Some would argue trauma can cause bipolar disorder. I would argue bipolar itself, feels like a trauma. I’m not suggesting bipolar disorder de facto gives you posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but I am saying the trauma reactions seen in trauma survivors are similar to what I experience with chronic, obstructive, severe bipolar disorder.
Traumatized by Bipolar Disorder
I was walking down the street this morning and I realized I was feeling traumatized. I felt like something terrible had happened to me and I was trying to bounce back. I felt like the terrible thing that happened to be was bipolar disorder. I was feeling traumatized by all that bipolar disorder has brought into my life.
And really, contracting any serious, chronic illness is a trauma, if a highly underrecognized one. It really is like experiencing a major death or another horrible event.
Trauma Reactions to Bipolar Disorder
I’m not suggesting I have PTSD, I’m just suggesting I’m experiencing trauma reactions.
According to the National Center for PTSD in the United States, common reactions after trauma include:
Feeling hopeless about the future- Feeling detached or unconcerned about others
- Having trouble concentrating or making decisions
- Feeling jumpy and getting startled easily at sudden noises
- Feeling on guard and constantly alert
- Having disturbing dreams and memories or flashbacks
- Having work or school problems
- Stomach upset and trouble eating
- Trouble sleeping and feeling very tired
- Pounding heart, rapid breathing, feeling edgy
- Sweating
- A severe headache if thinking of the event
- Failure to engage in exercise, diet, safe sex, regular health care
- Excess smoking, alcohol, drugs, food
- Having your ongoing medical problems get worse
- Feeling nervous, helpless, fearful, sad
- Feeling shocked, numb, and not able to feel love or joy
- Avoiding people, places, and things related to the event
- Being irritable or having outbursts of anger
- Becoming easily upset or agitated
- Blaming yourself or having negative views of oneself or the world
- Distrust of others, getting into conflicts, being over-controlling
- Being withdrawn, feeling rejected, or abandoned
- Loss of intimacy or feeling detached
Do those sound familiar to anyone? Do those sound like reactions to the diagnosis of bipolar disorder or to the realities around living with bipolar disorder? For me, the answer is “yes.” I have put the ones in bold that I, particularly, feel.
Does Trauma Cause Bipolar Disorder?
I just want to mention that trauma, in and of itself, does not cause bipolar disorder. If you take a look at my article, Are People Born with Bipolar Disorder?, you’ll see that trauma may be one part (a marble in the jar) of what causes bipolar disorder to manifest, but make no mistake, trauma itself does not cause bipolar disorder. Many factors have to be present for bipolar disorder to manifest. The fact that some bipolar symptoms look like trauma reactions is simply a crossover of symptoms common to many mental illnesses.
Getting Over the Trauma of Bipolar Disorder
I, of course, have been dealing with bipolar disorder for two decades, so if anyone should be over it, I should be. That said, acceptance of bipolar disorder is a process and many people get to acceptance, and then fall back, and then find it again, and fall back again, and so on. It’s a process, for sure, and it’s not a linear one. Acceptance of bipolar disorder is more a journey than a destination.
So maybe that means I destined to feel traumatized by bipolar disorder and the effect it has on me and my life forever. I don’t know. What I do know is that today, particularly, I felt traumatized by bipolar and needed extra self-care. So maybe that’s the lesson. Maybe the lesson is that sometimes bipolar disorder hits us like a traumatic wrecking ball and, you know, wrecks stuff, so that’s when we need extra self-care.
In the end, I think my trauma reactions around bipolar disorder are pretty common and if I do take them as a signal to increase self-care and decrease responsibilities, then it’s probably okay. Recognizing it for what it is, though, – a signal not to ignore — is the key.
Its a trauma to have to live with Bipolar, and sometimes, for those of us who are therapists, its a compassion fatigue trauma to treat it.
Steven B. Uhrik
The marble analogy fits for me. Several years of self-care work has allowed me to put the lid back on that marble jar. It will overflow again in five or six years if my patterns continue. The episodes do get longer every cycle and the recovery more laborious. Each time I experience significant trauma. Loss is the biggest challenge. There is loss of routine, direction, income, relationships, memory, self-respect, and identity. Each recovery is recreating a new me. I turned 50 this year and have long periods of my history I can’t even recognize with photos. I have flashes of memories that feel like they belong to someone else. Knowing that this will likely happen a few more times in my natural life I am looking for ways to prepare so the recovery is not as difficult and the loss is minimal. Loss is traumatic I learned. I would be interested to know you prepare for the next episode.
I feel more traumatized by my family’s reaction to my diagnosis than my acceptance. I’ve always known something not right with me and my mind since I was very little but many years of docs giving me this anti-depressant and that anti-depressant with no improvement, and at times worsening… family reactions were “she just wants to be important and have (so and so) take care of her..”. So, not true but what siblings and parents kept chanting.
