“Everyone Has A Plan Until They Get Punched In The Face.”

That is the Mike Tyson quote that is plastered all over the internet. That’s not what he actually said, but it is a great take on the original words. What he actually said, was:

“Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time”

Mike Tyson, 1987

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Destabilization was the punch

2025, especially recent months including January 2026, punched me in the face. Over and over. A plethora of really challenging feelings, emotions, and what I have come to realize: a destablization of the bipolar disorder that challenges me.

Destabilzation was the punch, and my medication change last year was the plan that was going to prevent the broken nose and black eyes. Then the universe had other plans and my life abruptly changed.

Earlier this week everything fucking went sideways incredibly fast.

I had a really innocent two-second event on Monday that triggered a “near death experience” amount of anxiety. I felt like I was going to die. Not exaggerating. My life flashed before my eyes. It took hours to calm down. And my rational mind was just fine and was like “fuck that trigger, it’s nothing to worry about”, but my bipolar chemistry mind went apeshit and I couldn’t control the adrenaline response at all.

Tuesday morning, right before I wake up, I have a really intense but emotionally safe dream. Not a nightmare or bad dream, it was actually romantic in nature. But I woke up flooded with panic. Same adrenaline fear response as Monday. I’m standing in my kitchen about twenty minutes later waiting for my egg bites to cook in the air fryer, and had a complete tear-filled meltdown.

So 30 minutes later, my bags were packed and I was on I-5 Southbound. I fled. Before I got hurt (even though there was no actual threat of harm).

Wednesday, I walked probably a mile and a half down Ruby Beach and had a very emotional outburst. Very dark. Very shameful. Not nice. Not pretty. Screaming at the top of my lungs while biting cold rain and wind blasted my face. Feeling completely hopeless about the irrational fears, adrenaline flooding, and completely exhausted from months of them relentlessly fucking with me.

This week it took three days and 769 miles of driving a “safe distance” for my system to unwind and me to safely feel like I was able to come back home.

This is the same reason I drove 2400 miles and spent seven days in California in late-November/early-December last year. I was certain that my life was in danger if I didn’t leave and get serious distance from my home.

It’s taken the dust settling for me and my supports to see the destabilization that has happened. I’m not in the throes of immediate emotions following a major life-changing event anymore. My rational mind has moved on. I personally don’t give two fucks about that event anymore. Just want to live my life. Continue growing, healing, and moving forward.

But my bipolar brain has pulled the emergency brake, and has no intention of releasing it.

I finally told my therapist and psychiatrist on Tuesday that my triggers around certain things in my life are ruining my life. That these triggers literally feel like my life is being threatened. Near death experience every time. As if someone is holding a gun to my head. My life flashes before my eyes. I’ve been embarrassed at the severity and it feeling like I am dying. It’s not just fight or flight, it’s avoiding imminent death. I have tried everything I could to figure it out.

My therapist, my healer, my psychiatrist, and myself now all have concerns that recent changes in my life have actually destabilized me. Not into mania, psychosis, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, suicidality, or any of the really bad and destructive bipolar shit. Thank GOD. Been there, done that before.

This is important and I want to be very clear:

• The destabilization is not threatening, hurting, or spilling over onto other people or other things in any way.
• The destabilization is only affecting me, it’s on a personal physical/mental level, and it is simply very uncomfortable/distressing for me, and only me.
• The destabilization has flooded my system long-term with adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones, leaving my body completely drained and exhausted.

The destabilization is slowly eroding and destroying my quality of life. I’m not living like I want to, I’m white-knucking my way through the day, every day.

What I am experiencing doesn’t match or align with the situations I’m in at all. And in recent months I’ve literally tried and identified probably fifty different things in therapy related to these thoughts, fears, and overwhelming adrenaline responses. No matter how much I know deep down inside that I am fine and safe, something even deeper goes apeshit with the even the smallest of triggers. Things that normally don’t get a millisecond of my attention.

No matter what I try, the thoughts, fears, and floods of adrenaline come back with vengeance.

My professional supports and people close to me have seen this play out in recent months. Revelation after revelation. Breakthrough after breakthrough. Meaningful and real things, not “manic” miracles.

I find something that finally makes clear and perfect sense and explains this persistent fear of dying and associated adrenaline response when I have these tiny triggers. I find potential solutions.

