As someone who’s lived with Bipolar Disorder for over 30 years, I know firsthand how complicated mental health is. Stigma often drives incorrect, preconceived notions that make things harder on all of us. It affects our personal and professional lives. It even affects the way some health and social services providers treat us.
So, I want to tell you seven things that I wish people knew about Bipolar Disorder. Let’s reduce the stigma.
1. Bipolar Disorder needs some form of treatment and management.
“Bipolar Disorder gets worse with age” is a saying you often hear in recovery spaces. Statements can change the more they’re repeated, sometimes losing important context along the way. The actual statement should be, “Untreated Bipolar Disorder gets worse with age.”
Why? Brain plasticity. The more you use specific parts of your brain, the stronger and more efficient those parts become. That’s not always a good thing. The more you swing manic, the stronger those parts of the brain become, which makes it easier to swing manic, which strengthens those parts of the brain, and so on.
Medical News Today informs us that effective treatment slows down or stops this process altogether. That’s why it’s so important to act early on. It may not be bad right now, but left untreated is paving the way for things to be terrible years ahead.
2. Bipolar Disorder can be mild to severe.
Bipolar Disorder is a mental illness with a wide scope. On one end, it’s not so severe and may be manageable with minimal help. On the other hand, you have severity that absolutely requires medication, or else you can wind up dead, as an in-patient, or in jail.
However, there is an important piece of context missing in the statement, “Bipolar Disorder can be mild to severe.” That important piece of context is how people interpret the word “mild.” They tend to think, “Oh! It’s mild! No big deal!”
Mild to severe in the context of Bipolar Disorder is much like a fire. “Mild” is like a house fire, whereas “severe” is more like a wildfire. Both are really bad! A house fire will still burn your life to ashes if left unchecked.
3. Describing Bipolar Disorder as ups and downs isn’t accurate.
Bipolar Disorder is most often described as a mental illness of ups and downs. People interpret the “ups” of Bipolar Disorder as euphoria. They use euphoria interchangeably with mania because they just don’t know any better.
You can experience hypomania and mania without euphoria, and it’s absolutely awful. It can be too much anxiety, rage, hostility, lack of impulse control, and so much more. As this study shows, increased energy and activity are a key part of mania, not mood changes.
Not only that, but the way people tend to view the “ups” of Bipolar Disorder isn’t even accurate. It’s a nice, almost romantic story when the free spirit decides to set aside their life, quit their job, and travel! It’s a story that a lot of people want because it does sound like an amazing experience. However, there can be context that is left out.
Alright, so the free spirit decided to free spirit away on an adventure. However, what they left out is that they cleaned out their bank account, ran up $25,000 in debt, quit the career they’d been building for a decade, and left their spouse and three kids behind with no way to make the mortgage or even buy food. All this because their disconnect from reality told them they needed to go.
How does anyone come back from that once they crash back down into reality? There are too many people who need the answer.
4. Lifestyle changes can reduce the intensity of symptoms.
People with mental illness are told ad nauseam by uninformed people that lifestyle changes can “cure” their mental illness. Informed people constantly tell us that lifestyle changes can help you manage mental illness, and that part is true.
As someone who has spent far too many times in the hole of depression, in the cynicism and negativity that mental illness and trauma creates, it sounded so stupid. Like, really? I’ve got these terrible things going on in my head, and things like eating healthier, sleeping more consistently, and getting out of the house can help?
Unfortunately, they’re right. They won’t fix you, but they can help. You may still need treatment through medication or therapy, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that these lifestyle changes can have a dramatic effect on your brain and body chemistry for the better.
Sobriety is one of the best things you can do for your mental health.
Personally, my severe depression went away when I gave up pot. It’s a depressant, and it was a big reason for my depression. I thought it was helping me because it let me survive some dark times, and that’s true. It did. But it’s also true that it was making me worse in the long term.
Talk to a doctor first if you want to get clean. It’s not a secret that withdrawing from alcohol can cause seizures in some cases. You may need medical oversight or help.
5. Treatment and management is not one-size-fits-all.
Treatment and management for Bipolar Disorder are different for everyone. Different people need different things. However, that’s not what you often hear in communities or from your peers. Instead, you hear things like, “If you have Bipolar Disorder, you need to be medicated.”
Many people do need medication to manage and control Bipolar Disorder. For some, medication is the difference between life and death, productivity or winding up on the streets. For some, medication is absolutely mandatory, but that doesn’t mean it is for everyone.
People with less intense Bipolar Disorder may be able to get away with self-management practices and/or therapy. Furthermore, for some people, the more they understand their Bipolar Disorder, triggers, and management, the easier it is to manage.
A good rule of thumb – if anyone tells you that you “need” something, it’s a good sign to be skeptical of them. They may believe that or need it for their own treatment, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. The only way to figure that out is with trained mental health professionals.
6. Therapy can help with more than management and tools.
It’s common knowledge that you can learn valuable management skills in therapy. It’s common knowledge that you can use therapy as a place to process difficult emotions privately. But, there is a lesser known use of therapy that can benefit people with chronic mental illness.
Living with a chronic mental illness changes the way you perceive and interact with the world. Habits and actions come from perception, and perception gets skewed with mental illness. In my case, I lived for over 15 years with undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder, heavy on the depression side.
I quickly learned that the coping mechanisms and perceptions that had been forced on me by mental illness in all of those years could no longer serve me. I had to work on changing the perceptions and beliefs that my mental illness had created.
I’ll give you a stark example. Depression convinced me that no one cared, that no one ever cared. I continued to believe that even when a total stranger sat down with me outside of a dive bar when I was clearly not doing well. I continued to believe that even though I had a social worker who busted their ass to get me help, a psych who gave me a grocery bag of free samples of my medication when I couldn’t afford it, when other mentally ill people tried to comfort me.
And I am so fortunate to have a family that would have helped me if I had known how to ask.
It took a therapist reframing my experiences through their neutral perspective to open my eyes, and it took tools I learned in therapy to make new perspectives stick.
7. People with Bipolar Disorder can recover.
Life looks bleak when you’re going through the worst of what Bipolar Disorder has to offer. It’s far too easy to destroy your life while escalated or drown in depression while cycling, on top of any other mental health issues you may have.
But understand this: people with Bipolar Disorder can recover. They can reach a point where they can feel good without mania, feel emotions without depression, and live a life almost like anyone else. Of course, we can’t be rid of Bipolar Disorder completely, but it can be managed to varying degrees.
Final thoughts…
Don’t give up hope for yourself or your loved one. It can get better. It can be so difficult, but personally, I absolutely believe that everyone can improve their quality of life with appropriate resources and support.
That’s what my life and experience have shown me, and I hope it shows you, too.
