I Hate Myself for Having Bipolar, I Forgive Myself for Having Bipolar

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Feb 25, 2013

Bipolar disorder feels like a curse. It feels like somewhere, somehow, I’ve ticked off an old, horror-movie, crone and she’s cursed me to 1000 years of suffering. 1000 years of grating, clawing, slicing, pounding agony.

Any why do people get cursed? People get cursed because they did something wrong. I must have done something wrong. I must have done something unspeakably wrong. And I hate myself for it.

Emotional Overreactions and Depression

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Feb 19, 2012

Yesterday I was having a good day. This doesn’t happen to me all that often but I was being all productive and downright cheery. Miracles. Every day.

But then something happened. It wasn’t an earth-shattering thing, it was just a thing. A life thing. A thing that your average person would feel bad about but not the end of the world.

Just the end of my world.

Depression

Depression is a funny thing. Not so much funny ha ha but more funny want to slit your throat. Depression makes you believe things that aren’t true. Depression makes you believe that you are lowly, that you are nothing, that you are unlovable, that you are unlikeable, and a host of other things all seemingly designed to tear you to the floor.

And it’s really unfortunate when life events work to confirm, or seemingly confirm, these false beliefs.

Bipolar’s Not Bad Enough – We Beat Ourselves Up – Advice

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Oct 3, 2011

Part of having a mental illness like bipolar disorder is having a brain that hates you. A brain that overreacts to the slightest perceived imperfection. All it takes is believing that we have done something wrong for our brain to see it as a capital offense and spend hours or days beating ourselves up about it.

This is pretty de rigueur for someone with a mental illness (especially depression or anxiety).

Beating Yourself Up Over a Perceived Error

And this morning I got an email from someone in just this situation. This person had spent some time with friends and felt they were overly-anxietious, overly-talkative, overly-hyper and so on. And unfortunately, this person was using this perception to beat themselves up.

This is wrong. Please read my response to this person. I hope it will help anyone in this situation (which includes me, from time to time).