And a few weeks or even a few days of integrating my new findings, I learn through trial and error, that these things don’t solve or relieve the problems I am having, at all:

It’s my patterns.
It’s avoidance.
It’s love addiction. 
It’s other addiction. 
It’s anxious attachment. 
It’s codependency. 
It’s my identity death. 
It’s facing the finality of relationships that have ended.
It’s feeling remorse without being able to repair. 
It’s trauma responses and CPTSD. 
It’s my burdened IFS parts. 
It’s my mother wound and unresolved grief of her death. 
It’s feeling defenseless. 
It’s celebrating my freedoms and checking off bucket list items on New Years Eve.
It’s people violating my no contact boundaries. 
It’s making a plan for future unwanted or unexpected contact. 
It’s changing my bedding. 
It’s eliminating friends who I can’t fully trust. 
It’s gaslighting myself into believing this is all bipolar psychosis, delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations.
It’s gaslighting myself into believing I am experiencing anosognosia. 
It’s realizing people have gaslit and manipulated me into believing the same.
It’s a voluntary hospitalization a month ago. 
It’s a hundred plus pages of journals. 
It’s writing reframes and helpful thoughts for every thought loop and rumination that I have, and reading them every time I have one. 
It’s an emotional/love detox plan. 
It’s quitting cannabis. 
It’s stopping excessive long distance walking. 
It’s avoiding triggering places.
It’s avoiding everything associated with certain people. 
It’s no longer talking about triggering things with anyone. 
It’s permanently deleting everything (every photo, text, video, voicemessage, etc…) related to people who used to be in my life.
It’s permanently getting rid of every gift, note, momento, reminder, or token of love from people no longer in my life.
It’s deleting my entire online presence on social media.
It’s writing my manifesto. 
It’s writing a book and reestablishing my blog. 
It’s finding gratitude.
It’s missing my former identity.
It’s a new plan to hike the Chuckanuts and begin training for backcountry hiking season.
It’s spending time on the beach.
It’s road trips, Redwoods, and new scenery. 
It’s sunsets on the pier.
It’s ecstatic dance. 
It’s dancing in the middle of normally busy intersections, late at night.
It’s Thai massage. 
It’s breath work and self care. 
It’s demonstrating self-love.  
It’s my object personification synesthesia
It’s dating myself again. 
It’s reclaiming my personal space and making it mine. 
It’s being repulsed by certain people/things and saying “fuck you” out loud anytime they pop in my head. 
It’s EMDR and therapy. 
It’s weekly IFS and cranial sacral sessions.
It’s doing grief work with Sentinel, the buffalo.
It’s telling myself over and over, “I am OK, regardless” anytime the fears creep back in or I get triggered.
It’s biochemistry.

Tomorrow it’s probably a med change and some psychiatric intervention.
The day after it could very well be something else. At this rate, I have almost no confidence in anything helping.

Nothing has seemed to work more than two weeks. Some less than a few days.

I’m grasping for anything. When I can’t understand or figure out something, I get extremely frustrated. I am feeling stupid. 

When it’s my own mind that I have lived with for 42 years and know better than anyone else, and I can’t understand it, I reach for ANYTHING I can to figure it out.

Today, I’m feeling defeated and dumb because I just can’t figure it out. 

So I just spilled all of that with my therapist and psychiatrist. Told them at this point it feels chemical. Like I am battling neurotransmitters. It’s the only thing left to explain this maddening experience I am having.

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It’s time to adjust my neurochemistry

Monday I meet with my psychiatrist. And it’s going to be a medication talk. Probably going to be adding two if not three medications to my platter. I’m not thrilled but unfortunately it’s become necessary.

I have been stuck in some really intense thought loops and ruminations. A lot of really disturbing flashbacks and nightmares. I have some really big irrational fears that I can’t shake, no matter what I try therapy wise. I have insanely uncomfortable, disproportionately large, and long lasting adrenaline-filled fear responses to the smallest of triggers.

I also can’t nap anymore. Everytime I nap, it turns into hellish nightmares.

My rational mind has totally moved on from recent events and has no fears about anything moving forward, but my bipolar chemistry is acting otherwise. So it’s some kind of “bipolar fuckery” with my emotions and thoughts. It’s on a chemical level.

And it leads me and all the professionals to believe chemistry is actually fucking with me. Because logically nothing makes sense with any of what I am experiencing and going through. No actual threats, past or present. It’s not C-PTSD. The triggers do not resemble anything from my past.

The adrenaline response says death is imminent.

I’m scared to death of medication changes. But my current quality of life isn’t good.

I’m not living. I’m white knuckling every day. Here we go again.

Another mental health mountain climb with medications and potential side effects.

I will survive. I will come out stronger from all of this. I always do.

I’m remaining unkillable and moving forward no matter what life hands me.

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