Patient Perspectives: Bipolar disorder

[SERIOUS MUSIC] You know, my mom started reading the pamphlets and she's like, oh my god, I always called you my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde child.

And I was like, mom, that's like an analogy for bipolar disorder. But it just it just shows you that she had no idea. A game plan is so incredibly vital

because you can't fix what you're not trying to fix.

Even before your diagnosis, what things made you really think about, maybe something may be going on wrong here, and I may need to get some help.

My symptoms started when I was in sixth grade. And I remember waking up one morning and just not being able to get up.

I literally spent all day in bed completely in the darkness and realized there's something wrong with me,

but I don't know what it is. So I didn't think anything was wrong with me. I just thought I was a jerk. I mean, honestly, my family tried

to punish the symptoms of bipolar disorder out of me, right? So I just thought that I was having trouble--

I don't know-- being good. It never occurred to me that anything was wrong with me that wasn't my own doing until I ended up in a,

you know, I was committed to a psychiatric hospital. And then people started explaining to me, they're like, well, no, this is an illness.

This is part of a symptom. You have bipolar disorder. You need help. For the most part-- I mean, I've had waves of depression my entire life.

It was so overwhelming that I was just like, there is something really wrong here. Like, I need to start figuring this out.

So 2014 is when I started in therapy. But didn't get diagnosed until 2018. So I spent four years, like, doing this work of like,

OK, maybe it's these other trauma issues, when, yeah, it was that, but it was also because I'm bipolar.

I would say for me, I definitely didn't realize something was really wrong with me. I think like Gabe, I think I thought,

for the first part of my life, I thought it was just me, and those are just how I was. But my eye opening thing was going

into my sophomore year of college and I actually suffered a knee injury.

And that sent me-- that was the beginning of my psychotic break, I would say. But I was hospitalized, as well.

So I definitely could see how that's a that's a traumatic event within itself

having to go to the hospital. So I just assumed that everyone was thinking about suicide, contemplating ending their lives.

And this was this was just my experience. So like I said, I thought I was a jerk. So one day I ran across somebody and she

recognized the symptoms of suicidality, of bipolar disorder. And she was like, there's something really off

about this guy. She said, are you planning on killing yourself? I said, yes. She freaked out a little and panicked and said,

you need to go to the emergency room. I said, the emergency room? I'm not sick. The emergency room is, like, for a heart attack

or when you fall off your roof-- car accident. Like, you're nuts, lady. I actually thought she was the crazy one.

You know, people who are suicidal need to go to the emergency room. It blew my entire world view.

If I didn't run into her, I would not be sitting here. I was a freshman. And I was trying to just assimilate, make friends and get

good grades. But my manic episode crept up. So I had to reach psychosis and completely just

lose complete touch with and then be hospitalized. There's just terms and things you don't understand.

And it's rough. It's rough. For me, I really don't experience much of the mania. But it's just constant sadness, like, all the time.

And when I do experience any of those manic symptoms, it's usually part of a mixed episode, which I don't know if you guys have experienced those,

but those are a trip. And I just was so frenetic, like with energy, like I just could not do enough to get the energy out

of my body, but was also really, really sad at the same time. And so I wrote, like, six pages of just like-- fired off all

this stuff that I was feeling. And I brought it to my therapist. And she was like, OK, so we need to discuss what's happening here.

And that's when I finally got a diagnosis, which was so helpful because now I had a vocabulary to explain what was going on.