My illness is invisible. I’ve hid it quite well for a long time now. Every so often; it pops out from the shadows and the “public” sees it.. the family, shakes their heads and rolls their eyes. Again, “she just wants to be…”
The trauma of MY Bipolar illness stems mostly from the reactions and responses of those loved ones that supposedly love me and so less than the illness itself. Yes, I’ve lost a few opportunities due to (when looking back) and I’ve wondered where I’d be in my life if it weren’t for.. but it is also comforting to know; that “weren’t for” was/is a illness that is not of my conjuring and definitely not what I desire.
I also suffer from Bipolar I. I didn’t learn of my affliction until recently at the age of 28. Suffered my first episode 7 months ago. Luckily, I’m on the correct meds now. Your blog resonates so true. Every article a treasure of information. Thank you for what you do. I dabble in writing but have yet to confidently approach any attempts towards publishing. How did you start? Plan to read your book soon!
My biggest fear is I have passed this affliction to my daughters. Do you have children? I know you have articles posted on medicating bipolar children. I’m afraid to do so, clearly we have begun to see signs in my oldest child.
Thank you
Hi Ian,
I started my writing with this blog. I then was hired at HealthyPlace and worked onwards from there. I hope you enjoy the book.
I do not have children. It’s a very tricky thing to decide what to do about a child with bipolar disorder. If at all possible, I highly recommend a psychiatrist and a psychologist who specialize in pediatric bipolar disorder. They are going to be the best resources when making decisions.
– Natasha Tracy
Wow. That list. It is totally me. I am going to show my psychiatrist when he asks me how I’m feeling. I have so much trouble articulating ALL of the things I am, or am not, feeling or doing. I do not know if some of these are due to the BP or to the medication, but it doesn’t really matter. I sure wish I could afford a therapist to see on top of the free psychiatrist. Psychiatrists just deal with meds, and I need to talk to someone about all the other “stuff”, like this list.
I do have bipolar disorder but the majority of my years have been spent without active symptoms. I agree with you on the trauma part though — every episode has included cringe-worthy self-concept-obliterating actions and horrible consequences. After every episode there’s the necessary rebuilding, loss of jobs, loss of marriage, loss of family relationships, and all this rebuilding needs to be redone during the longer depressive phase that follows mania. Back to “a perfectly normal life” promised by medication prescribers (25 years of lithium, among others, before kidneys gave out) but interrupted, always interrupted. So much for career, family, education, retirement planning. I would say the trauma part has had to do with all the things a person cannot even apologize for and the losses that can never be recovered. Over and over we start again, best foot forward.
Hi Natasha! I have gone through the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Please tell me that only a few of these are present in the bipolar patient or all of them?
Hi Katy,
You may have symptoms of trauma or you may not. Trauma symptoms are separate from bipolar disorder and are individual.
– Natasha Tracy
WELL I agree with you that only trauma is not enough to cause bipolar disorder. I have seen patients who have history of different mental illness and they are bipolar as well. Well covered information
Thank you for sharing. I can definitely relate. Not only are the symptoms of bipolar traumatic, but they can also contribute to increased stress and trauma in our lives. PTSD also co-occurs at a higher rate in individuals with Bipolar, and combined the two may contribute to worsened symptoms and increased suicide. Thanks for bringing attention to this important issue.
I’m not sure if it’s trauma I feel or not, but it’s certainly different to how it was a decade ago when I finally learnt what my diagnosis had been for the previous 10 years. (Yes, I was diagnosed as Bipolar 10 years before I and my GP were told! During that time I was treated as being ‘clinically depressed’ and fed the wrong medication for Bipolar Disorder. Great. No wonder I experienced the hypomania/depression cycle on an increasingly fast turn around …) But previously, I had been told “it’s just stress” or the usual “pull yourself together”, which made me feel all the worse about myself, that it was all my fault I felt had and I must be a weak person because I couldn’t pull myself together. So, when I finally got the Bipolar Diagnosis it was actually an enormous relief! Great – there IS something wrong, as I always thought there was, and best of all, it WASN’T/ISN’T my fault! But now, as time has moved on and I am living the consequences of the illness, realising all the things I have missed out on in life that others have experienced and knowing the chequered flag is just around the corner, I feel that’s mine’s been a life of missed opportunities and experiences.
Hi Harry,
I feel like I have missed so much and that I continue to do so on a daily basis. Honestly, if I think about it, it makes me weep. I don’t want to be so segregated from the rest of the world, but the disease just dictates that.
