Tag Archives: mental illness

“normal” vs. “bipolar” = “stigma”

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“normal” vs. “bipolar” = “stigma”
by jennifer kiley

a symbol for support and caring

i started writing a response to a comment on my blog and it turned out longer then i expected and i turned it into a post. what they said so inspired me that i ended up with this post, talking about “normal” vs “bipolar” or “mentally ill” is something that cannot be measured. and how we are exhibited in films and on tv is such an exaggeration. that is why society cannot see who we are who have a psych chart with one or multiple diagnoses.

i will not allow someone to judge me b/c of what my chart says. if someone wants to judge then i don’t feel that they are the kind of person i would want in my life. it may be hard for those in our life to deal with the effects of our diagnosis/es but that’s what therapy is for, to learn how to adjust. if someone loves you they will be willing to work on understanding. and adjust as you adjust to the effects of your bipolar or whatever your diagnosis might be. i know it isn’t easy for them but it isn’t easy for us either. there really isn’t any such thing as “normal.”

when i was a teenager and started private therapy, it was one of the best days of my life. i found someone who wanted to help me understand who i am. at that time, i was always worried that i would go crazy. what put that into my head, i am not sure. shortly after starting in therapy my younger brother had a nervous breakdown. that didn’t help with what was going on inside my mind. where did i get the notion that i could go crazy?

sometimes it feels that way for everyone
it’s called being stressed out

i really don’t remember but i do know i always felt so outside of all the people around me. my family was really f@cked up. this i recognized. when i was still a teenager my therapist helped me to get it together enough to move out of their house. at that time in therapy, i was just dealing with the trauma of my childhood. the idea of labeling what was wrong with me never came up. since then, however, i have been given so many different labels, but none of them was “normal.”

sylvia plath

i would say it was easier to understand myself when i knew “why” and “what” was going on inside of me. labels may cause someone to be “stigmatized” by society but for me it helped me to understand myself more clearly. when i found out long after i was given the diagnosis of bipolar, at first, it was quite a shock, but then i read as many books and articles on it. i think i was lucky b/c the first book i read was “Touching Fire,” written by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. it’s a brilliant book and talks all about the creative/artistic temperament of someone with bipolar. she examines the lives of famous artists, writers, poets, musicians who were bipolar. it effected me in a good way and made it easier to accept having bipolar. it puts one in good company.

virginia woolf (1902)

maybe i have a grandiose attitude, but i say f@ck you to those in society that don’t try to understand the differences of every human on this planet. to judge someone for whatever reason, is not right. when i finally realized i was a lesbian, i was stunned at first, then accepting, then i freaked out and wanted to commit suicide but eventually i found that acceptance of myself again and felt overjoyed that i was GAY. the same kind of acceptance has come with everything in my life, even my psych diagnoses.

edgar allen poe

am i overjoyed to get so depressed that all i want to do is die? NO! but then i know how creative i am able to be when i am in a hypomanic state. my partner may be driven a touch crazy when i am hypomanic b/c my thoughts come pouring out at the speed of light and switch all over the place. and my moods tumble out into anger or i will lose it for a moment and get into an argument. but i pull back as fast as i am able in order to get my behavior under control.

kurt cobain-i am an artist that uses words and music and the visual to express myself-but i hardly knew him yet was so saddened by his suicide and grieved his loss-my therapist could not even understand my feelings and now my partner does not get it-i think i felt a kinship with him-i knew his kind of pain-wanting and attempting to kill myself several times and in my thoughts all the time-it holds some kind of fascination and comfort to know there is always that way out

people that worry when they hear that you have a mental disorder, whatever it may be, should not assume from what they watch on tv or see in films, that if you are not totally “normal” or “sane” – what ever that is – that you will become violent or want to kill people or anything like that, have such a misconception of just what bipolar or any other diagnosis is. we are not those people you see in films or on tv. those are fictional creations and distortions but it is a large part of why the “stigma” is reinforced and “we” the “stigmatized” have to bear the distorted reputation in our lives.

lord byron-out on the edge and out of control

these people, whomever they are, who think we are “crazy” when we are just dealing with a disorder or illness like anyone who might have diabetes or cancer or multiple sclerosis. society accepts a medical condition and is quite understanding if they have any compassion. but somehow, when your body, where your brain is contained, has an illness that effects how you are able to function mentally, you are somehow like a leper, untouchable and too different to be an acceptable member of society.

