Tag: psych meds


  • You Label Me While I Am Doing The Work.

    Everyone has had a name for it. Isolating. Manic. Avoidant. Lonely. Shutting down. The diagnoses have been flying in from every direction, from people who love me, from people who used to, from people who saw something unfamiliar and decided that must mean something is wrong. I understand the impulse. I don’t accept the label.…

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  • For years I’ve been fighting shadows, trying to “fix” myself through willpower, discipline, or distraction.

    For years, I thought my relentless dopamine chasing was a personal failure. Weak willpower. Poor discipline. Another addiction story. It turns out it was biology. Genetic testing confirmed what I’d long suspected: my brain is wired with significantly fewer dopamine receptors, making “normal” life feel chronically underpowered. That truth changed everything. Recovery stopped being a…

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  • The thing that frustrates me to no end with bipolar disorder

    One of the cruelest parts of bipolar disorder is never fully trusting good feelings. Is this joy—or the start of hypomania? Is it real, or is it a glitter-bomb that’s about to explode into consequences? Right now, I can see that some recent “good” feelings were actually mild destabilization during a medication change. Not a…

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  • 28 days into a psychiatric medication change.

    On paper, I’m “stable.” My mood is steady. No swings. No spirals. But underneath that stability is a brutal reality: crushed energy, flat dopamine, and relentless akathisia. For years, one side effect quietly dictated my life and drove me to self-medicate with alcohol and kratom just to function. I finally named it for what it…

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  • Acceptance. And Uncertainty.

    Today, I hit a trailhead I couldn’t ignore: my fear of uncertainty. In IFS, it showed up as a very young part—quiet, tense, always bracing—using denial as protection. I’ve spent years fighting diagnoses, circumstances, and history, thinking resistance was strength. It isn’t. Acceptance doesn’t mean approval or giving up; it means stopping the exhausting war…

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