So someone on a Facebook group I'm in has bipolar disorder and isn't coming to terms with the fact that this is a lifelong thing (she's very young and has multiple suicide attempts already.) What would you say to her with your experience?
I’m sorry I didn’t answer this immediately, but I really needed to take some time to think it over so that I wouldn’t respond with something cliché. But even after several days of contemplation, the first thing I could come up with is “it gets better”. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing sense, I just mean that as a young person/teenager, everything is so much more acute and intense. Hormones are raging and the sense of self is labile and often unclear, this inherent instability of that age is magnified a million times when you add in the fucked up neurotransmitters that create bipolar disorder. It’s basically like PMS on crack 100% of the time and the depressive symptoms of bipolar make you believe that things will always be like that and there is no way anything could ever change. But, I can say from experience, once the hormones and chaos of adolescence wears off, you can begin to cultivate a more stable sense of self.
That’s not to say that cultivating this self doesn’t require work. When I got out of ED treatment at 20, where I finally received my bipolar diagnosis, I looked back at my adolescence and realized that everyone around me was dealing with an uncertain sense of who they were, but my experience was heightened to a more intense extent. After six weeks of a high dose of mood stabilizer, the veil over my eyes began to part and I could see clearly for the first time in my life that I wasn’t vastly different from the people around me and it made me feel a lot less marginalized and alone. Certainly, my peers who didn’t deal with mental illness had a relatively easier time navigating adolescence and figuring out who they were, but even though my experience was much more turbulent, I was extremely NORMAL. That realization was very important for me.
Now, at 25 after struggles and med changes, I can say that even the pain of the past five years has been so much less than that of ages 13-19. Does that mean that I don’t struggle? That I don’t contemplate suicide often? Absolutely not. But with therapy, medication, and most importantly time, I have proven to myself that there is more to who I am than a diagnosis, and I deserve more than a life filled with chaos and instability.
Let me be honest, I HATE TAKING MY MEDS. I hate it with every fiber of my being. I would give ANYTHING to not have to take all these pills every day, but I just think of what happens when I go off them, and I don’t want to end up in the hospital again. I want to be a productive member of society, and if that means I have to swallow a handful of pills right now, then I have to do it. Bipolar is like my cancer, I could choose to not take meds, not go to therapy, but I now realize that this is me making a conscious choice to lose everything I’ve worked so hard to build. Essentially, it is me choosing death over life. Because that’s the reality, bipolar puts us in a constant battle between life and death. And I spent a lot of time bemoaning this diagnosis and wishing I didn’t have it, even sometimes ignoring it. That’s very easy to do while manic, Manic!Kristen can convince herself that the doctors are lying and only trying to keep me from achieving my full potential, because Manic!Kristen doesn’t have much foresight. Manic!Kristen doesn’t realize that she won’t be around forever, that she’ll escalate to out of control terrified Manic!Kristen and, invariably, she’ll disappear and be replaced with Depressed!Kristen.
The one thing that both Manic!Kristen and Depressed!Kristen have in common is that they can’t see past the current moment. Manic!Kristen thinks she can do anything in the moment, Depressed!Kristen thinks that she’ll never escape the pain of the moment except through suicide. Neither of these Kristens actually contribute anything to my life because they only see what’s right in front of them. Stable!Kristen has goals, thinks rationally, and can tell herself that as long as she keeps moving forward, she’s leaving this current moment in the dust. Stable!Kristen knows that she controls her own future, and that is such an empowering feeling that it’s sometimes intoxicating.
The hardest part is that, in order to get that insight, you have to take a leap of faith. You have to trust your team. You have to realize that while still unstable, you can’t see the world as it really is, your perception of the world around you is clouded by constantly changing moods and the hopelessness that comes with it. In the moment, you believe that nothing can ever change, I’m here to tell you that it can….and it will, if you just surrender that desperate attempt to have ‘control’ because that’s just your illness trying to keep you sick. Don’t forget that mental illness colors your perception and experience, but it’s not a death sentence. You can get better. You can recover. Unfortunately, it’s not easy and it’s a choice you have to consciously make every day, but it is SO INCREDIBLY WORTH IT.
To summarize, I would first off remind you that when your hormones stop raging, things will become slightly less chaotic, and second I would encourage you to trust your team, take the medication, stay in therapy, don’t isolate yourself, and reach out for support whenever you need it. Isolation keeps you sick. Recovery isn’t something that ‘just happens’, and it can never occur in a vacuum, but take solace in the fact that YOU are the only person who controls your life and you are NEVER alone.
