Everyone’s manic-depressive
The year started and I’ve listened to a lot of great advice. Some of the advice came from books or podcasts, but the best came from my uncle Michael.
Michael is a diabetes doctor, but other than a lot of doctors he’s usually occupied with so much more. He’s doing all these activities with his kids, takes singing lessons, volunteers and still takes the time to read all the newest research on the medication he is prescribing etc.
One morning Michael seemed frustrated. It was clear that the last days played rough on him. He didn’t get much sleep, because of some errands. Also the day before he had two encumbering patients, who still occupied his thoughts. One of them was a young Syrian man, who was almost blind due to his terribly treated diabetes type 1. The other was dear friend and patient, who just survived a rare form of leukemia and now had to be sent to a specialized hospital due to a severe pneumonia.
For a long time Michael sat quietly, sunken in his thoughts, at the breakfast table. After a while I asked: “What are you thinking about?”. He said: “You know today I need some time for myself. So I’m thinking about which obligation I can cancel.” It didn’t take him another minute to cancel every obligation he had on that day, besides the appointments at his practice. He told me:
Always remember in your manic periods, not to take on more obligations than you can handle in your depressive periods. And if it happens, don’t shy away from taking care of yourself.
What he meant was that everyone has episodes when he is full of energy. In these periods you’re searching for activities and are saying yes to everything. But afterwords there follows a period where your energy levels are low and it’s difficult to keep up with all the stuff you signed up for.
The important part is to understand that there is this frequent cycle of ups and downs. And when you’re in a down period it’s necessary to acknowledge that you need to cut the slack away and focus on the important stuff.
