Category: bipolar disorder

Losing Hope for Bipolar Wellness When a Role Model Gets Sick

There are many reasons I don’t typically talk about my own, personal, current mood and treatments. I’ve written about why I don’t write about my bipolar treatments here. Similarly, I don’t talk about my current bipolar mood state because my writings are less about me, in particular, and more about the experience of bipolar, in general. I believe that’s one of the reasons my writing is so popular. I take my personal experience of bipolar disorder and use it as a springboard to speak to what it’s like to experience bipolar for so many.

But one of the other reasons I don’t talk about my personal, current mood state is because I’m a private person. I know this seems weird considering how much I share online. But I’m careful with what I share, and what I don’t.

And finally, I know that I’m a role model for some people and I don’t talk about my own current mood episode because I don’t want other people to lose hope. In spite of recent accusations, I do actually bring hope to thousands of people with bipolar and people who love those with bipolar disorder and I don’t want to do anything to injure that hope.

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Can You Die From Bipolar Disorder?

In short: yes, you can die from bipolar disorder.

Now, I know, many people would disagree with me on this, after all, bipolar disorder doesn’t produce a tumour in your body that will eventually kill you, it doesn’t create plaque in your arteries to eventually kill you and it doesn’t spread a virus through your cells to eventually kill you. I know, bipolar is not like that.

But, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), suicide takes over 35,000 lives a year in the United States and many of these are our brothers and sisters with bipolar disorder. You think that suicide isn’t the same thing as death by bipolar disorder? Think again.

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Creating Art through the Manias and Depressions of Bipolar Disorder

The Bipolar Burble blog welcomes guest author somePlaywrights, a collaboration of two writers based in Annapolis and Brooklyn, who face, seemingly weekly, a struggle to succeed as a creative, bipolar collaboration.

On its own, the practice of creating art is bizarre: fusing this abstract feeling with that concrete image, trying to convince others of something only you can see, and all the while endeavoring to balance concept with content. With the addition of bipolar disorder, a condition that is just as, if not more, slippery, firm, and fleeting, the artistic process often teeters between genius and delusion, between coherence and disunion. It is in this realm, where mania meets medium and depression intersects with artistic production, that we, as bipolar artists, must carve and claim our collective space…

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Should You Go Public About Your Bipolar Online?

People contact me and ask me to advise on many subjects and one of them is whether they should go public about their bipolar disorder online. People often want to know this because they want to start a blog or in some other way express the challenges of bipolar disorder. Usually, it is with the best of intentions that people ask. Usually, people want to go public with their bipolar disorder online in an effort to help others.

However, I tend to be the bearer of bad news: I do not generally think people should go public about their bipolar disorder online.

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Bipolar – I Just Want to Be Like Everyone Else

I was sitting in my living room today starting at the wall. I spend a surprisingly large amount of time staring at the wall. It’s not that my walls are even vaguely interesting, it’s just that I spend a lot of time depressed and when depressed, even considering watching TV seems overwhelming.

And I was sitting there, depressed, staring at the wall, and the thought occurred to me: I just want to be like everyone else. I just want to go back to a time when walls were just the things you painted and not sources of non-entertainment. I just want to go back to a time when I couldn’t define bipolar disorder and psych medications were something I would never even have considered. I just want to go back to a time when I was just like everyone else.

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Blaming Others for Bipolar Disorder

It’s very natural to be angry when something egregiously bad – like getting bipolar disorder – happens to you. It’s not necessarily rational, per se, but it is normal. And when we’re mad about something we look for someone or something to blame. We look for someone to blame for our bipolar disorder. Again, this isn’t a rational, or even conscious thing, it’s really just a natural reaction to an extremely unfortunate situation, but it really isn’t healthy.

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Additional Writings

Check out my Amazon Author Page.

I write a three-time Web Health Award winning column for HealthyPlace called Breaking Bipolar.

Also, find my writings on The Huffington Post and my work for BPHope (BP Magazine).

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