Manic Episode 4: Idea #43

Well, I’m happy to say that I am feeling much better this week. No depressive symptoms. It seems like the lower step of olanzapine, at 2.5mg, is serving me well. Not sure when I will take the step off of it completely, but if I can be as functional as I have been this week, while still on 2.5mg, I feel no rush to do so.

This week, let’s go back into my database of thoughts from my fourth manic episode. Here is #43:

“The Upside Down World: Is there a slower, less efficient way of doing this? For manic times, it helps to have tasks that are slow and long. The experience of time dilation when I am manic makes 10 minutes feel like an hour, so it feels like you have more time to fill, which is exhausting. I find that it is helpful to have things that chew up lots of time.. like taking each piece of laundry directly to where it goes piece by piece… “

This is something I tried out during my last manic episode, and it is definitely an idea to keep. When I choose to keep certain thoughts and ideas for the future, it is because they serve a very important purpose: They can help solve the difficult problems that I will face in future manic episodes. Some ideas can help me in my everyday non-manic life too!

Being manic comes with a very alternative set of cognitive problems that I don’t experience in my stable periods (“normal periods?”… as if there is such a thing). I have found that my alternative problems require alternative solutions. Here’s a list of five specific problems that I face when I am manic, and then I will explain how and why idea #43 helps me solve them. Here are some of my challenges:

1. Inability to keep up with household tasks – Laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.. These things become impossible for me when I am manic. This overarching problem is really a symptom caused by combinations of the next four problems.

2. Inability to focus on tasks made up of many subtasks – Let’s use my example about folding and putting away laundry as I mentioned above. When I am manic I see the world differently, everything around me screams out for my attention and I feel totally overwhelmed by everyday items that I would usually be able to ignore. Also, things that I normally see as a group, like a hamper of laundry or a dishwasher full of dishes, become daunting collections of individual things that must be attended to. IMMEDIATELY! So the laundry hamper is not a laundry hamper, instead I see a gang of 100 little jobs to do that all need to urgently be done at the same time. Clearly an impossible task! As such, it stresses me out like… well, crazy.

3. Restlessness – I literally (literally literally, not ‘literally’ literally) cannot stop moving. If I am not walking around, I cannot help but sway in place. If I am sitting down, I am tapping my fingers and feet or rocking in my chair. If I am lying down, my legs are rolling around and my hands and feet are drumming the floor.

4. Racing thoughts – This is the basis for this whole blog project about my ideas. I have too many scattered ideas crowding the finite space in my skull, and I need to get them out by writing them down or by telling someone, immediately.

5. Time dilation – Each hour feels like 10 hours. When I am manic, my mind is running at about 100x the rpms that it normally does. So, whenever I look at the clock, I am always shocked at how little time has passed. In my third and fourth manic episodes, I took a high nightly dosage of olanzapine to help me settle down at the end of the day. It helps my mind slow down enough for me to get the sleep that I desperately need. I was on a high enough dosage at the beginning of the episodes that when the drug took effect it was like I got run over by a bus. I could expect that about 90 minutes after taking the dose I would get barreled over and be able to sleep. At the end of the long-long-long feeling days of mania I feel ‘wired but tired’, and I very much welcome the olanzapine bus to knock me out. But the time dilation makes the 90 minute wait feels HOURS long.

Now that you understand some of the general problems I have, let’s talk about how idea #43, doing things as slowly and inefficiently as possible, helps me solve these problems. We’ll keep talking about laundry. Here is how I normally (non-manic) do it. 1) Separate the whole hamper into stacks by who lives in what room 2) Separate the room stacks by what goes in which drawer 3) Take the separated drawer stacks to their respective rooms 4) Put the stacks into their respective drawers 5) Distribute the miscellaneous items (towels, sheets, rags, etc.) around the rest of the house. For one hamper of ~50 items, this maybe takes five or ten minutes. Done.

This kind of orderly method is literally (same as above) impossible when I am manic, there are too many distractions. I simply cannot focus long enough to separate by room/person, then drawers, then go to another room and expect to remember that I was working on the WHOLE hamper.

Instead, when applying idea #43, here is how I (sometimes) managed to put away a whole load of laundry as slowly and inefficiently as possible. 1) Grab the topmost item in the hamper 2) Delicately fold it to ceremonial precision 3) Walk to the room that it goes in and put it in it’s respective drawer 4) Walk back to the hamper 5) Grab the topmost item… etc.. This alternative process helps me out with my aforementioned list of general problems in these ways (We’ll go in reverse order, just because):

5. Time dilation – this is pretty straightforward. It is much easier to fill the slow-moving time if each task takes much longer than it normally does. In my example of a ~50 item hamper, if I am taking 30 seconds on each item, then a 5 minute task takes 25 minutes. Time well burnt!

4. Racing thoughts – If I am focusing one ONE tangible item in my hand, like a piece of clean laundry, I am able to block out my thoughts as I attend to that ONE item. My thoughts will distract me from dealing with the WHOLE hamper, but if I am focusing on just ONE item, I can manage to temporarily stifle them. Also, I can be listening to music or wearing Icy Hot, which helps me tone down my internal cognitive noise.

3. Restlessness – I cannot sit or stand still as I separate and fold clothing. But walking from room to room 50 times helps my jitters. By inefficiently duplicating the subtask of walking into a different room for each item of clothing, I am able to take 50 short trips around the house, which eats up time and gives my body more physical work to do too. Extra steps well taken!

2. Inability to focus on tasks made up of many subtasks – I can’t fold and put away a hamper of laundry. But give me one piece of laundry, and I’m able to fold that and put it away. If I am able to ignore the full hamper, and focus on just one piece, I will eventually hit the bottom of the hamper at some point before nightfall… which leads us back to…

1. Inability to keep up with household tasks – And just like that, an oppressive full hamper of laundry was successfully folded and put away by a maniac. An alternative solution to an alternative problem.

#43 is a keeper, and can be applied to other such tasks like washing and putting away 50 dishes or sorting Legos.

See you next week!