Let’s Celebrate Differences

Article

By Sarah-Kathleen
June 22, 2017

Bipolar makes you feel things in extremes- and often causes you to be labelled as ‘too intense’ or ‘too sensitive’.



At 18 years old I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II and a few months later Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was shattering. I had just come to terms with mental illness after being diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, several years prior. That in its self-took 5 years to do. It felt as if the moment I had become ok with depression and anxiety, it was taken away from me.I believed bipolar disorder was for crazy people that lived in asylums and PTSD was for soldiers, not someone who had been a victim of sexual assault. It took me a long time to come to terms with my new diagnosis but one of the most valuable things I was told was that I feel and process things on a different spectrum to others. So instead of being ‘too intense’ ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too aggressive’ it was that the way people with bipolar disorder experience and express emotions are not like others. Bipolar disorder is an illness that affects our emotions. It is marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy, and behavior.

I feel things in extremes, I never am ambivalent over something. I remember as a child and a teenager being pulled aside by teachers because I spoke not only too much but I spoke my mind too much and ‘let my emotions get the better of me’. I had my sensitivity put down to numerous things such as it was normal behavior for my star sign, the fact I’m an only child or that I’m just overly fragile and should stop taking things to heart.

The thing is, I wish being this way was as simple and easy as it is to write this. I am the only person in my family with a mental illness and whilst people around me try to be supportive, it is something they will never truly understand. It is extremely isolating and isn’t something I can grow out of. I find having bipolar disorder to be indescribable and hard to cope with. Most of the time I don’t know why things set me off and trying to explain situations to others makes me feel worse. Try explaining to someone that when walking from the train station to university, you had a panic attack because every single person was actually watching every single move you made or why you got so furious and engulfed with rage at the person driving in front of you just because of the make of their car or even why you woke up uncontrollably crying and it took someone actually holding you for an hour to make you feel somewhat in control of yourself.

This lends me back to what I began this piece with: bipolar disorder means you are different to the person standing next to you because of the way you feel and process emotions. I tell myself this so many times a day and it still helps me cope with the isolation and confusion I experience.

My other go to is Stephen Fry’s The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive. It reassures me that whilst I might feel isolated I am not the only one who is going through this. Seeing others talk about their struggles especially Stephen Fry and Carrie Fisher, the two people I admire out of everyone, sharing their episodes assures me that I am not the freak that everyone must think I am because I can’t be in a room with more than forty people or I’ll go into an episode. I love it so much that I think every single person that has a loved one with bipolar disorder needs to watch it. I could go on and on about how important this documentary is and whilst this piece has been more of a reflection of how I experience having bipolar disorder, I hope it does what reading and hearing other people’s writing on bipolar; reassure you that you are not alone.

So I will leave this piece with words that Stephen ends on. They really comfort me and hopefully it will to others:

‘I know I have a chronic illness that will be with me for the rest of my life, but it is sort of like asthma but in the while its always going to be there, the key for most people is in finding ways of reducing the attacks and make them less severe – and that’s where treatment comes in’.