This is quite fascinating! Hmmm I’m going to try and see about my allergies which I developed when I moved out of Buffalo. Interesting, very interesting!

https://www.bphope.com/blog/could-emotions-trigger-allergies/

The intense emotions associated with bipolar may cause allergies to flare up.  Pinpointing a traumatic experience and talking it out may help.

Photo: PeopleImages/Getty Images

By Lynn Rae

For this blog post, I am going to take you back in time to the 1970s.  I am going to show you that allergies are really our emotions in disguise, in my experience.

I was a teenager.  I rebelled against authority, but only in small ways.  My mother still ruled and I was afraid of her wrath if I did anything wrong.  Smoking cigarettes was the cool thing to do at that time.  It began innocently enough for me.  I was only 12 and a friend came to our cottage with me.  I tried smoking, but couldn’t inhale.  But I was hooked.  I kept trying to smoke and I was going to learn to inhale.  By the time I was 16 I was smoking regularly, perhaps 2-8 cigarettes a day.

Then I met the man, who was to become my husband. He smoked a pack a day. By the time I was 19, I was smoking that much too.  I really don’t know why I enjoyed it so much.  It is only in the last few years I have come to understand that all my emotions went up in smoke.  I smoked when I was happy, sad, mad or glad.  I smoked to celebrate the beginning and end of the day.  I smoked on my coffee break and lunch hour from work.  If I was angry with my husband or some other family member, the first thing I did was reach for a cigarette.  With every inhale and exhale, my problems seemed to disappear.

By the time my son was 3, he was fascinated with cigarettes and the ashtray.  One thing I didn’t want was for him to become a smoker.  A hypocrite was something I was not!  I quit smoking in the spring of 1988 when I was pregnant with my daughter.  For three days, I lay on the couch in the fetal position having withdrawal.  It was tough, but I was determined to quit for my kids’ sake.  Exactly six weeks after I quit smoking, I was visiting a farm and my nose started running.  It wouldn’t stop.  I went through a box of tissues in 24 hours.  I went to see my doctor.  He said I had allergies.  I shook my head in disbelief.  How could this be?  I quit smoking to get healthy and this is what I get?  I took allergy pills and/or a needle for a few years.  Every time I walked by the perfume counter in a store I would start to sneeze.

Over a 15-year period my allergies eventually subsided.  I didn’t need to take medication for them anymore.  During this time, I was diagnosed with depression, then bipolar disorder.

This is when the real work on myself began.  I read over 200 self-help/motivational books, attending workshops and support groups, left my marriage and began to rebuild my life.

Since 2005 I have had very few problems with my allergies acting up.  Also by 2005, I had resolved every issue I had with people in my life to the best of my ability.  I knew that getting out of toxic relationships and/or jobs was the key to my well-being.  As a side effect, my allergies cleared up as well.

Fast forward to the summer of 2008.  I met a man and fell in love with him very quickly.  However, he was never available.  I didn’t want to believe he was married, but the signs were all there.  But there was something about this man that captivated me.  I wanted him more than I have ever wanted a man.  But all I got was the leftovers.

A few months later he was going away on business.  I told him when he got back he had to decide; it was her or me.  Finally, I had to accept that we would never be together.  When I tried to accept this fact, my sinuses started acting up.  I hadn’t been bothered by allergies for four years.  My nose just ran and ran and ran over a 24-hour period.  I couldn’t sleep, I was so stuffed up.  I tried working, but had to come home.  I could hardly breathe.  I took some over-the-counter medication, but it didn’t help.  I told my girlfriend how I was feeling.  She let me talk and talk and talk.  When I finally was all talked out, my allergies eased up.

Now fast forward to 2015.  I was slightly hypo-manic and decided to contact him.  I hadn’t thought about him in years, but for some reason I needed him again.  Once again, we started up a relationship.  However, by this time he had left his wife a year earlier.  Of course, I was daydreaming about how we would one day live together.  When, once again, I realized he was just using me, and my allergies acted up.   It was only when I could let him go that my sinuses cleared up again.  I have seen over and over again that when I am really upset about something, my nose gets stuffed up.

You see, when we smoke, we are smoking all our emotions away.  When I quit smoking in 1988 there was nowhere for my emotions to go because I didn’t know how to talk to people about what I was feeling.  We didn’t talk about problems in our family; problems got swept under the rug hopefully to be forgotten about and go away on their own.  It was only when I learned to talk about anything and everything that was bothering me that my allergies disappeared.  They only rear up once in a while, but don’t last for more than a day or two because I can usually pinpoint what the issue is and talk in out with a trusted friend.

If you are bothered by allergies, go back to when they started.  What triggered them?  Do you agree or disagree with my opinion about why we get allergies?