Congratulations, you've won bipolar disorder
When it comes to mental illness, you would be surprised how many people don't have a diagnosis. For me, a diagnosis of bipolar 1 answered a lot of questions about my past.
It wasn’t just that I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I had been diagnosed with BIPOLAR ONE (the most severe!) I may not win much else in life, but at least I had finally been given a diagnosis after almost two decades of irregular instability. This unnamed mental illness had popped up since my early 20s, and I’m just over 40 now, so you can imagine roughly two decades of not knowing what’s wrong with you kind of makes you give up on things.
One thing that I definitely gave up on was doctors and medical professionals. It wasn’t anything against them, I just honestly never received a clear diagnosis after being hospitalised in my twenties. That left me floating along thinking maybe nothing is wrong with me because it wasn’t happening all the time.
Fas forward nearly two decades later and after a rather severe mixed episode (switching between mania and depression) I ended up in hospital again. Thankfully this time I eventually ended up in the hands of Doctor Hall and Nurse Aaron. They had really gone through my records (what there was, as I had avoided doctors for many years) and my symptoms.
“You have bipolar one” Doctor Hall said.
It was such a big deal for me I wanted to jump out of my seat, but having a mental illness means you try to always appear sane. I know I should have been a bit depressed about having a mental illness diagnosis but you don’t know my history. I’m someone that if anything ever happened to me and they just happened to write a news article about me it would probably include “history of mental illness” in the description of me.
I have known for a while something was wrong with me, but generally I managed it and just lived with it. I didn’t have a name for it. I had suspicions of different things, but really had no idea and to be honest bipolar was not something that had come up for me. Now at long last when someone angrily asks “what the hell is wrong with you?” I can now reply I have bipolar affective disorder.
Not that I write this to use my mental illness as an excuse, it isn’t. It’s an explanation. Caused most likely from instability in my life when I was younger, it is something that has been on this journey we call life along with me. There is so much power in being able to name your demons, and Doctor Hall and Nurse Aaron gave me that power and I am forever grateful as a father, a writer and most importantly a husband.
So I hope to all of you medical professionals that have to share such sad news like a mental illness diagnosis, please know it doesn’t make all of us unhappy. One of the happiest moments in my life.
Thank you all for reading. I am new to substack and I am just beginning to write about some of my mental health journey. I leave out some details because that’s my business, however, I hope to share some of these stories to share with others going through similar experiences.
KJ, thanks for being so vulnerable in sharing your experience. Vulnerability is one of the ways we walk into our true power.