There is this concept that some mental illness diagnoses are better or worse than others. Once you start looking for this concept, you’ll see evidence of it all over the place, such as in: “At least I don’t have schizophrenia,” or, “Don’t date borderlines, they’re really messed up.” But why do people think some mental illness diagnoses are better or worse than others?
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Today I’m going to write about the conservatorship of Britney Spears and how it relates to mental health. Last week I wrote about the #FreeBritney movement and how people are declaring the Britney Spears is being held at a mental health facility against her will. I made the point that this is due to mental illness prejudice as no one would think she was being held against her will in another type of medical facility. (For the record, Spears is no longer in a mental health facility.)
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I have battled with what I now know is depression for the better part of a decade – since my teenage years. At the time, I didn’t see it as depression, it was simply a part of who I was. What my parents once considered to be nothing more than bouts of teenage angst, was something much more sinister. A while back I learned (in therapy) that most of my energy went into keeping me “above the surface.” Fighting like this really is a draining experience. It drained me emotionally, as well as physically.
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I can’t tell you how horrible it is to be consumed by guilt because of depression and having that lead to suicidal ideation. Well, being consumed by guilt for any reason at all is horrible, but when it’s driven by depression — a demon in your brain — it’s incessant and resistant to logic. Yesterday I was overwhelmed by guilt because of depression and it actually made me suicidal.
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I went to university with bipolar disorder. In fact, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science with bipolar disorder. I know it’s incredibly difficult but I know it can be done. Today I want to talk about how you can do it too, and about a source of free money for
Depression is a bitch, suicidality, more so. Just reading the official symptoms of depression can tell you that. It’s living with depression that really turns up the volume on that reality. And one thing I’ve encountered recently is the flash flood suicidality associated with depression. I’ve characterized severe mood shifts as causing “mood whiplash” but this is a little different. Whiplash sucks, to be sure, soft tissue damage is hard to heal, but a flash flood decimates everything in front of it. The flash flood suicidality in depression is a bitch, squared.
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Employment in bipolar disorder is a big topic and trying to work with bipolar disorder is no easy thing. If you have a job that requires the use of your brain, you’re going to have trouble if you have a brain illness like bipolar disorder. This is just logical. But what is this “trouble” like? What how does it really feel to work when you have bipolar disorder?
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Living in the moment doesn’t always work and it doesn’t work for everyone, period. This is one of my biggest problems with pop psychology and the one-size-fits-all nonsense spouted on popular websites untethered by science. Science can’t tell you many things but one thing it’s clear on is that anything only has a percentage chance of working — and that percentage is never 100 percent. In other words, no matter how sage the advice, it doesn’t work for all people. And while “live in the now” or “live in the moment” sounds good and fits on a bumper sticker, I just don’t find it works for everyone — particularly not the seriously, chronically ill — and it certainly doesn’t work all the time.
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I have a lot of bipolar complaints right now. I have a lot of bipolar complaints about medication side effects, medication withdrawal effects
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