to dates – e.g., Hamila’s birthday and the anniversary of her passing – became more frequent and unpredictable. The hypomanias were swapped out for anxiety attacks.
I was in a mess and feeling hopeless. For the last 18 months or so, however, I have been under the care of a psychiatrist who actually treats me. I’ll call her “Dr. D”. Yes, she monitors my meds. But she also gives me homework exercises based in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, an offshoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) owing to Prof. Marsha Linehan of the University of Washington. Its emphasis is on “building a life worth living” and it draws heavily on Buddhist theory and practice.
The point of this blog is to share the results of all that homework. I hope it will speak to readers. I hope too that it will prove therapeutic for me.
Thanks for sharing Rob.