Most bi-polar books will talk about stressors or triggers that either first awakened the bi-polar and/or continue to cause episodes during treatment. Since sufferers have zero tolerance for most things, seemingly unimportant and inconsequential day to day things can cause outbursts of seismic proportions! Money matters are a huge stressor and will be dealt with seperately under I for Irritability. Here is my list below and I am sure there could be additions!
- I think one of the biggest triggers is anything technological which pretty much screws me in today’s world. So computers that re-boot without my permission, all technological breakdowns, gadgets, mobile phones, service providers or as my husband says ‘’anything that you cannot fix within 2 seconds’’. I then throw a wobbler or tantie (tantrum) as we call it in our house and this usually ends up with me screaming and getting very agitated.
An example would be selecting some digital photos to send to family members. Firstly one has to download them, name the file and even re-size them. Invariably the ‘select all’ tick is mistakenly used and then the photo paper gets eaten and then the photos print on normal paper. I just want to nip to Boots to pick up my photos like we did in the old days. And what about this collective condition to photograph and document everything your child does ? We do not actually watch our children properly as we are too busy filming them. At every hockey match, the cameras are out. What happened to memories instead of everything being instantaneously catalogued? Don’t get me started on social media ………I realise I am in a freakish minority of finding it utterly grotesque.
Another example is batteries running out in the mouse or rechargeable batteries. I am near hysterical every time I try to do my yoga DVD. There’s a paradox there me thinks. Let me take you through the process. First of all it has to be downloaded onto Apple. Everything is linked, the TV, the computer, Wii, all of it. It’s a maze of wiring like my brain. My husband has every latest gadget and for this I am grateful, until I want to do my yoga DVD. I have to come out of my system and go into his and then go onto Apple I tunes to find movies, and then I have to use 3 remotes to turn the TV on (SKY is another huge trigger) to find something called HD13 or some channel like that. Then when I eventually get onto Apple TV and select the item it starts BUFFERING !!!!!!!!!! BUFFERING has become a standard joke in this house. Even my phlegmatic husband can lose his cool over buffering. This requires switching off the computer (frequent loss of data in my case because I have not saved properly) and re-booting. I once calculated that it took around 30 minutes of exasperation before I was able to sit and, supposedly zen like, start my yoga. Not conducive.
And yes, I am totally reactive and not proactive so should go out and buy a DVD player. But where from? Do they still exist? Would this require extensive internet investigation? I think I am the only person in the world who does not have a new smart phone. I still have my little old Nokia as it took me about 3 years to be persuaded that predictive text existed. I am stubborn as far as technological progress is concerned and this stems from a lot of ignorance and a bit of arrogance. I want to benefit but I don’t understand how things work and then react badly when they break down. Since we are on computer related topics, how about passwords ? I can feel my blood pressure rising as soon as I have to log in to something or am given a password. I mean they just don’t work. I can never access a page when I copy/paste my password. Below is another recent example after making contact with a recruitment consultancy to try and re-enter the real world. It went something like this-