A journey within a journey. Pt 1.
I am sitting in one of the nicest airports I have ever been to. Seoul good job. There is the most epic lounge for just anyone to go to and they even have a nap room! BUT, I have really been realizing how much traveling I actually do. I don't even know off the top of my head how many flights I have been on!
One way that this has really become apparent is that I was talking about the flights I took to get back home and the ones planned for me to go back to Guangzhou (I'm in the middle of that right now). The combination of 13-14 hour flights with 3-4 hour flights, just to get back home to my family in under 24 hours. Not bad for 8,000ish miles. But as I would mention this, it honestly didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Crazy I know. I am so thankful for the opportunity to do all the traveling that I'm doing, but it is becoming normal to me to do so much flying. Which is awesome for my frequent flyer miles! ;)
One thing that I have not seen much about in blog posts that I have searched for on Google and Pinterest both is how to manage mental illnesses with the hectic travel/expat life. I literally searched for hours over the course of months. Since January when I was loosely offered my current job, I spent so much time planning for things. I spent so much time looking at travel tips and advice. I looked up things for long-haul flights. But the main thing I was searching for was how to do this whole living abroad thing. I covered so many different aspects. The only one that was missing was the one about mental illness. This has been one of my lowkey goals of using this blog, to share about my journey of frequent travel and living overseas.
SO to start this off, I have had my bipolar diagnosis for about 3.5 years. It has been an adventure. I have had those moments of mania (more hypomania in my case). But more frequently in my case, the plague of depression. I'm not going to go into the details of how all of those feel exactly because that would take way too long to write. However, I have become very tenacious in keeping on top of my bipolar.
Some of my tips are:
- Don't move overseas if you don't have a handle on your bipolar. Simple as that. If you can't deal with your {personal} issues, mental illness or not, and aren't being honest with yourself about them being overseas will not help the problem at all. As our bodies go through stresses, we all have our default internal preferences take over. (I don't have a degree in this so don't completely quote me on this.) If you haven't come up with some sort of coping skills or tricks, I strongly encourage talking to your doctor and/or therapist. They have skills you need in order to make sure you are taking care of yourself.
- Bipolar doesn't go away. As someone who refused to admit that bipolar is apart of me, denial doesn't help. Due to my inability to confront my mental illness, when back in America and college, it exploded in my face. Be honest with yourself. You don't want to ignore signs and symptoms of flare-ups and such. In my case, I ignored mania building up in my life of doing things completely out of character for myself. From this internal high, I dropped. When I was finally being real with myself, the worst depression I have ever experienced hit me. It was bad. And, the depression doesn't just magically disappear.
- Managing bipolar takes work. If you are doing it right, you have to work hard. Magic fixes don't just happen. You have to work with your doctor to find the right medicines for you. I am on my fourth(?) combination right now, and it has been working wonders for over a year! Some of the medications caused some awful side effects i.e. my hands shaking so much that I couldn't eat with a fork easily, my jaw clenching up while my eyes rolled back in my head for hours. But just because you can't find a solution right now doesn't mean you need to give up.
Along with your mediation/doctor, you need to find a therapist who actually listens to you, will help you become honest with yourself, and enables you to find the internal coping skills needed to deal with your bipolar. I am completely unashamed to say that I have been in and out of therapy (for a variety of reasons) for around 10 years or so. I am thankful for this background because it has enabled me to become able to fight for myself and my sanity.
- You are your best advocate. If you don't feel that your current situation is conducive to managing mental illness, I ask you to ask "How can I change this?". Some things you can't change, but others you can. One of the best ways to advocate for yourself is to prioritize your health over a lot of things. I self-admittedly could have done better in college. However, my senior year, I prioritized my mental and physical health over my homework and am thankful for it. I still stayed up way too late a couple of times to just finish my assignments but made a habit not to.
- Have a schedule. One of the things I have noticed most about my life since moving overseas almost 2 months ago is that it is always changing. Something is happening where life doesn't go as planned. I have to take care of visa stuff and have to leave work. My grandma gets ill and I have to go home to say goodbye. I wreck my bike. The list goes on and on. But I do try to keep to my own schedule. I always take my meds before I go to bed. I also have been developing a nightly routine that I do every night regardless of how late it is.
Traveling and flying over time zones is tough. As I mentioned earlier, I have taken a lot of flights. It can be difficult figuring out when I should be taking my medication to keep on a regular schedule when I'm on the other side of the world. My aim is to take my meds at night. So when I am heading to bed. Sometimes there isn't the best ratio, but as long as you're not intentionally skipping dosages, in my experience, you should be fine. But you only gain this through practical experience, so keep traveling and figure out what works for you.
There is so much more that I can add to this, even though it was rather ranty. I hope to give more advice and share my story on this topic as I gain more knowledge. But on that note, you are loved and catch you on the flip side!
