Author: Cassandra Stout Self-care. It seems self-explanatory; after all, the term indicates caring for the self. But why is self-care so hard to accomplish, especially for people who suffer from bipolar disorder? The answer is easy. When we’re manic or...
Author: Fatima It felt as though a trap door had opened under me and I was free falling. “What you experienced was a manic episode” the doctor said. “You have type 1 bipolar disorder”. My world was rocked. Bipolar disorder? What did that mean? What did that entail? I...
Something I Am Proud Of: This year marks my 10th anniversary (I guess) of understanding what makes me different. What has been paramount in my success is staying on top of myself- accountability, resilience, and love. I can say I have not lived the conformed cookie...
Author: Angela McCrimmon “I’d give anything to feel like you for even just one day”…..I smile because I realise they’re trying to compliment me but I also want to shake them and make them comprehend what it’s really like to be me in...
Author: Katie Barber I never thought that I had a problem with drinking. There were no interventions, nobody had expressed concern. In fact, a lot of people in my life drank far more than I did. The reason I felt like I wasn’t an alcoholic (and therefore did...
Author: Rosebuds and Thorns Through my experience with Bipolar Disorder, I have learned many things. To tell someone newly diagnosed with bipolar everything I have learned would take more pages than one could bear to read. So, I will focus on three things: time,...
Something I Am Proud Of: To tell my girlfriend, and my boss that I need to pause my life and seek immediate help before I try (again) to harm myself. To be comfortable telling people how I feel and why I will ‘disappear’ for a month to receive therapy and...
Author: Melinda Goedeke Chaos is what I know; it is where I excel. Keeping on the move ironically slows my racing thoughts and brings a loud silence to my brain. Right now it seems chaos is the norm for many amidst this unpredictable pandemic that is careening down...
Author: Violette Kay Being suicidal while manic is probably the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. Normally my manic self would think “I would never kill myself. How could I ever be so cruel as to deprive the world of my light?” but this time was different. As I...
Author: Sophia Falco Dear Sophia, You are deeply loved. You have not let bipolar disorder 1 define you while living with it for nearly a decade. This is not your fault, and you don’t deserve this suffering. You have persevered through challenging times in the past as...
Author: Natalia Beiser In the past, it was difficult to acknowledge that I needed to acknowledge self-care; in fact, when my therapist brought up that term four years ago, it was foreign to me. I determined that some of the self- care tasks cost too much money, were...
Something I Am Proud Of: My journey in managing my mental illness began with cultivating determination. I consider this the foundation for developing self-awareness of my strengths and weaknesses. I utilized these strengths when I underwent the peer support...
Author: Kitty Dedicated to all of those we have lost due to mental illness. I strive to endure because I know you are beside me. Surviving an abusive childhood left me with many mental obstacles but I can confidently say that for me personally, bipolar disorder was...
Author: Willa Goodfellow It goes back to Freud. You could call him a liberal for his day. He did not believe that homosexuality was a character flaw or degeneracy. He viewed it as a kind of arrested development. Does arrested development sound better than the later...
Something I Am Proud Of: The thing I am most proud of is finishing my over three-hundred-page memoir about my experiences entitled Daddy Issues: A Bipolar Memoir. I have lived through so much, and I’m so proud that I’ve been able to make sense of my life...
Author: Allison Hatch Many of you know all too well what it is like to live with multiple diagnoses. For many others, I know you have probably have a similar tale like mine to tell, or maybe you support someone who cannot work right now, or even now you are trying to...
Author: Courtney Casal I’ve found the stigma to be true, at least in my experience: having a conversation about your mental illness with your professors, much less anyone, is incredibly daunting. No matter how confident you might feel, you are immediately fearful of...
Author: Claire At the beginning of my college career, my expectations for post grad life were through the roof. I was going to graduate early, balance a million extracurriculars, and somehow make time to travel the world. Without time to prepare, mania arrived without...
Something I Am Proud Of: I am most proud of how far I have come over the years. I remember how I felt when I kept relapsing and was navigating managing my mental illness as well as caring for another person with bipolar disorder. Graduating college, being in a healthy...
Author: Rebecca James I’ve been keeping a journal since I was fifteen. That was twenty years ago! But journaling has never been as important to me as it has been in the last seven years, since I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. For me, journaling makes sense...
Author: Lauren Meredith When I first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I found it difficult to identify how I felt a lot of the time. Giving my emotions, especially ones that I encounter more often than others, a nickname has helped me to identify my emotions in the...
Something I Am Proud Of: I am proud of myself for learning to better manage my anxiety. It has been a long road, with lots of hard work, and I have learned a lot about myself and my anxiety. For example, it largely shows up in work environments, in large group...
Author: Sophia Falco When I garden this allows me to look outside myself no matter if I tend to one plant or many, and liberates me from my negative thoughts especially during trying times. For example, when dealing with bipolar depression. Or living in this state of...
Author: Angela McCrimmon Is the relationship equal or is there a power struggle? Does mutual respect spill over the sides or is the respect demanded from the “Professional?” Hang on a minute though…..which one is the Professional? Is it the one who...
Author: Sasha Kildare As of June 12, 2020, I am unemployed. It’s scary, because the only manic episode I had in 25 years occurred during the Great Recession. Other than a seasonal part-time retail job in 2009, I did not have a full-time job for 18 months. After a few...
