By: Danielle Workman If you’re anything like me, the mere thought of the 4th of July, Chinese New Year, or even smaller firework related holidays and events make your skin crawl. These holidays come with a wide range of emotions, and all of them royally mess up what...
By: Julie A. Fast People with bipolar disorder live on the edge of mood swings. This means that what we do in our every day lives affects how we wake up the next morning. The internet, constant access to binge watching on Netflix and other channels, 24 hour stores...
By: Laura Sanscartier When I was 20, I was sexually assaulted. The details of such an incident are my own, and not anything of any use in a blog post, but they caused a condition called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. PTSD is found in the DSM-V, and many who...
Carissa is a teacher, mother, wife, and writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest. Now in her mid-thirties, she has lived with bipolar since she was a teen, as well as having a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder and C-PTSD. She also lives with blinding ocular...
By: Carissa Martos When multiple diagnoses exist in the same person, and impact each other, they are known as co-morbid conditions. My bipolar diagnosis came when I was 19, but I’d struggled with the cycles of manic function and depressed inability since...
By: Liz Wilson Trauma: An incident and its physiological and psychological effects on victims and/or witnesses to the event. The DSM describes 5 types of PTSD, the label most commonly associated with trauma. I want to talk about comorbid PTSD; a diagnosis given when...
By: Tosha Maaks When my father became sick about three years ago, I started to wake up almost nightly with night terrors. I would begin to cry and scream in my sleep to the point that my husband would wake up from a sound sleep and hold me as I tried to regain my...
By: Jayson Blair I woke up late in the morning. It was a little after 7 a.m. I have been sick for the past few days so I decided to not rush into work. I made a cup of coffee in my kitchen and then walked over to the living room. Standing between the couch and my...
By: Courtney Davey MA, MFT Talking about Bipolar Disorder can sometimes be difficult to do with people that you care about. It can be exhausting to educate people that you care about on the way that you interact with your symptoms and the world when you experience...
By: John Poehler When it comes to the topic of male stigma, I have quite the extensive experience. Right now, I am a 39 year-old male. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder right before my 21st birthday. The Beginning The expectations how a man is supposed to act and...
By: Danielle Workman Earlier this year I started to suffer from chronic, painful, daily migraines. The pain is constant and intense, taking away my drive to eat at all, removing my drive to exercise, and after days on end of constant and consistent migraines, I am...
By: Natalia Beiser I have been on medications for bipolar disorder my entire adult life. The prescriptions and I have an avid love/hate relationship. I need medications to function with the most amount of mental clarity. I resent my medications and am treatment...
By: Courtney Davey, MA, MFT We as humans are social creatures. Our relationships with family who raise us, partners who love us and friends who care for us influence our understanding of ourselves, others and the world. While family is assigned to us and partner(s)...
By: Kryss Jobes It seems innocent enough on the surface, but let’s take a closer look. Imagine you’re going through a rough time. You feel that downward swing in motion and you are overwhelmed. You’re doing your best to take care of yourself and your responsibilities,...
By: Geoff Crain How Are The Two Related? According the the National Institute of Mental Health, bipolar disorder is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out day to day tasks. If you have bipolar...
By: Conor Bezane It was in rehab in 2012 that I decided to carry the flag for the mentally ill. I’d received my diagnosis of bipolar four years earlier and ended up in treatment because I was drinking two six-packs of beer or two bottles of wine — or more — every...
By: Liz Wilson A cursory look at the research demonstrates that there is still misinformation in the entertainment industry in regards to mental illness, too few role models who are public about their mental illness/es, and that measurable strides have been made by...
By: Carol R. Ray, Ph.D. The jails and prison systems are the de facto mental health institution (Abramsky and Fellner, 2003). There is a prison within the prison, that those with mental health conditions, are subjected to. That is the practice of “solitary...
By: Danielle Workman To the Beautiful, Bold, Bipolar; The culture of today is fast paced, moving at a breakneck speed. With the technological savviness of social media sitting in the forefront of most of our minds, our culture has come to not only know but expect...
By: John Poehler I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 1 back in 1999. I use this as the official date to the start of my journey. Before then, I was just treading water to try and keep afloat. My symptoms actually began in the early 1990’s. My diagnosis took a...
By: Nancy Travers If you’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, it’s important to understand there are many forms of depression. Basically, Bipolar Disorder involves episodes of depression and mania. Bipolar I Disorder involves severe...
By: Natalia Beiser When I experienced my first manic episode at eighteen, my family was oblivious to my struggle. My mother stated that I had done something to bring the illness onto myself. She expressed that she believed that the trigger was that I had previously...
By: Laura Sanscartier I first knew there was something different about me when I was about 7. I kept my mouth shut, as I was the oldest of 4 kids, and mom and dad had many things to take care of. I could feel my body shift into moments of extreme anger, sadness, or...
By: Tosha Maaks I get to speak with a lot of different types of people every day. It often comes up that I am a mental health advocate; most of the time I get very positive responses. I will hear things like “thank you for the work you do” or “we need more people like...
