There are times when you need to remind yourself that your world is not the most stable place in the universe and that, if you have bipolar, it is not your fault. You are not cursed with the mental illness that you have and that your life is worth changing, and you will not have to live in a world where you are on medication.
That is not a stigma or an entitlement, it is an understanding that bipolar people do not have a “normal life.” Most of us know that a bipolar person is not like the rest of us, and we know that you can be happy and fulfilled and not even be on medication. We know that you can live a rich life and still be on medication. You can have a great career, drive nice cars, and not be on medication. You can be successful without medication and still be happy.
We know that it takes a lot of work to be bipolar, and that it’s not like most forms of depression. And we understand that most people don’t have a choice about whether or not they’re bipolar. We know that it’s not about the medication, it’s about our own patterns of thinking and feeling.
Bipolar disorder isn’t a mental illness, it is a mood disorder. Like, if you are depressed, you are bipolar. If you are not depressed, you are not bipolar. If you are angry you are bipolar. If you are sad you are bipolar. If you get sad but you have positive emotions about yourself, you are bipolar. If you get sad but you have negative emotions about yourself, you are bipolar.
Now, if you are bipolar, you may feel as if you dont have a personality. You feel as if you are a complete monstrosity of a person. You feel as if you need a psychiatrist to fix you up.
I have a lot of experience with bipolar disorder and its symptoms. I have to say that I am not a fan of the term “bipolar,” because it implies that you can’t even be happy. In reality, depression and hypomania are two sides of the same coin. That is, a person with depression can still be happy, whereas a person who is hypomanic is unable to be normal.
As a person with bipolar disorder, you will often suffer from periods of extreme mood swings and extreme “feeling off”. I have had many periods of this (in my case, the periods lasted for years) and I have experienced them to be incredibly sad and awful. I can’t say that I was ever in a state of hypomania, but I was in a period where I was extremely sad all the time. I was never able to be normal.
I have to admit, I had my own periods where I was extremely sad all the time too. As I was going through a phase of bipolar disorder, I found it extremely difficult to be normal, and that is probably one of the things I found hardest about myself. But I know that as I get into recovery and get my life back to where it needs to be, I will not be able to be normal. And with that comes the question of what I can accomplish in recovery.
We talked to a recovering bipolar patient named Adam who told us that when he was feeling sad, it was often because he was having a particularly bad day. He wanted to have a good day, but he was having a particularly bad day. And just to be sure, he took a blood test to see if he was bipolar and he was.
It turns out that Adam experienced the same thing when he was depressed. When he felt sad, he would often have trouble seeing the things around him. It is an interesting case where we see there is a clear relationship between depression and bipolar disorder, but also some other issues we see in both. For instance, when Adam was depressed, he would frequently get angry at people, he would get angry with the world, and he would often have trouble focusing on his work.