Congratulations; if you’re reading this you’ve survived the holidays, or most of them anyway. You’re past the late-night wrapping sessions, the overindulgence in eggnog and the stuffing that you never like but every year are forced into eating anyway. Huzah. But if you’re a bipolar like me, you’ve found that all that forced merriment has left you feeling hollow, tired and depressed, so it’s time to take action to get back to your pre-holiday self.

I’m spending this Christmas back in the town where I grew up, sleeping in my mother’s guest room. I have to be there a week. A week with parents and siblings. A week of turkey and tiny oranges. A week of me silently begging to go home. But I understand that holiday obligations are, well, obligatory, so I do have some methods for trying to survive it.

I was inspired today by Seth Godin’s blog article Lady Gaga and Me. In it, he makes the point that writers needn’t worry about all the people who don’t like them because really, they should only worry about all those who do. I understand this as I’m a writer, and there are people who don’t like my writing; which is OK, because there are many who do. The same goes for bipolar treatments. Some people are just never going to agree with your chosen bipolar treatment plan no matter what you do.

Epileptics often get what is known as an aura before they have a seizure. An aura is a sensation like hearing voices or seeing colored lights or experiencing numbness. An aura might be present a few seconds or a few minutes before the seizure depending on the person. It’s an early warning sign of a brain misfire. Similarly, I experience signs, an aura if you will, of upcoming hypomanias.

OK, so I admit it, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about gender’s relationship to depression. I know the basic pieces of information: more women are diagnosed with depression than men, and more women attempt suicide while more men actually commit suicide. But there is a lot to understand beyond that. Did you know that men are up to 15 times more likely to commit suicide than women?

When we were children, for most of us, Christmas was magical. You got to tear into shiny wrapping paper and discover the most amazing and wondrous gifts inside. There was a Santa Claus who confirmed we had been good all year long. There was a Christmas tree reaching to the sky and cookies and candies abounded. Our four-year-old, six-year-old, eight-year-old minds didn’t see the faults, cracks, bills and squabbles. All we remember is the Barbies, remote-control cars and cookies for Santa. And so it should be. Those memories, even if mostly embellishments of imagination, are great to hold onto. The problem is, for some reason, we spend our entire adult lives trying to recreate the magic that never existed in the first place.

I have been through very long, dark nights of the psyche. I have been in pain I didn’t think I could survive. I’ve been in pain I almost didn’t survive. I have done things I never wanted to do. I have done things I never thought I would do. I have been to places most people wouldn’t even come up with in their nightmares. And when I’m not there, I’m grateful. No matter how much I might think things suck, I’m not sitting in that particular pile of blood and muck. No matter how I feel today I can honestly say it can get worse. Every time I think I’ve hit bottom I’ve found there is actually more bottom beyond that. It is unfortunate but true, there is no maximum to pain. And any time I even think about changing meds I’m worried I will go there again.

What I know about the brain is a fragment of what is known about the brain. What we know about the brain is a fragment of what there is to know about the brain. That being said, what we do know is worth taking a look at. In the 1960’s scientists discovered that increasing levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in the brain reduced depressive symptoms. This suggested that a depressed brain didn’t have enough of these chemicals and this is where the chemical imbalance theory came from. It was quite reasonable and made perfect sense, but we’ve learned a lot since the 1960s.

I am a word-fetishist. I adore words. They are my playthings. They are my blankies. I generally mold them, shape them and occasionally break them at my leisure. But I also respect words. I respect their meaning and their use outside the bounds of current politically correct, self-help thinking, but somehow the rest of the world wants to complain because I call a spade a shovel.

I have been through more bipolar treatments than I care to recall; probably everything you’ve heard of plus a bunch of bipolar treatments you haven’t. And yes, obviously, I have failed the vast majority of these bipolar treatments. And while not getting better is certainly nasty enough, it always feels like it’s my fault that the treatment didn’t work.