Today’s guest post is by Curtis Hier. He is a 34-year public school teacher with bipolar I disorder. Today, Curtis discusses how we should strive for bipolar pride over just ending bipolar stigma.
Literature calling for an end to mental illness stigma has been abundant for the past 20 years, to little effect. It has been abundant online, too. End the Stigma was a popular blog with 36.4 K Twitter followers and 42,609 Facebook likes. The blog apparently had more than 17,000 hits. As a new bipolar blogger, I can only hope to reach stats like that.
But the posts have apparently ceased. The tweets are no longer. I see that with some bipolar or mental illness blogs. They go on hiatus. Or they just put an end to a good run. Perhaps a particular blogger is in a depressive episode. Or perhaps the successful blog and/or Twitter account was a prodigious achievement of someone in a manic episode.
Merely Ending Bipolar Stigma Doesn’t Work
Whatever the case might have been for this blog, I was eager to engage the person behind it. I’m still willing to engage with people who extoll the tired cliché of ending the stigma. Not in an attacking way, mind you. The point I wish to engage with is that we should be reaching beyond the goal of ending bipolar stigma. We should be building bipolar pride.
Bipolar stigma is indeed harmful. When I went back to work after an extended hospital stay, it was hard enough just to do my job without co-workers making it harder. Many people resist the treatment they should get because of the stigma.
Alec Baldwin’s character made this remark on NBC’s hit series 30 Rock:
“I believe that when you have a problem, you talk it over with your priest, or your tailor, or the mute elevator porter at your men’s club. Then you take that problem and you crush it with your mind vice.”
Let’s crush attitudes like that. They say the best defense is a good offense. Let’s be aggressively pro-bipolar!
Building Bipolar Pride
And what’s not to be proud of? Plato, Michelangelo, and Newton may have had bipolar disorder. Dickens, Twain, and Tolstoy probably had it. And painters Picasso and Pollack may have had it too. We’re in great company!
Many of us have rich and rewarding careers, some in the healthcare field. Others gain pleasure or profit from creative endeavors. Yes, we are known for our creativity.
Sometimes we are discriminated against, and we should absolutely fight back! After a manic episode that didn’t really affect work (I took sick leave), I was told where I could go and to whom I could speak. I was segregated in my workplace.
We are supposed to have the same rights as other protected classes of citizens. The Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 guaranteed it. Imagine an African American being told where to go. Actually, that did happen — to Rosa Parks. It still happens to those of us with mental illnesses. Mental illnesses aren’t as visible as physical disabilities, so judges and juries don’t decide for us very often. I fought bipolar stigma. I lost, but I fought it. We need to keep fighting and keep feeling proud of our lives. We need bipolar pride.
About the Author
Curtis Hier taught history in a public high school for 34 years. For the last decade, he was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder. He feels lucky that his career survived. He has also recently retired from teaching. He has lots to say about his experiences and about issues concerning bipolar disorder. Check out his writings at The Bipolar Star and find him on Twitter at @theBipolarStar.
I feel like an total failure at life. Up until now the only area that you might say I had any modicum of success in was my job and now I’m failing at that too. Yesterday I came home from work a nervous wreck and repeatedly threw up up. Then fell on top of my bed and cried myself to sleep. It’s Friday morning now and I hardly wait until the work day is over so I can go back bed and sleep my life away
“R” You posted this back in April but I hope you are able to see my message to you today in August.
I feel your pain but there is more help out there than you realize right at this moment. IT’s so important to always remember that bipolar folks like us over-feel and over-think literally everything and that sends us into terrible cycles of depression (and mania on the flip side) and it sucks the life out of us like you’re experience, or were at the time of this posting in April.
I sincerely hope you’ve come out of this by now but if you haven’t PLEASE GET TO YOUR PDOC OR ANY DOCTOR/COUNSELOR RIGHT AWAY! If you have to and have insurance or live where there is universal healthcare or similar, you can go to your local emergency room when it’s this bad and you’re repeatedly throwing up as you described. That is an urgent situation.
Now I’m not a doctor (but I play one on t.v. haha) but I think it’s quite clear that you need an adjustment in your medication A.S.A.P., that is, if you are already on medication and I sincerely hope you are. We bipolars just cannot function anywhere near normally without proper medication. This is just stone-cold fact!
And if you are indeed already on medication, I think it’s very apparent that what you’re taking right now isn’t working well like it should be. Unfortunately, for some bipolars it can take a good deal of time to find the right meds, or combination of meds, that work well for each individual. But when you find the right ones, it’s like a revelation! I speak from experience.
My 3rd pdoc, the one who finally properly diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, started me on Depakote (valproic acid, sodium valproate), then lithium, both of which seemed to be okay at first, but soon it was clear that they were only barely helping and I was still very unstable. She then put me on a carousel of antipsychotics that, one after another, gave me SEVERE AKATHISIA, among other crazy side effects, and sent me into one of the most unstable 2 months of my life. And that’s putting it mildly!
When we ran out of antipsychotics to try, she basically threw her hands up and I decided to switch to another pdoc. I’m so glad I did. (Not necessarily recommending that you switch pdocs but it’s always a consideration we should keep in mind if things just aren’t working) My next, and current, pdoc recommended Oxcarbazepine for my mania (my main problem) and that has worked out very well for me personally. Of course, I also take Lamictal for my bipolar depression which doesn’t truly work on its own, but it definitely keeps the lows from getting seriously low and so I’m able to dig myself out much faster than without it. I also take Bupropion, carefully, which really gets me motivated and moving again.
I’m not necessarily recommending any of those meds in particular, I’m just giving you examples of how the right med, or, more commonly, combination of meds can work wonders for our depression and mania. I was a total wreck before I found the combo I take now. I cannot describe how much better I feel now!
Since it’s been a few months since your post, I sincerely hope you have received good professional help and found some stability in your life. It is very possible to do that, some of us just need to keep trying a little longer than others.
Or maybe my words can help someone else, even one person, get real help to find some real stability in their life.
To anyone reading this, at least thank you for your time for reading this far. We might be bipolar and have been dealt a pretty serious mental illness (I like to use the term “condition” because “Illness” seems just a bit harsh to me), but it’s 2021 and there is a wealth of medicine we can try today. Somewhere in all those meds, is almost certainly a good combo for each of us so we can find at least a decent level of stability in our lives. Some of us just have to keep trying a little while longer to find ours. Don’t stop trying because when you do find it, you’ll know it and you’ll know how good you can actually feel.
I used to think along those very same lines in the early days of my diagnosis. It temporarily helped to deal with the internal stigma, shame, worthlessness and low self esteem I felt
But now I just believe that
Your statement “bipolar pride” is about as batty as HRH Prince Phillip’s odd psychotic (schizophrenic) mother Alice of Battenburg who sold what jewelery she could to became a nun, a religious nut, who started her own convent because no one in their right mind would have accepted her into theirs
Of all the conversations from Lewis Carrolls famous children’s book “Alice In Wonderland” these particular one to mind
“Have I gone mad?” says Alice. “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers” says the Cheshire Cat. “But I will tell you a secret. All the best people are”.
Decidedly, NOT!!!
Unless you are a person of privilege or have have some exceptional talent or creative skill this does not ring true. With a broken brain you are more likely to be on the lowest rung of society’s caste system