I don't want to admit I have a disorder with which I have to cope for all of my life. I want to believe that there is nothing amiss with my brain. I want to believe everything will be fixed tomorrow. I want to believe that any weirdness I exhibit and/or experience is simply a result of personality rather than a chemical/synapse anomaly. I want to believe that I don't have radical mood swings, that I don't need medications to be a stable human being, that everyone has weeks of debilitating depression and then weeks of hyperactivity. I don't want to write mood diaries, I don't want to self-talk, I don't want to be monitored by psychiatrists and psychologists, I don't want to know that scientific reports indicated that every cycle will only intensify over the previous cycle. I don't want to believe it. Any of it.
I am afraid of bipolar.
When I was first officiallly diagnosed with bipolar disorder it took me years to accept the fact that I had a psychological problem. Crap, I wasn't just an asshole. There was an organic underlying cause for my weirdness. And the simple idea that I would need to take drugs, psychotropic drugs (!) for the rest of my life was overwhelming. No, not me. I'm just fine. I don't have a problem. I just need a few weeks of talk therapy then everything will be on track again.
Then came the big, giant, crash. The crash that kept me out of work for months, the crash from which, after two and half years, my docs and I are still trying to find the right med cocktail for stabilization. UGH! During the initial med trials I struggled with incredibly extreme cycles and side effects. So . . . OF COURSE I didn't need the meds! Right? They were only making me crazy! These drugs are making everything worse! I'm dizzy, I'm barfing, I can't sleep, I'm sleeping too much, I'm catatonic! NO! I'm not bipolar!
The social stigma of bipolar disorder doesn't help. Let's do some research on this.
According a (unidentified) polll in Ireland, "The majority of people with bipolar disorder
believe that the public are unaware of and do not understand the condition.
As a result, as many as one in four do not tell family or friends they
have it for fear of social stigma . . . 71% believed that the public were unaware
of and did not understand their illness. As a result, 26% did not tell
family and friends. 35% had experienced some form of discrimination
as a result of their condition." (http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=7874).
And
"Stigma against the mentally ill is bad, and research suggests it is
getting worse, says Patrick Corrigan, PsyD, professor of psychology at
the Illinois Institute of Technology and director of the Chicago Consortium for Stigma Research.
"Mental illness is still extremely stigmatized," he says, "thanks in
part to television shows that portray this population as dangerous, in
need of supervision, and/or wild and irresponsible. That is the public
perception, despite evidence that they are no more dangerous than anyone
else."" (http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20189155,00.html)
I get it, and yeah, I get it., too. So, maybe that's the underlying root of my denial. And as a result, I think about my bipolar a lot. And thinking about it ... that leads to another practice in search of balance. How much should I think about my disorder? How much should I monitor myself? When should I attribute strange behavior as an affect of the disorder or simply an aspect of being a jerk (or an artist, or a deep thinker, or a sensitive person, or a competitive person, or a happy person, or a . . . ? Where is the sane place of equilibrium wherein I stop worrying about myself yet also stop denying that I have a condition that needs constant care?
I'll find it someday.
