What does it mean to me, in terms of self-identity, to have a dual-diagnosis of bipolar type II disorder (classified as a “mood” disorder) and borderline personality disorder (classified as a “personality” disorder)? I looked up the (psychology) definition of the word...
Veteran support is an important aspect of mental health. Many veterans come back from serving their country and suffer from both physical and mental issues. Some don’t understand what is happening to them or don’t want to admit what is happening. This...
My bedroom was full of figures. I knew I wasn’t dreaming – I was wide awake and had the light on. The noises were extra loud. I thought the hourly trains were blowing their horns over and over. The airport was louder than ever as well, with planes taking off...
I’m a girl who has been trapped in a nightmare for the last twelve years. I have bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). My drowning in despair started when my mother passed away in 2004. The diseases were...
The bangs of my head felt somewhat hollow against the cold hospital walls, for some odd reason, everything feels cold here. The cold grasp of the nurses hands as she tried to comfort me back to sanity. But dear God, what IS sanity in it’s most organic form? Is it like...
The vile potion of madness struck her like a lightening bolt gone astray. For what are we more than but a misty cloud roaming the night sky in the search for a shining star to give us the light and hope we are forever searching for. She walks the streets alone, every...
To all the hurting souls, My leaps and twirls; do they travel to you? That enduring energy flowing through the crisp air; do you eat it? When it rains, my dear, I dance in it. I laugh as the rain drops fall upon my nose. Do you feel the rhythm transcend through my...
“Oh my God,” my sister said, “you sounded just like Dad when you screamed at your wife during an argument!” She said that my head turned in a certain way just like our dad’s used to when he was in one of his frequent rages. “I thought he rose from the dead for a...
Living with mental illness is hard enough without outside interference, but no one can avoid the outside interference of everyday life. Whether you work full time, go to school, have hectic family lives, or any combination of these things; they all add more weight to...
I am a mom of three kids – four if you count my bipolar disorder, which can act just as (if not more) juvenile than my kids sometimes. I also take care of my two aging in-laws; they are both 73 years old. Then, of course, I am a wife. I take two medications for my...
The year is 2000. I’m working as a journalist in a small Connecticut shoreline town. I’m barely hanging on. My brain is shorting out. No one on or off staff knows how to help me. During this time, I would stay up all night working on stories, then come into work the...
This is the sixth in a series of 26 posts covering a variety of stress management tools and techniques, starting with the letter A. For some background information on stress and bipolar disorder, the blogger recommends reading her three-part series, “Getting a Handle...
Being a parent and having a bipolar diagnosis is hard. Before I was diagnosed with bipolar, my world revolved around parenting. As a stay at home mom, that was my job. I would have to say I was a really good parent at that time. My son was my pride and joy. He always...
She rubbed her pretty little eyes with cold clenched fists, and collapsed to her knees in angst and defeat on the cold and dust plagued cement. There was dust everywhere, it seemed, in every fraction of the air there was at least 10 million dust particles filling the...
“Get a support system.” That seems to be the number one thing I have heard since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I would look at doctors and therapists and tell them I didn’t have anyone. What about family? No. Spouse? No. Friends? They wouldn’t understand. I...
This is a painfully personal blog post. I considered writing the sub-title as “Meth and Madness” to balance two one-word nouns, but “madness” is a stigmatizing word, in my opinion. This is a personal blog post because six members of my family (immediate and extended)...
A year and a half ago, I submitted myself to a series of psychological assessments. It wasn’t my first experience with the mental health field. I’d been to treatment facilities and therapy in the past because of anorexia. But I knew something was going on, something...
This is Part 5 in a 5-Part Series: “When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground” (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here) Dear Future Manic Krystal, Mania and you go together like peanut butter and jelly. After five...
This is Part 4 in a 5-Part Series: “When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground” (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5 here) I moved back home with my mother a few years ago for financial reasons. Now that I’m back in...
This is Part 2 in a 5-Part Series: “When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground” (Read Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 here) I recently came across the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed. I follow her on Instagram and she posts...
This is Part 1 in a 5-Part Series: “When the World is Too Bright: An Intensive View of Mania from On the Ground” (Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 here) This is my fifth mania in the nine years since I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder....
Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I have not only been feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally ill, but financially as well. The cost of medicine is sickening considering that I need to buy it for maintenance. I work as a teacher in the Philippines,...
Episodes can occur in patients with bipolar disorder for numerous reasons; sometimes episodes occur for no known reason at all. I have learned to pay attention to my triggers so I can try to stay ahead of my episodes; sometimes it’s helpful, sometimes it’s not. I also...
If I could tell myself anything when it all started, it would be the following: ‘Reach out to your parents and tell them what’s going on with you emotionally. Lean on your family for help. They will be very understanding and supportive; they only want what’s best for...
To the girl who told me I was beautiful, so what do I have to be depressed about? I remember one time that I shared a personal story about depression on my Facebook page. This was one girl’s comment on the story: “Please don’t share such things on Facebook. You...
