Phase 1: Negative Self Talk
No one hates me more than I hate me.
“The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts...The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them. Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.”
Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive
I am objectively a good home chef - I’ve won contests — but if I have ever cooked for you, I started apologizing before I even put dinner on the table. “I should’ve taken this off the flame sooner” and “given that a few minutes longer.” I pick apart the meal, miniscule imperfection by miniscule imperfection, and eventually offer to order a pizza.
I used to tell my writing students that, of the thousands of pieces I have written professionally, there are fewer than five I would leave untouched if given a chance to edit them. A professor trying to stress that writing can always be tightened, revised and made better, or the words of someone whose lack of confidence lets perfect become the enemy of good?
And that’s just the stuff I say out loud. The running dialogue in my head is harsher, more profane, and even more oblivious to objective facts. On any given day, the things I say about myself internally are worse than anything anyone else — no matter how much they hated me — has said to me, and likely worse than the even meaner things they said behind my back.
Not long after my diagnosis, my therapist suggested I was stuck in a cycle that, until I could find a way to break it, would leave me looping through the nastiest phases of type 2 bipolar disorder. In short, my negative self talk makes me more likely to have a depressive episode, which makes me more likely to have a manic episode, making me more likely to have a hypomanic episode. Then repeat.
It’s a basic framework - the cycle doesn’t always follow that exact pattern. Phases can last a few minutes or a few weeks. Understanding each phase — and learning how to pull myself out of each phase — is crucial, so I’ll be breaking down each phase and sharing the techniques I’ve been using to fight them in these early posts of “Fun With Bipolar.”
Defending myself by shitting on myself
Kids are mean. I took a lot of abuse as a chubby kid with a bowl cut who never found a social niche that felt right in the typical, middle-class suburb where I grew up. Bullying, in those days, was treated as a part of being up — “boys being boys” — and if you got picked on, it was because you weren’t standing up for yourself.
In junior high school — when things started to get bad — I started developing a self-deprecating sense of humor as a defense mechanism. It didn’t work — I still got picked on — but I kept honing it and got good at self put downs. Grades slipped, and the quiet kid was suddenly finding more and more ways to get into trouble. Things got a little better in high school; when I was 15 I discovered I looked old enough to buy beer without getting carded and had a brief stint of popularity until the liquor stores got wise. Then it was right back to being a target.
By the time I got to college, getting drunk was the only way I felt comfortable in social situations. It was the only thing that blurred out the thoughts of “these people don’t like me,” and the only thing that gave me enough confidence to fake being somewhat socially normal. But drinking only intensified and habituated the interior monologue of convincing myself I was a fuck-up, an underachiever, unlovable.
It’s a habit I’m still trying to break. It’s a habit I must break if I’m going to learn how to control my bipolar disorder.
How I’m Fighting Negative Self Talk
Breaking my negative self talk cycle takes work — more so than the other phases of my bipolar, There are medications for depression and mood swings that help, but addressing the negative self talk that often kicks off those phases means learning how to challenge the thoughts.
It’s one of those easier-said-than-done tasks: you simply need to stop yourself every time you have a negative thought and break that thought down rationally. The thought is a feeling — you just need to refute it with facts. So if I say something like “I messed up this dinner and these people are going to think less of me” I might make a list (preferably written down, but mental if need be) of the facts that say otherwise:
The food is not burnt.
I followed the recipe precisely, and/or it’s a dish I’ve made dozens of times.
I only cook for people I love: even if this isn’t my best effort, that won’t change the way they feel about me.
Etc.
The problem is the sheer volume of negative thoughts: for everyone I recognize and break down, there are dozens — if not hundreds — each day that slip by. I’ve become so accustomed to the running trash talk in my head, that it’s often like background noise that attacks my brain subliminally.
Another rule, which I picked up from the actor Tony Hale when he was interviewed on a podcast (I' don’t remember which one) a few years ago: If you wouldn’t say it about your kids, don’t say it about yourself.
I’m getting better at it, challenging more thoughts and having fewer of them. It’s a lot of work, but there is a big reward for putting in the effort: I’m once again starting to enjoy things like cooking which are, after all, something I’m supposed to do for fun and to relax. At work, the ability to get over the anxiety of living with imposter’s syndrome has subsided, and I’m not beating myself up for every little misstep — real or perceived.