There are people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder. This is a thing that happens, especially online. People have written to me claiming of a bipolar cure. Companies also claim to cure (or magically treat) bipolar disorder. (One, in fact, threatened to sue me for talking about my experience with their product.)
My opinion is the people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder are dangerous.
I am suffering from severe bipolar-related agitation. Or is it severe medication-related agitation? This is the question. Technically, it’s mostly a question for your doctor, but it’s one I struggle with, too. On one level, it doesn’t much matter what’s causing the agitation as it’s happening and that’s that; and on the other hand, I think it’s important to know what’s driving the agitation – a bipolar symptom or a medication side effect?
If you knew me, you would know that I smile a lot. I fake smile a lot as a bipolar depression coping skill. Even when I’m quite depressed, I smile around others to hide. I would consider this to be pretty normal for people with a mental illness and even people without it. After all, how many people are hiding grief or heartbreak, for example, behind a smile?
But then there’s when I’m alone. I actually smile when I’m alone. When I was walking alone on the street this morning, I smiled at the moon. (I love when it’s out in the morning.) Somehow, seeing the moon created a smile on my face. Why is that? Why is it when I’m depressed I still smile when I’m alone?
I have experienced depression because of bipolar and cried in public more time than I can count. Like, way more. I’ve cried in grocery stores, malls, restaurants and pretty well anywhere else you can name. In fact, I just got off a plane where I was crying. So I’ve had a lot of experience crying in public because of depression and have given it a lot of thought.
Some days, depression actually makes me wake up crying. Sometimes the crying is a few minutes after waking up and sometimes it is mere seconds. I have even woken up in the morning with tears on my face. I don’t know how these things are possible. I don’t know how depression can make me cry when I wake up before thoughts are even produced – I only know that it can.
I do not consider politically correct language to be superior in any way. People who know me know I’m not a big fan of political correctness in the mental health arena. I don’t give a hoot about “person-first language.” I don’t care if you absentmindedly call the weather “bipolar.” And I will always call a spade a spade and say I represent the mentally ill and not those with “behavioral health conditions.” And I talk about violence and mental illness and other things that we’re not supposed to mention because it scares the villagers. And I certainly don’t think insisting on changing the aforementioned things (and oh-so-much-more) helps those of us with mental illness in the slightest. I realize, this puts me in the minority (and she laughs), but my opinion is, politically correct language is not superior, just different.
I know to some people, saying that bipolar, schizophrenia and depression are genetic is like saying the sky is blue. We know that these illnesses are genetic. It’s obvious. It’s also pretty obvious (to, me, anyway) that bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia overlap in some ways. Nonetheless, some people require yet more proof. Well, welcome to some more proof. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression (and actually autism and alcoholism) are genetic and these illnesses’ genes even overlap. Yes, we bipolars are genetically linked to our brothers and sisters with other psychiatric disorders.
Bipolar disorder can absolutely make me feel useless. I woke up this morning and I went about my routine of feeding the cats, taking meds and so on. That’s fine. Then I sat down at my computer to start work. I started doing my social media tasks for the day, answering comments and so on. And then my brain just seized. Suddenly, thanks to bipolar disorder, I was useless.
I so often feel like I can’t do anything because of depression. Look at the top photo. That is my life. I have had that objet cluttered and dusty for maybe years. It’s just one of the things in my apartment that I look at and see as failure. I see that I can’t do anything. I see that I can’t even clean up a small amount of clutter – clutter that can be found in so many corners of my apartment and life. Depression makes it so that I can’t do anything. However, while I feel this quite strongly, it may not, in fact, be entirely true.
I realize I need to recognize the real me who has bipolar disorder and not the idealized me that, theoretically, does not. What I need to recognize, to deal with, is the me of today and not the me before bipolar disorder or the me of five years ago. Things change. I have changed dramatically and what I’m capable of has changed too. I need to recognize this in everyday life. I need to work with the current, real, bipolar me and not the me I wish I were.
Many people hate drug companies and I totally get why. I spent years hating drug companies. But I’ve changed. I don’t hate drug companies anymore and I don’t think you should either.
For many of us, we are expected to be fat and happy on bipolar medication. This is because many people gain weight as a bipolar medication side effect – sometimes a lot of weight. You can easily go from a size 8 to a size 18 because of bipolar medication. This is not...
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