There has been no greater motivation for my recovery than fatherhood. Alone, I could go for long stretches of mood dysregulation. Even married, I was afforded the opportunity to sleep excessively and spend large amounts of time devoted to my self-care. Such privileges...
Have you ever been out shopping and witnessed a child have one of those nuclear meltdown kind of tantrums? The parent is obviously embarrassed and frustrated and they must take action. They can reprimand the child, they can snatch them up by the arm and hurry away or...
“The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls…” – Thomas Merton To say that I grew up in a...
Allison Clemmons was born and raised in the South. Allison likes to refer to herself as “a southern lady, raised by a far better southern lady.” She is an only child to two very attentive and loving parents who loved her very much, but never really...
Our hearts are packed with medicine, our eyes are blinded of dismay and anguished distance between life itself and the voices in our minds that tell us not to try, not to live, not to survive. The doctors tattoo a label upon our head that feeds itself into our blood...
It’s inevitable at times for something to happen that will shatter the beautiful recovery we’ve worked so hard to maintain. This is life. Reclaiming that recovery after a crisis will happen, but it may take some time. I recently had to deal with a few crises that...
Why don’t we talk more about psychosis from bipolar disorder? I am an avid reader. I read a ton of articles and blogs written by bipolar mental health advocates. What I’ve recently realized is that there is a lot written about mania and depression, but not much...
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/ I graduated from high school 14 years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was a good student, I had friends, I experienced “teenage angst”, moments where I thought “my life was over” because I had a...
Pound! Pound! Pound! Her heart beat echoing throughout her body; she’s running to meet amends. Her arms sway quickly beside her knocking the leaves from the trees on the side of the path, they fall briefly from the tree, up into the air and onto the earth’s ground...
In the year 2009, I gave birth to my son. After this event in my life, my suffering began. I started to find it hard to sleep at night. I often would stay awake each night staring at the ceiling of my room. It lasted for about a week and I began to have hallucinations...
My name is Roger and I have Bipolar. This was written a week ago, just after the painting was completed. There are times when I am in the “high” of a mania and there are times when I am in the “low” of depression. This painting depicts that frightening time when I am...
I have no memory. Alright, I’m being a little tongue in cheek here. But, most days I really do feel like I have no memory. Who knows when it began. I’ve always had some memory retention issues growing up. It drove everyone around me batty. I can’t...
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/ My journey through bipolar disorder started genetically, but wasn’t kicked off symptomatically until the major traumatic event that could shatter any teenager’s life. My mother died suddenly of a...
Help us win Healthline’s Best Health Blog of the Year! Vote for International Bipolar Foundation here. I was diagnosed with bipolar type I disorder when I was twenty-three after experiencing nine years of symptoms, a diagnosis of depression, and then a...
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/ Do you remember the song “Sound of Silence”? The one we used to sing with Dad? Remember how we always thought it was about being quiet and not making any noise no matter what we were feeling?...
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/ Dear scared Ros, I know you tried it again last night, like you try every week. You spend hours crying and pouring your emotions into your little black book hoping that someone will finally hear your...
I was born in the mid 1950’s when mental illness just wasn’t talked about. I wish that I could have had advice about the bipolar disorder I struggled with prior to my diagnosis. Perhaps it would have brought some ease to the fear I was experiencing. If my parents had...
If the teenage Sarah knew what 27 year old Sarah knows now, I believe this bipolar journey could have been a lot less painful. But when I’m tempted to dwell on how much farther ahead I could be had I been more prepared to live life with a mental illness, I remind...
I can’t give you the answer you want, because the real answer is “Probably. You will most likely require psychotropic medication for the rest of your life.” (I’ll get to that “most likely” in a bit.) Personally, I don’t see...
My father was a man of very few words. The only exceptions were hilarious dad jokes and long conversations with my mother — conversations that looked so pretty that I wished to have some like them in my life. Since he didn’t talk much, I can’t start with a...
Carrie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 28, though she experienced clinical depression for the first time as a teenager. She knew something was seriously wrong but wasn’t able to get help at that time. Carrie wrote the following letter to her 17-year-old...
I keep hearing the word acceptance when it comes to living with bipolar. But what exactly does it mean to me? A doctor once told me acceptance means acknowledging a fact, but not necessarily being “ok” with it. I was uncertain so I looked it up. Acceptance is defined...
September is Suicide Prevention Month. This is my story of my suicide attempt on September 12, 2014. I have chosen to share this to raise awareness – it has never been told before. Blink. “One, two, three.” My limp body slid to the ER table. Blink. The bright light....
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/. I know junior high was rough, and high school is only going to be rougher. By now you’ve realized that you’re different from most of the other kids – they’ve told you so, but they...
Learn more about #DearTeenageMe at http://sayitforwardcampaign.org/. Remember freshman year of college at the Fall Health Fair? A man at a table handed you a piece of paper and asked you to take a depression screening; they were encouraging all incoming freshman to...
