Dissed Ability

At one and the same time I am extremely grateful that I have disability insurance and can be sustained by that safety net as I cope with my Bipolar diagnosis, AND am extremely resentful that I am considered disabled at all.  The most aggravating part of being on disability is to be asked the evaluative questions by my insurance company.  Can you dress yourself?  Can you care for your own personal hygiene.  Can you assist with routine household chores?  (Truth be told, I've never done well with that last one even when I was at my best.  Just ask my wife!)

My experience has been that I have been more disabled since diagnosis and treatment than I was prior to treatment, when I was still maintaining a full work schedule, though admittedly, it was getting more difficult.  But before we proceed, a bit of background on Bipolar II symptoms.  First of all, someone who is Bipolar will experience recurring bouts with depression alternating with periods of "hypo-mania", or an elevated mood, but one that is not a full blown manic episode.  Symptoms of hypo-mania are:

• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• Decreased need for sleep
• More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
• Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
• Distractibility (e.g., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)
• Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation
• Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potentional for painful consequences (e.g., the person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indescretions, or foolish business investments)

As I began to recognize these symptoms in my own life and that they were symptoms of a disease, two things occured:  First, I felt that some of my greatest gifts had been dissed, or devalued, and were now to be considered as liabilities, symptoms of a disease to be managed, not assets to be drawn upon; and secondly, I felt extremely vulnerable, unable to confidently trust in my own abilities.  For example, one of my most recent episodes occured when I decided to resign from my position as pastor of First Lutheran and go back into the woodworking business.  I immediately determined that to be successful I need to cash in some of my pensions and invest in a CNC router, along with upgrading some of the other woodworking equipment in my shop.  I was absolutely unable to hear and appreciate my wife's caution in this regard. In my mind my abilities to make this work and the goals so achievable if I just went "all in", that to even question them was inappropriate.  I, over and against my wife's concerns, bought the equipment, and only time will tell whether it was a wise choice or an "unrestrained buying spree" and "foolish business investment".  The jury is out.

I went on disability because of a deep depression.  Stress at work was also producing within me "partial complex seizures", where my right arm would shake uncontrollably.  This was particularly pronounced in Church, where I could not sit through a worship service, let alone lead one, without experiencing the seizures.  I was also diagnosed with PTSD at that time, which I preferred to call "Post Traumatic Church Disorder".

As I mentioned above, my decision to not return to the ministry, but rather establish a woodworking business, triggered a hypo-manic episode.  That proved to be relatively short lived, however.  Once we had the CNC Router up and running, a simple complaint about the noise by a neighbor (we were operating it with the garage door open) sent me into a tailspin into a deep depression.  My productivity went way down.  And since that time, I have struggled to maintain a full work schedule.

It's this vulnerability to external triggers that keeps me on disability.  My medical team is absolutely convinced that parish ministry is toxic for me, now.  Too many triggers.  And there is no way to predict whether a trigger, such as a simple negative comment from a parishioner, will send me into a deep depression that has previously left me feeling borderline suicidal or ignite the engines for another hypo-manic phase.  

I am fortunate that our Church has a good and generous disability program.  What I have come to appreciate is that there are two distinct advantages to having that in place.  First of all, and most obviously, it provides a safety net for me.  Through the disability program the Church has cared for me and my family and we have not suffered as a consequence of my being Bipolar.  But, I also realize now that the disability program also protects the Church from becoming a victim of my disease.  As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my most pronounced hypo-manic episodes ended up costing the Church millions of dollars.  Yes, that is no exaggeration.  Hopefully, one day, that will be recoverable.  Perhaps the greatest risk associated with a bipolar pastor would be if a hypo-manic episode manifested itself in "sexual indiscretions".  The potential damage of that would be irreversible.

And so, for my sake and for the sake of the Church, I've accepted the safety net.  I just wish I didn't have to answer questions about whether I can dress myself.