Tosha Maaks is a mom and a wife who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when her youngest boys were only 2 years old. She raised all four of her children in a house where the topic of mental health was openly discussed. After going back to school in 2012 and a turn of...
By: Courtney Davey, MA, MFT Emotions are the foundation of a romantic relationship. They are an inherent part of the attachment we have to our partner, and our emotions surrounding the person, behaviors and events all affect are feelings about the relationship itself....
By: Christine Marie Frey One of the most important things to remember in life is that everybody needs help sometimes. When I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I refused any help that came my way. I didn’t want help from my parents, my teachers, or even my...
By: Richard Hansler Bipolar glasses? Are they the ones they give you when you go to see a 3D movie? No? You say they are designed to help people with bipolar disorder sleep better and help them control their moods. Awesome!! Tell me more. The idea that wearing glasses...
By Lori Lane Murphy There are times when I bore myself silly. Living with my mental illness is like living with that one person who corners you at every party. You know the one? The one who won’t stop talking. Not only will they not stop talking, they usually have...
By: John Poehler April is Stress Awareness Month in the UK. Stress is a huge trigger of bipolar disorder. There is no way to completely get rid of stress. Noone lives in a bubble, but there are ways to reduce and manage the stress in your life. How Stress Affects...
By: Natalia Beiser After a serious depression, I was declared to be legally disabled and experienced extreme social phobia. I was rarely able to go in public, except in the middle of the night. I was afraid that I would be seen by people that I had known in my...
By: Sasha Kildare Sometimes desperation inspires action. A while back, the desperation of homelessness ended my eight-year cycle of hospitalizations for bipolar disorder that had begun in my teens. Sixteen years ago, I was struggling with secondary infertility....
Sasha Kildare’s memoir and information guide Intact: Untangle the Web of Bipolar Depression, Addiction, and Trauma is due to be published in January 2021. She is a storyteller with a passion for mental health advocacy and integrative treatment. Her blog...
By: Kam **Spoiler/Trigger Alert** I’ve had Netflix and Prime for a long time but as I spend most of my free time either studying or engaged in some kind of outdoor activity, I was late to the party with ‘The Walking Dead’. My friends were positively shocked when I...
By: Carrie Elizabeth Lin This is the eighth 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...
By Michael Kinyanjui Until my psychiatrist diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and prescribed medication, every aspect of my life was broken. I rarely talked to my family, and my friends were a distant memory. Worst of all was not knowing why everything was so screwed...
By: Conor Bezane I used to be ashamed of my bipolar status. I was ashamed of all of the screwball things I did when I was manic. That was back in 2008, when I tipped the shoe-shine guy $60 because that’s how much I had in my wallet and it seemed like the nice thing to...
By: Danielle Workman Being your own advocate is neverending. In January, I had to be admitted to the emergency room due to an unusual complication to a common ailment. While it wasn’t related to my mental illness at all, the emergency room staff was convinced that it...
By: Sabrina Ruediger This series is exploring the mania, including psychosis, in manic episodes of Bipolar I and my experience with that in a psychiatric hospital. I was inspired by a poem I wrote during my stay at Aurora Behavioral Health Psychiatric Unit in 2016,...
By: Carol Ray, Ph.D. Prisons and jails have become America’s default mental health institutions. More individuals with severe mental illnesses are housed in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals. Individuals with severe mental illness, while in...
By: Courtney Davey, MA, MFT There’s nothing quite like having a long-term relationship. After you have moved past some of that initial nervousness, it can feel great to have a steady person in your life to be a friend, lover, and support. Knowing their patterns and...
By: Conor Bezane I still make mixtapes. They may be on CD, but, to me, they will always be mixtapes. Music is my higher power in AA and even though I don’t go to very many meetings anymore, music still plays a pivotal, necessary role in my recovery — for my dual...
By: John Poehler Getting the news that you have a chronic mental illness can be quite disheartening. It can be extremely overwhelming. You cannot change the fact that you have bipolar disorder. You can change your perspective about mental illness by reframing your...
By: Lori Lane Murphy Before my Bipolar Diagnosis, I didn’t really give much thought to my sleep patterns. I guess that’s because I used alcohol so much that it didn’t seem like an issue. I confused passing out with sleeping for many years and I thought I had this...
By Michelle Vasiliu, Author of My Happy Sad Mummy. In 2007, when I was 40 years old, I experienced my first manic episode. I was duly diagnosed with bipolar one. Knowing what I now know about my condition, it is highly likely those sporadic periods of frenzied...
By: Kam Having an invisible illness such as mental health comes with all manner of problems and stigma. I’m very lucky in the sense that I am supported by my family and friends but I often find that thought creeping into my head… ‘they just don’t get it’. What I...
By: Kathleen Westerhaus Cryptic acronyms texted on our phones, new words perhaps, communicate ideas in short memorable phrases; examples include: LOL, ICYMI, DYK. I’ve come to appreciate the creativity of individuals who cleverly express phrases on their vehicle’s...
By: John Poehler It is interesting to note that the prevalence and type of bipolar disorder related to men’s health is gender specific. The DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance) provides some startling statistics: The incidence of bipolar disorder is the same...
