“Being open about my disorder has made me realise just how many people don’t understand what it means.”

I began to distance myself from a lot of kids my age when I was around eight years old because I was way more sensitive to emotional issues than others were, and was often excluded because of it.

The symptoms of bipolar range in a variety of ways, but I experimented with very risky behaviours from a young age such as hard drug use and self harm, experiencing very intense highs and lows to the extent where I had to be hospitalised multiple times.

I’d say the mania is the worst part of bipolar, with extreme outbursts of anger and grandiose delusions of being God, or being able to speak to the dead. The intensity of the emotions was the worst- I felt like I didn’t know who I was or what was real anymore.

Bipolar has severely affected my relationships. I wasn’t able to recognise the differences between friendships and romance, and often would become obsessed with anyone who showed any sort of kindness because of the isolation I felt.

The outbursts of anger and tendency to steal from people I cared about caused my family to distrust me and I had to change schools multiple times because, in their words, I was ‘a distraction to the students and staff’. I had to become home schooled for a certain amount of time and wasn’t able to make any real friends until I was about 17.

It took me a lot of therapy and self assessment to realise that it was myself causing the issues, and not everything else. At first, my mother didn’t want to believe that something could be wrong mentally and thought it was a hormonal issue, so she took me to a gynaecologist who was very understanding and seemed to be aware that this was far more than just hormones, and suggested we see a psychiatrist.

The first one I saw, seemed to just want to get the job done so to speak, she was very apathetic to the point where I don’t really even remember her too much. She gave me numerous medications, and when those didn’t work, she suggested a medical trial for a new bipolar medication for kids, and it was that doctor who realised I had Bipolar Type 1.

The medical trial doctors were very empathetic towards me, and I had a lot of questions. I was very young and didn’t really understand what having a mental disorder even meant, but they would let me read the DSM and explain that there is something in my head that causes it. I tended to ignore it for a while, and it wasn’t until I was much older that it hit me how much it really did affect my life.

The professionals I dealt with varied greatly, and I dealt with so many. The nurses at the hospital tended to be either kind and empathetic or completely cold and uncaring. My last psychiatrist and current therapist are who I credit with helping me so much, as they genuinely cared about me and my health and it motivated me to try harder. We realised that medications really didn’t help me, and if anything caused more issues than good, so they recommended I use cannabis, which has helped a significant amount.

Since my psychiatrist felt we no longer needed to see each other, I now see my therapist from childhood. I met her when I was 14 and she helped me solve the root of a lot of my traumas in order to soothe and manage the symptoms.

I’m very good at recognising the patterns within myself now, but it took me a little over a decade to get to this extent. I’d say what helped me the most was allowing myself to be alone, and realising that was okay. I delved into philosophy and the arts a lot and really tried to figure out who I was and why I do what I do, and that it’s okay to be bipolar.

I do a lot of holistic work, acupuncture and yoga. It helps me calm things down when the mania starts to creep in, or to help reset when I notice I’m getting too down on myself to help prevent the depressive episodes. It allows me to maintain this calm, neutral state for much longer.

I realised there weren’t a lot of people who were willing to talk about it, so I started to talk about it. In a way it helped me weed out the people who didn’t care and know who the ones who really did were, and their support means a whole lot to me.

Being open about my disorder has made me realise just how many people don’t understand what it means to be bipolar, especially type 1. I’ve had some friends with Type 2 who refused to believe the mania could get as bad as it could, because they’ve never experienced that, and I’ve had close loved ones feel that because I am not in a constant state of instability, that I must not actually be bipolar.

Yet when I do have episodes, they assume I’m overreacting or they have to ‘get away’ from me. It lead me to realise I really can’t lean on them for support when I thought I could, and that I couldn’t be as open with it as I thought. They often say how they don’t want to hear or talk about it, or automatically label you as insane or a liar.

It’s not very often that someone is genuinely open to listening and understanding about it. My mother (who suffers from an equally stigmatised disorder) is the one who took the time to defend and understand me, and my absolute best friend who gets the same hatred directed towards her. But it’s also given me a much greater empathy for those who are ostracised for things out of their control, and more motivation to speak out about it. In a way the hatred and misunderstanding is what motivates me to speak out more, so that others like me never have to face the same issues.

I wish people understood that I don’t want to hurt them, no one with bipolar disorder wants to engage in these risky behaviours, and none of us are intentionally trying to damage or bother people. We’re trying our best and that’s all anyone can really ask of us.

I wish people generally were more open to hearing people out with these disorders instead of writing it off because it’s difficult to listen to. It’s difficult for us to live like this at times and all we want is for people to understand we just want to be loved like anyone else does.

I just wish people were able to feel okay to be themselves, regardless of who that is or what they have.

Everyone, I feel, is deserving of love.