stephen fry manic-depressive-well may commit suicide

in the far away past, we were sent to asylums, far away from what eyes could see. forgotten. or maybe, like in Jane Eyre, hidden in a locked room up in the attic. those days are past but not forgotten. we do, in our society, still lock up those who are “crazy” if they start acting different than “normal,” but b/c of health insurance, are released onto the street to live. unprotected and looked upon as the lost and homeless.

van gogh “starry night” c. 1889

we are actually able to function in many different ways. and are not a threat to society. all we want is acceptance and not to be looked at as less than anyone else that is categorized as “normal.” we are not “crazy,” we just have a different way of perceiving the world around us. we have our rights to be treated like the human beings that we are, no less no more.

pollock “number 8″

what we want is understanding and some compassion. not to be “stigmatized” b/c we are perceived as so different from anyone else. we are artists, poets, writers, politicians, philosophers, atheletes, musicians, psychiatrists, students of life, we are everyone, part of the 98%. the 99% and the 1%. we are here. we are proud. get use to it.

a – z famous people with bipolar disorder

famous people with bipolar disorder

my psychiatrist is spying on me and i’m not paranoid

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my psychiatrist is spying on me and i’m not paranoid
but if i was, and i am definitely not, paranoid
it doesn’t mean my psychiatrist is not spying on me

by jen kiley

a new addition to this post. i found out someone is spying on my posts and informed my former former therapist, the one who emotionally and psychologically used their position and their words to tortuously manipulate me into doubting my sense of reality and intuitive judgments. this informant and former former therapist passed this information along to the psychiatrist i was writing about in this post. she informed my current therapist that she knows what i have been writing in my blog posts. since i am an identity who on paper does not exist it is pretty pretty interesting that someone i do not know nor who should have no clue to who i am feels that they actually know who i am. i feel like capt. yossarian in the joseph heller novel ‘catch-22′ i exist therefore i am but i do not exist therefore who the hell thinks they know me. i can’t fly if i am crazy but i am crazy if i want to fly; and not wanting to fly proves that i am sane.

just what every stalked child who suffered child sexual abuse wants to feel.

the rest is the original post in which i have made some modifications.

where to begin: i have multiple diagnoses and recently found out that one of them is manic depression/bipolar (which was recorded many years ago on my psych chart but no one told me). I also have the following diagnoses: DID/MPD; Panic Disorder; Agoraphobia; C-PTSD; Major Depressive Illness plus Anxiety Disorder. The problem that i am dealing with right now is i lost my therapist, “to lose one’s therapist may be regarded as misfortune to lose two is carelessness.” (paraphrasing oscar wilde.) which is causing me extreme levels of pain and sadness which is driving me mad. i started seeing a new therapist who i asked to check out my psych records and she discovered the Bipolar Diagnosis. She wasn’t surprised because during our sessions i would go into a manic state and it is like a roller coaster ride. Since i found out about this new/old diagnosis i have been doing research. in the past I’ve seen several psychiatrists and psychotherapists and not until now did anyone tell me this was what was causing my deep depressions and suicidal ideations and just as magically i would go into a manic episode and not sleep; suffering from sleep deprivation; forgetting to eat; talking rapidly; so many thoughts needing to be expressed; sudden high energies of creativity [i am a writer and a poet.] forgetting to take my meds; mixing them up; in the past wild spending; what i am trying to say is all the symptoms are there but i have a psychiatrist who (one) told my medical provider that i am imagining my DID (was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist earlier on in my life and have all the signs of DID/MPD) and now when i asked her to alter my meds to help deal with my manic depression she told me that i did not have bipolar disorder. that it was the trauma i suffered in my life that was causing all these symptoms. Her reasoning is that i have never exhibited my symptoms in her office. well my therapist told me today that i am bipolar and my partner has witnessed all of this behavior including the DID. she’s met my alters over the years. they would switch out all the time around her without any awareness by me. i wasn’t told i had DID/MPD until several years ago. she has also witnessed the bipolar. my new therapist sees me twice a week and i am manic as hell. she told me that my psychiatrist never witnessed this behavior because for such a long time i have been totally unemotional after having a major mental and emotional breakdown. so except for the deep depressions and feelings of suicide and thinking about how i would do it to the point that my partner would hide the knives i felt nothing. but when i started seeing the therapist before her, she was working with me and she was starting to bring to the surface my emotions. we worked together to break through the barriers i had built up to protect myself from feeling pain and now after she abandoned me my emotions are in full release mode. when i get depressed it is so severe that i want to kill myself. this occurs several times a week and sometimes several times a day. i never know how i will feel or what will trigger my mood changes. i have a difficult time remembering what i have even done during the times of my manic episodes which lead to high levels of creativity and euphoria and i become so engaged in my projects. on any given day i never know what it is i will be doing but i cannot stop once i get started, unless my body just gives out and i find that i have lost consciousness because i am so exhausted. now to the question: what do i do with a psychiatrist who does not acknowledge my diagnoses and just tells me to set alarms and just go to bed on time. i do not feel i have any control over that. i’m not crazy about the idea of taking anymore meds than i do and i take a great many psych and medical medications 6 times a day and over 20 pills a day, one of which is an anti-depressant. from what i have read taking an anti-depressant without a mood stabilizer acerbates the manic states. i see my psychiatrist soon. she will not do anything for me until we meet ftf (face to face) but the last several times we have met we have just argued and the last time we met i was in a suicidal state which she caused to make more severe. i use to trust her but i am feeling she just doesn’t get me and is unaware of how she most recently effected me. i am suicidal quite a bit and depressed but i am on an anti-depressant and have been on different ones over the past many years. before that i use to self medicate with marijuana from the time i was a teenager and alcohol and other mind altering drugs. there is bipolar in my family. my younger brother has been diagnosed with it and with paranoid schizophrenia and my uncle committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, just like ernest hemingway. he may have been a fan, i really don’t know, my aunt died in a mental institution in her late 40s and my mother was completely off the f@#king wall emotionally and extremely abusive and emotionally unpredictable. I am at a loss. My therapist will be seeing my psychiatrist at an all group meeting for the counseling center i go to and plans on speaking with her. my new therapist said that i am starting to have emotions and i am expressing them. the dam has broken.

