0:00 wow it's been a while it's been a second, uh how are you guys? how you been? I'm sure that just like me so many things have changed.

0:13 If you're new here I'm Reese Grey that's crazy if you're new here this is the first video, cuz this this is wild okay. this is what we got today, hold on. Time is changed but honestly not much has changed because I still need to write not a script. It's not a script, I promise... it's a "guideline" . For today's video today we're going to talk about how I'm embracing my insanity, and so there's going to be some changes around here okay? We're going to be talking about my bipolar diagnosis, my car accident, I'm writing a book, and uploading here and stuff... in just general. I'm going insane! And I'm going to share that with you guys.

1:03 The elephant in the room what are the stickers on my laptop? K, Hayao Miyazaki with all his stuff look it's like Kiki's Delivery Service totoro, the Cat Bus. A chonky Business Cat. This is my work laptop, so they're never going they're never getting this back. Or if they want it back that you can't take these stickers off??? So I don't know how they're going to do that.

So let me show you guys what's happening around this room in my last video too, just two months ago I talked about like moving and stuff and so this is is like where I moved to and this is the space I created which is pretty good. That little bike plant is from my cousin and I love it very much, this is my favorite book so far from the last year. I love John Green I love Fault in Our Stars. I hated the movie but this book was fantastic. I love that he just like rates the universe and I Vibe with that.

2:22 This Holy Bible... my mom gets into these random moods where she just like gives me stuff like tons of stuff like just gives me tons of stuff away, and that Bible is one of them, like she just I was getting into my car and she's like I want you to have this, it's really important to me and I just want you to have it, and I was like okay and there was like I felt so much pressure on it okay so I'm not like a religious person anymore but definitely like spiritual and I I respect religion and all of that :) uh and I love my mom... and so I was like what am I what am I even going to do with this huge Bible like I'm not really going to read it but I think she's hoping that I do and so I it's it's a beautiful book like so I put it up there um anyway...

It's pretty messy right now and what might be fun is like doing something where like Im Marie Kondo-ing it and just like exercise the closet like there's a evil spirit in it or something. I got this from Costco it's like a giant bean bag so this is what it looks like from here to watch the Telly and as you can remember from my video essays we have peanut butter! He's very very smart, he's a professor in everything!

3:33 And so grab your snacky drinky guys I think it is high time we get into talking about embracing our insanity and why I am insane today. My drinkie of choice today is Lulu Lemon Water. Christmas present from my friend. I guess in the past 6 months is it's been really hard which is kind of hilarious, because every like YouTube video that's like "oh sorry guys I've been gone for a while because things have been pretty hard" like it's just kind of funny that I'm doing that now because I have to laugh. I have to laugh about things. It sounds like really dismissive and I would never tell this to somebody else who's going through a hard time, but to get through these things I just started to think like I'm having a hard time how am I going to make it work for me? So let me just rewind a little bit, so I got into a really really bad car accident... it was just me in the car I was by myself and more than just getting into a car accident it was the circumstances under which it happened that are really difficult for me to cope with.

About a month before the car accident happened I was really really depressed so this was back in July of 2023, about solid 6 months ago. And I had like an emergency consultation um with a psychiatrist at my Works Hospital, I work at a hospital I literally go into the emergency room and I was like something is wrong with me like I can't sleep and more than like not being able to sleep I feel I feel confused like I felt it's something that's really difficult to explain um maybe if you've never felt this before but it's kind of like being so overwhelmed with every single emotion that any little choice absolutely crushes you. And this sounds unbelievable right because everything everything was really good in my life, everything was really good with with work, I was financially stable. I had Thomas, it was a safe relationship, had my cat. I couldn't think of any external circumstance that would merit such a a despair inside of me.

And so I was starting to feel really confused and I needed help so I go into emergency consultation, and I just this is what I literally said because I couldn't sleep so I was just like "I just need to be um sedated for like uh like one day because I haven't been able to sleep!" This is my third day not being able to sleep, and um I just need uh to to go to sleep :) And so she referred me over to Psychiatry and I told them what was going on,

6:55 And I was like okay well I already had a psychiatrist that I found like on grow therapy online who was helping me before. This new psychiatrist was like okay well tell me about that, how's that been going on? This was literally in the span of 1 month so 1 month before my car accident this psychiatrist kind of derailed my life, so I went in to see her she had this like preliminary Psychiatry thing and then gave me three medications immediately. And so she gave me um Lexapro lamictil and prazosin. So Lexapro is for depression and anxiety and lamictil is a mood stabilizer and then prazosin is for nightmares.

