MORE therapy meta! Have you seen the interpretation floating around tumblr that Ilya might actually have bipolar instead of unipolar depression? What do you think? In the AU where Ilya gets therapist Anya comingatthecottage instead of Galina, is that something you're wondering about before you start looking at a treatment plan?
hello! i have seen this interpretation and i disagree with it. i would definitely ask some questions tho because bipolar (especially in people who are "high functioning" yuck i hate that label) is often missed/misdiagnosed and, particularly if medication is part of treatment, that can make things a loooot worse, and i always want to help people rule it out! i'd been in therapy for over a decade before i was diagnosed as bipolar (and it took multiple years after i had an ssri-induced manci episode too! should've been a giveaway when i took zoloft and immediately almost burned my house down) so here at anya comingatthecottage therapy inc we definitely ask some questions about it
however i don't see my experiences with bipolar really resonate in ilya's character. as far as i can remember the books, and at least in s1 of the show he doesn't have any periods of sleeping little and doing a lot without feeling tired, which is my personal hallmark of "oh i'm hypomanic" (like this is literally how my psychiatrist helped me rule out whether i had a heated-rivalry-induced hypomanic episode when i realized i was writing like 2k words a day--yes, increase in goal-directed activity, but it was making me sleepy af). he's confident but i think that's his personality--he never seems grandiose in his self-assessment, externally or internally. his speech and internal monologue are pretty well-organized, his thoughts don't seem to be racing or tangential? as far as the internal experiences of mania/hypomania, i don't see it
i think some people have this headcanon because ilya does a lot of stuff that's reckless--fast cars, lots of casual sex, drug use, etc. i would say that it doesn't seem to be episodic or impulsive in the way that it is during a manic episode? i'm not expert on this part because i don't tend to have a ton of risky behaviors when manic, mostly i just start a bunch of art projects i abandon, talk really fast, don't sleep, and can't concentrate. but ilya doesn't seem to have discrete periods of time where he seeks out risks or thrills, he seems to always enjoy those things (until he settles down into a more domestic routine with shane), and they don't seem to be driven by a lack of ability to understand the consequences or a sense of invulnerability, but more by the kind of lack of care for himself that is a result of depression and trauma. he's also shown to enjoy thrills in a non-impulsive way: like fucking shane is risky, and he spends years planning for that one
tl;dr: ilya has a lot of traits (confident, impulsive, reckless, outgoing, risk-taking) that are associated with mania, but imo those are traits of his personality that are consistent over time, not symptoms that emerge during discrete, time-limited episodes of mania. not hating on anyone's headcanon, just my own opinion as one bipolar person
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