Many love to call a person with bipolar inspiring, especially if the person is publicly successful or famous. They say it when we keep going, when we tell the truth about our illness, and sometimes when we simply exist in public without falling apart, where others can see it. But too often, what they are really doing is turning our pain into something that makes them feel good. They are not seeing us as full human beings with serious mental illness. They are seeing us as a lesson, a symbol, a moving story they can consume from a safe distance.

That is the problem with inspiration porn. The lives of people with bipolar disorder are not here to motivate other people, warm their hearts, or remind them to be grateful for their own easier lives. We are not inspirational because we suffer. We are not admirable because we manage to function while carrying an illness that can kill us. People with bipolar deserve dignity, support, treatment, and respect, not objectification wrapped up as praise.

What Is Inspiration Porn?

According to Jan Grue, in this paper, inspiration porn can be defined as:

“. . . the representation of disability as a desirable but undesired characteristic, usually by showing impairment as a visually or symbolically distinct biophysical deficit in one person, a deficit that can and must be overcome through the display of physical prowess.”

It essentially tokenizes people with a disability like bipolar disorder and uses their story as a feel-good lesson.

You might see this as:

  • Being called brave just for existing with a disability
  • Having your pain referred to as uplifting
  • People praising your survival, while ignoring the realities of your suffering
  • Being turned into a symbol of resilience instead of being recognized as a three-dimensional person

This goes right alongside romanticizing disability like bipolar disorder. How often have we heard about mania creating genius creativity? How often have we heard about mental illness suffering driving brilliant art? How often do people try to posthumously diagnose those with extraordinary abilities with mental illness? They do all this to show us how “worthwhile” our disability is.

There is no end to the examples of this all around us. See movies like:

  • Silver Linings Playbook — makes mental illness symptoms seem like mere quirks that are redeemed through romance.
  • Girl, Interrupted — makes psychiatric suffering feel aesthetically alluring, bonding, and rebellious in some ways.
  • A Beautiful Mind — softens the day-to-day weight of mental illness and frames it through genius, love, and uplift in a way that can feel idealized.

Each of those films shows mental illness, but they do so in feel-good ways with happy endings that “solve the problem” of mental illness to inspire audiences. I’m not saying movies like this are bad, per se, but I can attest to the fact that there is nothing romantic or feel-good about my suffering from bipolar disorder.

Why Inspiration Porn Is Harmful

Essentially, inspiration porn was invented to make normies feel good about those with disabilities. They don’t want to see our suffering or our challenges, or admit that not all stories end happily. They want to use us as lessons instead of acknowledging our incredibly difficult realities.

Inspiration porn is harmful because:

  • It dehumanizes people.
  • It centers around the comfort of the observer,
  • It minimizes the brutality of disabilities like bipolar disorder.
  • It creates pressure to perform recovery or be inspiring at all times.
  • It erases anger, grief, disability, and complexity — all real parts of what it’s like to have bipolar disorder.

Not to mention the fact that by looking at people with bipolar disorder or another disability as a shiny object, they don’t have to actually provide the accommodations in society that we need and deserve. This means they actively harm those they posit to admire.

Inspiration Isn’t Bad; Minimizing Suffering Is

The truth is, many people find me inspiring. If you’ve ever been to one of my talks, I hope you left it feeling pretty inspired, in fact. That is not inherently negative.

The negative part is not also acknowleging the ugliness that comes with the shiny. And I guarantee, if you’ve seen me speak, you’ll definitely see that as well. Living with bipolar disorder (and, in my case, other chronic illnesses as well) is horrific. I do not sugarcoat that. I do not intimate that I just turned that frown upside down. I talk thoroughly about the pain I live with every day. That pain is a critical facet of my experience as a person. I can’t gloss over my suffering, and if I have anything to say about it, you can’t either.

What to Recognize Instead of Inspiration Porn

If you’re inspired by people with challenging life circumstances, that’s great! You just need to complete the picture.

When you see a person with bipolar disorder or another disability and find them inspiring, remember to also:

  • Listen to authentic tellings of experiences.
  • Respect all manner of lived experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
  • Support our rights, treatments, dignity, and accommodations.
  • Remember that we are full, three-dimensional people, just like you. We have good days, bad days, and sometimes can be jerks, just like you.
  • Stop turning survival into a morality tale.
  • Accept us when we’re not “inspiring,” just like you would anyone else.

In short, people with bipolar disorder do not exist to make others feel grateful, inspired, or emotionally moved. We exist to live as full human beings.