Hey there Che’,

I know there has been a lot going on lately, and I just wanted to travel back in time and let you in on a few things you’ve realized over the last 20 years. Buckle up and get a pen and paper, you’re going to want to take some notes.

If you feel like something is wrong with you, listen to that voice and ask for help. Your body is designed to keep you safe. This doesn’t only pertain to you experiencing pain when you get injured, or becoming hyper alert if someone is breaking into your house. I theorize that the body also warns you if something is not right with your mind. This warning may come to you as a whisper, or a gut feeling, that the way you feel is not “normal”. Listen to that voice and reach out to a loved one or a school counselor so you can seek help and start feeling like you again.

You will think you don’t need your medication, but you do. Soon you will be given the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and you will be put on medication to balance out the unbalanced chemicals in your brain. This will take some trial and error to find the right combination of medications, but when you find the right ones, you will start to feel better and think that you don’t need the medication anymore. DO NOT STOP YOUR MEDICATION. The reason you are feeling better is BECAUSE of the medications. Your chemicals are balancing out, which is making you feel stable. This thought process is extremely common in people with bipolar disorder. You don’t want to spend 10 years of your life going on and off medication, only to find out that you in fact do need to stay on your combination of pills to live a successful life that continuously flows without constant disruptions that hold you back from growing.

Talking to a psychologist is just as important as talking to a psychiatrist. You didn’t start talk therapy to help with coping skills and triggers until 15 years after your diagnosis, and I wish I knew at your age that seeing a psychologist to learn these things was equally as important as seeing a psychiatrist to get on medication. Medication may be the number one thing that helps you with your bipolar symptoms, but talk therapy comes in close second. Even when you are stable on medication, you can still dip into feelings of depression, mania, or hypomania. This can happen for several reasons. Experiencing high stress or becoming tolerant to the dose of medication you are on are two common reasons. Knowing your triggers and learning coping skills is crucial to understand so you can cope with your symptoms to avoid completely falling into a full-blown episode.

Feeling misunderstood by loved ones doesn’t mean you can’t find people who do understand you. You will soon come to find that when you are in the midst of an episode, it’s easy to start feeling isolated and like no one knows what you are going through; especially the ones who are closest to you. You can try to explain to your loved ones how you are feeling, but the fact of the matter is that if you aren’t experiencing something first hand it’s close to impossible for someone to truly understand what you are going through. Finding a bipolar disorder support group will be

extremely helpful when it comes to relating to others who are going through exactly what you are. Look into the bipolar disorder group on Facebook. It has several groups you can join for free right at home. After getting a diagnosis as complex as bipolar disorder, you also are going to have many questions that you need to know for yourself, and having a place to go and quickly ask a question right at your fingertips is tremendously beneficial. The family isn’t going to be very proactive in learning about your disorder, but people who are interested in educating themselves on your diagnosis can also join these support groups so they can attempt to understand what you’re going through, how to hold space for you during an episode, and how to set boundaries with you if needed.

This is going to be a long and hard road as you stumble your way through the many different avenues that bipolar disorder will take you on. Sometimes you learn things better by failing, and I in no way regret the path I have been on, but if I had this advice and guidance when I was your age, I could have saved myself a lot of unnecessary suffering. Just know that it’s all going to be ok, and having this disorder is just a little part of you and your story; it does not define who you are.