i want to add to my previous comment that i have seen a multitudinous number of psychotherapists since i was 19 and quite a large number of psychiatrists, one who actually had a nervous breakdown while treating me and prescribing the wrong medication which caused me to overdose. needed the emergency room on that one because after drinking my lunch and popping the pills he prescribed that were not relieving my anxiety which is what they were suppose to do i became more and more agitated so that when i got back to work one of my alters crawled under the desk and wouldn’t come out. this was long before we knew anything about the DID/MPD. Before and since then we have acted on 3 suicide attempts and have been in danger of doing physical harm to ourselves and have thoughts of suicide on a regular and continual basis.

to add to all this my best friend who died suddenly at a young age from unknown causes whom i met at the same time as the therapist i was seeing before my current one. together the three of us became very close and we had a continuing connection through texting and phone calls and i would always run into her at the counseling center where we both met our own therapists. she was the only person i trusted sharing my feelings with and she was helping me through the loss of my former therapist until she died. my new therapist had to break the news to me over the telephone after leaving me a cryptic message on my voicemail earlier on the same day: “there is something i want to talk to you about.” i immediately jumped to the conclusion that i had done something terribly wrong and she wanted to terminate therapy with me. when we finally connected she told me she had bad news to tell me. my mind went in every direction. first thought was that something terrible had happened to my former therapist that i loved so much and missed so much. my second thought was that she really was going to end our therapeutic relationship but the worse news was yet to come when she said the name of my friend and that she had died. it was like hearing an echo from a distance. i know i heard the name wrong and said oh no not her. i thought she said the name of my former therapist but then it came streaming into my consciousness that it was my friend who had died. there was no relief in any of this, just shock and disbelief. i couldn’t imagine my friend not being there. earlier that morning around 3am i was going to text her but then i remembered she had told me that her cell phone would wake her up so i put it off and told myself that i would text her or call her later in the day after i got some sleep. now i wish i had texted her. maybe i would have woken her up and she would not have died. whatever had killed her might have been chased away. i think it was an aneurysm. she had been having headaches for a very long time and no one seemed to be able to find out what was the problem. she is gone now. i never got to tell her about the bipolar but maybe she figured it out. my partner did before i ever told her. we did share an abusive childhood and DID/MPD. she lived a difficult life but she had two young girls that she really loved. they will also miss her. and she had many friends she made through the counseling center we both visited often. i’ll never see her face again. she was the only one any of us trusted there. everyone else scared us or made us feel uncomfortable.

so where do i go from here. i write my poems; collect my quotes; write my manuscript; work on my other writing projects with the help of all of us inside and i work with my new therapist to try to get help for all the madness that i have to work through.