And so I was on all three of those at the same time, and I felt really really good and now so with lamictil unfortunately some people get a rare side effect that is a horrible rash which I got around two weeks after starting it. I thought I was just coming down with a cold, because I had these like um this like cold feeling in my throat, like in my nodules right like I didn't actually know that it was an allergic reaction to the medication like I thought I was just coming down with something until right here on my arm like started to become this huge rash thing which I told her about, (my old psychiatrist) and then she's like "oh that's that's a rare reaction to the lamicitl stop that immediately" So I was only on Lexapro the anti-depressant and the prazosin. And so while I was on the only the Lexapro, I was I was euphoric.

I didn't eat, I didn't sleep... I felt like I was I had I I have reached an amount of happiness that I have felt before in my life which I thought was normal happiness, now this is this is the kicker, so I haven't, I wasn't sleeping well I was sleeping about four or 5 hours a night which sometimes I just do. There were times in my college life where I didn't I didn't sleep right like I just thought I was one of those people who only needed like 4 or 5 hours of sleep and I would just not sleep some nights, and it was not really that big of a deal. And so that's kind of what was happening for about 2 weeks.

9:40 A week. before our car hits a pothole, and it needs to be repaired at some kind of shop. It was a really bad pothole, like the side the rim was all like crushed and like there was tons of damage right? So they fix it up, and they return it back to us about a week later, I get into this accident. And this is what makes it really difficult to cope with because... I don't know like I wasn't sleeping right, I was on this medication that was causing this horrible reaction of euphoria because I didn't know that I was by bipolar yet, and what happens when you're only on a like SSRI when you have bipolar disorder it causes this it causes a manic episode, basically, which I was absolutely having. And so, what had happened while I was driving I was on my way to go see my cousin um and we were going have high tea together. I had taken that day off of work because I was feeling so overwhelmed and confused with everything so I felt like I just needed to relax and and have some time just to talk out what I was feeling. And so I was on my way to see her, and what had happened was I was going to take a turn I pumped my I I was breaking because I was turning right I was breaking and I I the breaks didn't work I was breaking and breaking and breaking way before the exit came right so I was going off of an exit breaking to turn I freak out because I cannot break, I'm going like 60 MPH I and I freak out and I overcorrect I overcorrect I just turn just just try to make the turn and it flips the car and I flip like one and 1 half times before I'm knocked out and then when I wake up I'm on the side of the car so like with like sitting on my side like this and I'm in the driver's seat and the passenger seat is up above me and so what I do is I I am able to unbuckle and I'm able to stand on the steering wheel to climb out of the passenger seat on the top, And so I climb out that that way some really really kind strangers stopped at the side of the road a lot of cars stopped actually. It was literally like five or six cars and they were really really nice and kind but they were kind of freaking me out cuz they were yelling at me they're like is anyone else in the car? Are you okay? And I was like, nobody else is in the car, and I'm fine. And then one of the people who stopped was like did you turn off the car? Cuz this is an empty barren field like in the middle of the summer with a running car because I forgot to turn it off. And so they actually flip over the car and they take out the keys out of the ignition so a fire doesn't start in this warm July day.

13:15 Another thing I I struggle with still is feeling guilt about how I immediately acted after the accident because I I was insane I just started laughing I was laughing I was like I'm I'm just going to go home I'm going to go home, I'm just going home now... um yeah and they basically forced me into the ambulance, and they were just like are you sure you you're okay? I didn't need any pain meds at at that point, I had a lot of adrenaline going there... so I did need some later like my neck and my back and everything just hurt hurt.

Thank God I didn't run into any property any other cars any other people and nobody else was in the car absolutely nothing wrong happened except now I had a totaled car and we had to get a newer safer car. Thomas was concerned that it was a like (faulty repair), so that's what happened, but honestly it's not the worst thing in the world because you nobody was hurt, like not even me. So it's fine.

