Hi, my dearest reader (if any, haha. I love to talk with myself so I don’t mind about getting more readers or not, but if this is your first time to see this blog then, welcome!)
It’s been months since I’m not post anything on my lovely Tumblr *aww. I want to share about racing thoughts. Mmm, have you ever heard about it? or maybe even experience it? yup, you’re right, racing thoughts mean there are a lot of things coming to your mind whether it’s random, past memories, and anything in one time. So you can’t control which one you want to focus on thinking of. It also links to the nerve system in our brain because the speed of the liquid chemical in our brain, which contains so much information, is so fast, that’s why we are having racing thoughts.
Wait, what is the purpose of sharing this information? Ok, for the last 5 years I’m living with my bipolar disorder. It’s one mental disorder that affects your mood. Bipolar disorder is quite similar to MPD (multiple personality disorder) if you see it at glance. But it’s totally different, because the mood changing in bipolar disorder, between manic and depressive episodes, make you think it’s a different person just like with MPD, the truth is not. The manic episode in bipolar disorder makes the person feels more confident, brave, smart, and feel like the world is in his hand. It looks good but, at the time the person will feel easily irritated, and emotionally aggressive. During the manic episode, that person could talk at the speed of light, like Eminem does and he can have racing thoughts. While for a depressive episode, the symptoms are feeling unmotivated, feeling gloomy all the time, feeling isolated and lonely, having suicidal thoughts, or even so hard to do daily activities like waking up from bed. If you think that you have experienced some of the symptoms I’m encouraging you to see the head doctor fix everything before it’s too late.
As we know that the racing thoughts are one of the symptoms of a manic episode, it makes me feel like I want to say everything that comes to my mind. Then it makes me say something randomly and incoherently. For example
“Omg, I love Zayn Malik so much. He’s so handsome, and I’m so happy that he finally has a daughter with Gigi Hadid. But do you know what it feels like to be the first child in your family? omg. it so hurts or burdens me even more. I don’t know what to say but I think I want to quit my job because my boss is like Hitler, he dictates me to do what he wants me to do. Do you know BTS? Omg, they’re so famous in the world right now, I want to be V’s wife in the future, he’s so freaking handsome, I want to accompany him perform in Grammy and meet Ariana Grande on the red carpet and having a chit chat with her and singing “7 rings” together. Omg, she’s so pretty. Ouch! I forgot that I should meet with Obama to discuss the pandemic situation and fix the world ”
Hahaha, I hope it would be a great example of how racing thoughts affects the things that we want to share with someone in a conversation. They might be confused about what we want to say because you don’t have any purpose to say it.
I remember, back in 2016, I had a lot of things to solve, my family issues, my dream to get married before 21, my ambition to get a higher GPA, my trust issue, and all the things that lead me to perfection. At that time I decided to take 7 activities in college to distract my mind from my problems. I joined a theatrical club, election committee, tax seminar & training committee, Islamic club, new students committee, Islamic charity committee, and educational foundation committee. Can you imagine that the 7 activities were running at the same time? It was crazy, I know. Because I have problems and getting more activities, my racing thoughts were getting bad. It made me couldn’t sleep at night for 8 hours, I could only need 2 hours to sleep and felt so fresh in the morning without yawning or even felt like I lacked sleep.
Then, the question might be, how do I handle the racing thoughts?
Well for me, at that time it was too late to prevent it because I lost consciousness for 7 days. It was different for me, and the hardest week in my life and for my family too. My mood was changed rapidly from manic to depressive in one second. My family tried everything to make me better. Some people said I was possessed by the devil or got the black magic from someone. My parents’ friend even tried to ruqyah me - to send the devil out from my body in an Islamic way - but it’s getting worse, it has nothing to do with it because the problem was in my head, I need to see the doctor take the therapy and medication. I could still remember when they read some dua for me, all I thought was “oh Allaah, is it the time that I will meet you (died)?” then suddenly I became so angry and freaked them out and I don’t remember anything after that. There are so many things that I forgot within that 7 days, that’s why I was afraid of myself.
That’s why I said it was too late to prevent it, so if you feel the racing thoughts are bothering your daily life, your productivity, your emotions, your sleep, and your eating pattern, then I’m encouraging you to see the head doctor (psychiatrist).
People might have a stigma if you go to the head doctor, but believe me, all they can do is judging from the cover, they don’t even help you to pay for your medications, they don’t know your problems or even understand your conditions. If you agree with them and lock yourself in the room without a professional helper, it will hurt you even more. Believe me, to start this step is hard but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You need to accept yourself before you expect everyone to accept you. If they don’t want to accept it then just focus on the good things inside of you, you’ll be happy and come back stronger as you used to be.
Because acceptance that matter.