What I try to remember is that every day is a new day for experiences. Maybe my experience will just be walking to the local breakfast join for an egg sandwich. I know it’s not much, but it’s mine. But I have to make the effort to do it when I can.
– Natasha Tracy
I had the same problem – depression meds but no stabilizers. I missed so many wonderful opportunities and had a really chaotic life until finally, at age 46, I was properly diagnosed and medicated accordingly. The symptoms are still here, to a degree, It’s just easier to recognize them now. I grieve for the life I could have had, had I been diagnosed and treated even 10 years earlier. I started trying to get help when I was 30. Got Prozac. Went manic. Got depressed, got more Prozac……
I truly agree with being diagnosed feeling like a trauma..I was diagnosed 8 years ago and finally made a commitment to accepting it after being hospitalized for a long stretch of depression I’m still fighting to get out of.. accepting it is hard in itself because I’ve done and said a lot of hurtful things while not being treated and I honestly believe had I accepted the diagnosis years ago things would be very different now. I wake up each morning feeling like my life is over and I have to manually jumpstart my mood with prayers and affirmations only having to reboot a few hours later and that is traumatic especially when I’m at work or in public wondering who’s looking and am I looking crazy. Im doing alot if research trying to find ways to educate my family and friends hoping that with understanding or having some idea of the mental agitation I face daily will help ease the judgement and the sting of my past.
My Psy. Dr. And my GP disagree on my diagnosis. Psy says CPTSD and Bipolar 2 but the GP says she thinks it’s just a hormonal imbalance causing many issues. I don’t let her treat me for it anymore. There are alot of similarities between the 2 in my opinion.
Just this week I had a conversation with my therapist regarding how I feel traumatized much of the time. Perhaps my reaction to having Bipolar?
I never really think of this, but bipolar sure has been traumatic. I have, or have had, all those bullet points. Then there’s the excruciating guilt about things that I would have handled far better, or not have done at all in my right mind.
I’m glad you wrote this post, Natasha. I definitely experienced trauma because of my bipolar disorder, though I do not have PTSD. Trauma is not limited to people who develop PTSD.
I believe my first bit of trauma from bipolar occurred when I was 15. I have been affected by that since, though I’d like to mention that the effects can definitely ease, though perhaps not always fully. They did for me.
The worst years of my life occurred between my 32nd and 42nd years, when I was seriously disabled by my bipolar disorder. I could check off very many of the trauma symptoms you bulleted in your post. It was an avalanche of illness that almost destroyed me. It was like being mentally crippled and having to learn how to live life again. That trauma does live on, but again, over time it started to ease. Though medications helped with my bipolar disorder, it has been therapy, time/patience, and a type of hard “work” that has helped me get past some of the trauma. Some, but of course not all. It’s a work in process.
I won’t grieve that all of my trauma is not gone. It’s better to look more at the accomplishments I’ve made in surviving the experiences and the strides I’ve made. I know many of us get frustrated when we make two steps forward, only to be knocked backwards again, but we can again continue progress.
I believe that people who’ve had challenges in life can be wiser and ultimately stronger than those who haven’t. Even if it doesn’t necesarily appear to be the case. Appearances are sometimes deceptive.
I counted the common reactions to trauma that I have and thankfully there was one I didn’t have or don’t feel.
~one.
Traumatized is the way I truly felt the first time I looked up the word ”mania’ (after a long period of examining my own my own past, life and behavior) and realizing what I have. At that point nobody knew but me.
hmmm do I tell my doctor? husband? friends? mother? anybody? no. I was ashamed, terrified, and furiously paddling down that famously long river. Denial.
So I began reading, discovering, and learning whatever I could about this heavy oxen’s yoke I was being forced to wear. “Maybe I’m wrong”, she said mentally rolling her eyes. No. I knew. I just wasn’t ready for this to be happening to me. So maybe if I wished long and hard enough..it would go the fuck away. I had already suffered 7 traumatic events in my life at that point. I’d paid my dues, right?
Well, I did the wishing, but no. It had already set up shop in my head, heart and mind. And it was absolutely excruciatingly difficult for me to accept. Still is. The only ones who really understand — are other bipolar people; of course.
Why I’m always trying to come up w/ an accurate analogy re: the way my bipolar feels to my spouse, is beyond me. In all other areas he seems to always ”get” me. Understand me.
Why is it so important for me to have him understand the un–understandable? It’s hopeless, but I keep on trying. One of my favorites (close to yours) is –”remember how you felt when ____ died?”
Well, I get that feeling when NOBODY dies. yep. Gratis. It can come on at anytime; anywhere and does.
He just doesn’t understand it.
Traumatized? from me to you Natasha, -a resounding but staggeringly sad …yes.