Author: Valéry Brosseau I rode an ATV around Mykonos once, my hair free in the wind and my iPod blaring as whitewashed and blue-trimmed towns blurred by. I turned a corner and found myself at the top of a cliff watching the horizon turn a soft orangey pink and the sun...
Something I Am Proud Of: Existing with bipolar disorder and other comorbid mental illnesses is something that I often remind myself is more than enough to be proud of. I am proud that I exemplify courage and resilience and refuse to settle for anything less than what...
Author: Trevor Simonson Five years ago. I was getting familiar with depressive and hypomanic episodes. As a 17 year old kid, I was about to say goodbye to everything I thought I knew about myself. What follows is a journey of victories and setbacks. Highs and lows. A...
Author: Melinda Goedeke As the sun sets and the red hues slowly drip into the lake, I pause and watch. Peace washes over me as I breathe slowly noting the sound of my breath. It is a stark contrast to the rapid, somewhat panicked breathing I know all too well. The...
Something I Am Proud Of: It’s been 7 years since my last episode and 10 years since first diagnosis. I’m determined never to have one again. With blood, sweat, tears and a lot of CBT, while being medically compliant, I am walking on the other side,...
Author: George Hofmann | www.practicingmentalillness.com It’s possible to establish a practice that enables you to predict, prevent and manage episodes of depression or mania, but it takes some work. I write this piece for International Self-Care Day, but I’ve always...
Author: Lauren Meredith The hardships of self-care may look vastly different for everyone. One person can struggle with sleeping while another individual has problems getting out of bed, or eating properly. Others, meanwhile, may struggle with focusing and...
Something I Am Proud Of: Something I’m proud of in my journey of managing my mental illness is publishing a book of poetry about my experience with health professionals and educating them on how things are from the other side of their treatment. My book is a...
Author: Angela McCrimmon The world as we know it has all been torn away, The things I do to keep me well as I navigate each day, The routine that I follow to keep me on the ground, It’s scary as I realise that my world is upside down. I tell myself...
Author: Trevor Simonson I used to think my life was over. There was nothing left for me. The world was empty. I still deal with that feeling, though it may not be as strong right now. It is like living in a cage. Existing in a dim light with no sense of self, no hope...
Something I Am Proud Of: The moment I realized I am like everybody else despite my diagnosis’ was the light in my journey. I realized my diagnosis of mental health problems is no different than physical diagnosis like asthma or diabetes. Ultimately, when I saw myself...
Author: Keyoka Kinzy When Anne Lamott wrote about the phenomena of wanting to jump off a cliff or drive your car into oncoming traffic in her book, Almost Everything, I felt seen. So, it isn’t just me? I thought. I’m not the only person in the world who contemplates...
Author: Natalia Beiser I had a dear friend that could not understand my mood disorder; particularly the depression. I tried diligently to explain it to her. She could tell when I was down by the tone in my voice over the telephone. My friend was a senior citizen and...
Resources from MHA General www.mhanational.org/bipoc-mental-health www.mhanational.org/infographic-bipoc-mental-health www.mhanational.org/issues/healthcare-disparities-among-black-indigenous-and-people-color www.mhanational.org/bipoc-communities-and-covid-19...
Something I Am Proud Of: I am especially proud of the fact that I was able to write and self-publish “The Mental Patient: A Journey of Faith” on Amazon. This fictional memoir is based on my 65 years of struggling with bipolar with psychosis. It came in three stages...
Author: Lauren Meredith I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) when I was 21 years old. I was a senior in college. I had testing problems and lo and behold it was due to testing anxiety which was also manifested in various other aspects of my life. My...
Author: George Hofmann It seems that today a man with a mental illness in his middle age is without a voice. So many of the stories told about the struggle with an incoherent mind are from the point of view of the young and mostly female. For so many older men the...
Something I Am Proud Of: One time I led a local community training on mental illness and I decided to integrate my own experiences with recovery into the training. It was a leap for me because my illness would be made public. The response was huge and people...
Author: Valéry Brosseau The gym smelled a bit like a warehouse would smell, but mostly like sweat. I came to this gym 5 times a week to practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but tonight I was not feeling it. I struggled through the warm up. My anxiety was making me irritable...
Author: Jessica Kaushik I was diagnosed in 2004 and have been largely living hospital-free for the last thirteen years. So, I do have a few coping strategies for living with Bipolar Disorder that I’d like to share with the newly diagnosed. …I wouldn’t say the list is...
The senseless acts of racism and violence that have unfolded over the last several weeks serve as a stark reminder of the devastation wrought by centuries of enslavement, bigotry and discrimination. These acts have been a deeply upsetting, unsettling and painful...
Something I Am Proud Of: For years I thought if I tried harder I could be different, normal. I was diagnosed in my 20s and finally found hope. I now know there is a name for what I experience and that there is treatment. I’ve tried to give positive meaning to my...
Author: Zachary Burton The California hills were quickly turning to gold. Our weekends were filled with barbecues, swimming, and late nights around our fire pit. Life couldn’t be better. I certainly thought so, as I hurtled toward my PhD qualifying exams in the late...
Author: Violette Kay “Grandiosity”. That’s the word that convinced me I actually had bipolar disorder. The sleep disruptions, increased energy, racing thoughts and flight of ideas – not to mention the recurring depressive episodes – all these other textbook...
Something I Am Proud Of: I completed my 10 month DBT class, and got my first full-time job during treatment! Advice For Newly Diagnosed: Learn how to access the beauty and creativity through the ups and downs. Getting treatment, whatever that means for you, is...