14:36 and so that's what I told my new psychiatrist in this appointment and she was like okay yeah I'm pretty confident that um you have bipolar disorder, and it it was just really difficult for me to deal with that diagnosis of having that, because it made me feel like everything that I was feeling and everything that I was doing was a a result of my disorder, that I newly had, because all during college like one semester I felt on top of the world I took 22 credits because I got a really good scholarship that year too so um I didn't want it to go to waste or anything, I took 22 credits I worked still on the weekends, so only like 12 hours like a week just to have a little bit extra cash and like I could do that until I inevitably crashed and I just knew that that was how I thought that was how my body worked. I thought that I that was just my life pattern, this manic huge High to this low and but the highs for me were always better than the lows, which made everything a lot easier to ignore. Like some days. I would miss like two weeks of classes because I would just not literally not be able to leave my bed until I was just able to leave my bed and then everything was just kind of normal again. So I just learned how to cope with it.

I had two different sets of friends the sets of friends I had when I was feeling a little bit low. not low enough to be in bed for 2 weeks. but you know who I could like see movies and be chill with and then the friends who would party and not stop for like 3 days. Because we're all freaking insane. And I think kind of anyone who has been diagnosed maybe with bipolar in their like adulthood... will be able to kind of empathize with the fact that it makes us question our entire identity and Life Choices for the rest of our lives. Even like the the huge decisions of like me getting my Master's Degree over in Korea like I put that together like in a 12-hour period I put together all of my like letters of recommendation by like begging some of my professors, who I thankfully had a good relationship with and just made these really huge life altering decisions on a whim. And was always kind of able to pull things off... Even like the little things like I noticed like I would listen to the same song literally like on repeat like for days, and not like listen to anything else which later I learned is like a sign of like manic behavior. And I know it sounds like really nitpicky stuff that you like can nitpick about yourself and then like diagnose yourself as like having this type of disorder... But I argued so much that I didn't have bipolar disorder. I was just basically thinking like this couldn't be right like this isn't right because I feel like I did so much to prevent anything bad from happening, and then all of the sudden because of this sleep deprivation and Euphoria but maybe it was a faulty repair I get into this car accident, we don't know if I just like a cop was even there at the scene of the accident and he was like did you fall asleep or anything? And I was like no, I didn't. It's just really crazy not having that like validated that maybe the something did go wrong because like we even asked the mechanic too and they like kind of refused to say like what really happened, and they were just like oh well we can't like tell tell for sure what happened if you're interested in a faulty repair like you can have someone like look at it, and it was just so much at that time it was it was too hard to also have to go through a bunch of steps to blame someone a mechanic who probably, definitely like didn't mean to do anything, and it was just a lot of pressure so I didn't want to deal with it and I don't regret it but I do struggle with it. cuz like I don't know like the truth, you know?

19:40 I think what's really crazy too is that I met some friends online, like a month or two before that and they were really there for me. They came over to my house and brought snacks and I hung out and we watch like cooking documentaries and stuff and it was really healing. It's really surprising and heartwarming that people you don't really know can be there for you just because they choose to, and it's just really beautiful and I'm really thankful for them.

20:17 My family did come over too, it was really hard when I saw my sister all I could do was like cry. Like I just told her that I'm losing it and I didn't know what to do and kind of all she could say was like no you're not it's okay. But I was, and so that's why I went to this new psychiatrist, because I just needed help sleeping. That's all I knew at that time, and so she put me on this med called Zyprexa oh my God it made me sleep yeah, but it was was brutal. It was so strong I felt so pressed down it's like an antispsychotic right? And it does the trick it puts you to sleep but I didn't want to stop sleeping I felt like I slept for like 3 days straight and then my psychiatrist was like oh no biggie like it's just you catching up like Let Yourself sleep. And then I did, and then like no joke no joke my skin started graying and I was like I felt so awful. And so she took me off that, and then she put me on lithium took a while for it to build up in your blood it did that it still gave me that pressed down feeling. It's supposed to be like the golden standard basically for like bipolar disorder it's supposed to like really stabilize your mood but I did not like the way it made me feel, I felt like it's stifled me. And it felt like I was still okay, and I was still me, and I could still focus, but everything felt really foggy. And it was really hard um to deal with that. And so then uh we started seroquel uh which is also a mood stabilizer and then we have Guanfacine also because I also have um diagnosed ADHD as well but when you're bipolar you cannot be put on stimulant so I can't have like Adderall or anything because that'll throw me into another manic episode which we don't want. And so um the Guanfacine and the seroquel right now are doing its thing.

