Why are the holidays so hard?

By Jack Smith

Some say the holidays are hard because we expect too much. We hope for Norman Rockwell and end up with Clark Griswold.

We cook too much. We clean too much. We shop too much. We spend too much. We drink too much, eat too much and expect too much.

Those things are probably true. But my guess is what makes the holidays hard for some of us is we carry too much weight into the season of giving. And it's exhausting.

We carry our burdens and resentments, our hurts and disappointments that have accumulated in our hearts and minds. We carry our failures and our bitterness, our  pain and our anxiety about what the future may hold.

With the end of the year approaching, it feels like dragging an anvil across a finish line we can't really even see.

Relapse really is part of recovery

By Jack Smith

My doctor told me two things the day I left The Menninger Clinic: I may never outgrow bipolar disorder, and relapse is often part of recovery.

My first six weeks or so at home, I felt renewed and refreshed, hopeful and content.

I awoke every day at 5 am, read my Bible, made a gratitude list and enjoyed the silent comfort morning brings. I experienced something that has eluded me for much of life. Serenity.

My naive hope was that my illness was behind me. Maybe I finally had found the right combination of meds and mojo, therapy and attitude.

Yet somehow the train recently came careening off the tracks, and I couldn’t stop it. I pulled the emergency brake, but it didn’t stop. I did all the things I was told to do.

I prayed. I exercised. I mentalized. I took deep breaths. I told myself the paralyzing anxiety that triggered obsessive and ridiculous thoughts would pass, that feelings are just that. They aren’t facts.

Yet the depression came back like a slow-moving, dark cloud, consuming my soul and distorting my thoughts. The stubborn cloud hasn’t moved.