22:45 and I have been struggling lately with like feeling like I'm not sure when like it's okay to feel. And that that sounds weird but like I recently like got really back into like wanting to make more YouTube videos, wanting to do like fun stuff, uploading it onto Instagram and Tik Tok, and I'll kind of get into that now. Like I stopped letting all of the stuff that I was creating just kind of like sit on my phone to die. Cuz I had like a bunch of videos on when when I went to the UK and it was so much fun to like edit those, and see all those moments like saved forever. Really nice to get back into that and that makes me feel really fulfilled and I love making these videos and I love like the conversations that we have like in the comments and in my DMs, and like I I missed it and sometimes it's difficult for me to think like am I just going crazy again? And I think that's like really scary because like it's almost scary to feel happy again and like sometimes it's still difficult to sleep and I've been lately getting into those like sleeping for like only 5 hours again... and I'm like medicated right now and I've been like avoiding therapy because I don't want to go into it and it's all just too much it feels like it's been a really hard six months and I just I just want I just want it to stop, um but it's never going to.

But on top of that, I kind of stopped trying to fit into this like, if you guys have been following me for a while it's going to be obvious that I was trying to fit into this mold of like academic YouTuber educational type of thing and try to be like a little bit like aesthetic with my uploads to Tik Tok and IG and stuff and be like that bubbly cute kind of fun person and kind of like not talk about my life--life, like on the internet and now I have this desire to still kind of like use this teeny tiny minuscule platform that I have to talk about my life-- life. And I was just kind of like, should I? But I've been feeling really lonely like with all of these feelings and if I can get a bunch of people to talk with me about international relations Theory on a bo burnham video, then I can probably get some people together to talk about how much it sucks to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder... I don't know? Maybe it's like a crazy thing it's a crazy jump definitely but it's a jump I'm trying to make, to try and create a nice conversation a nice like group of people who can stand around and maybe like support each other and talk about what's going on.

So another thing on my list that I had was that I allowed myself time to rest and at the same time had to take responsibility for making a schedule. How I did that a lot was just allowing myself to sleep get into my sleeping Rhythm which took me about 2 weeks to just get into a sleeping Rhythm really. And then I started doing things like actively for myself I found out that I really really love Club Pilates before that I tried a pure Bar which is just exercises like in Pilates like on the floor and stuff but the Pure Bar near me was so crowded it was like full to the brim every class and then like every time there would be like 14 people like on the floor and like people are like kicking each other it was crazy. But at Club Pilates you each have your like own workout station and so you don't get that like weird I'm going to kick someone on the face accidentally Vibe. And with when classes are full they're full you know and so they don't overbook their stuff and stuff but before that I did go to like a local bar studio which I did like but some of the instructors were actually a little bit catty and so I I really didn't like that Vibe so like each time I like leveled up with like things that I liked and so I really like Club Pilates now and I do that literally every day, the past 30 days actually I think I've missed like only 3 days? Because I just really enjoy going like it's my favorite way to start the day, like I go at 7 a.m. uh every every day just before work and it's lovely and I love it

28:30 And then number five that I had was putting more effort into adult friendships. Me and some friends had like a really cute sleepover for Christmas, which I loved! And then also I went to San Diego to see my friend, and like spent the weekend there for her birthday which are both really really crazy things for me to do. I would regularly never ever do those things, but both of those things I've done within like the same six-month period of feeling really down and depressed about my like identity and things that were going on with my mental health I also challenged myself to put myself out there more with more friendships, be healthier with working out and stuff and so even though there's a lot to like grieve there's a lot to be proud of as well and I'm really proud of making my Insanity work for me or embracing it just embracing that I'm crazy and getting the most out of it if I'm going to have random burst of energy I'm going to recognize when I'm not sleeping enough and I'm going to take the responsibility um to make sure that my mental health doesn't suffer and I don't like hurt myself or others like even on accident by like not sleeping enough and getting into a car I'm really excited for the rest of the year I'm going to try really hard this year and I'm going because I know that so much can happen in 6 months, so how much can I make happen in a year? That's kind of like the attitude that I'm going into this year with and there's a lot of goals I have like I mentioned like wanting to write a book wanting to grow this channel, wanting to grow my Instagram wanting to be able to make passive income basically with social media so I'm more stable. Even though I have my 9 to-5, it does pay well and it's good, I want something that's mine. And so I'm going to try really hard to make that happen for me and make a nice community for like like-minded people and I'm just going to try I'm going to try a lot this year. And that's what this video is about. Let's so let's embrace our Insanity together and just try this year and see what we get out of it. okay love you bye