CN: bipolar disorder, therapy, medication, family dynamics
Don’t fret – I’m not going to write 31 posts about involuntary civil commitments.
My first accurate diagnosis was Bipolar Disorder. Originally, I was type II because I experienced hypomanic episodes rather than full blow mania. When I had a truly terrifying experience in 2010/2011, I was rediagnosed as type I. Type II is not less serious, it isn’t ‘bipolar light.’ The deep depressive episodes can be life-threatening and are painful.
It is a chronic illness that can be fatal. It shortens life spans. It requires significant effort to manage, but it can be managed.
Sticking with my treatment plan, getting good sleep, caring for physical health, and having a strong support system of friends. That last one is particularly important and challenging because I don’t have any close living family members.
I also tend to experience rapid cycling (going up and down often) and/or mixed episodes. That’s hard to suss out and doesn’t matter because they are so similar, treated the same, etc.
This is just my experience and the information pieced togther to help me understand my bipolar diagnosis. You should always seek help from a credible professional to confirm a diagnosis and get treatment that’s appropriate for you. Don’t rely on WebMD.
A core part of my experience is that I recognized something was wrong and repeatedly asked my parents to send me to a therapist. I was a pretty high functioning teen – good grades, activities, part-time jobs, etc. My future was bright.
But I felt horrible. I knew my moods were up and down, but I had no language to explain. I was not necessarily a good friend because of my irritability. I often had periods that I described as anguish where I did the bare minimum. Being a normal teen (versus just high functioning) was something I pursued relentlessly. It wasn’t about being popular.
It was about stuffing down the sense that I was broken, damaged even and proving that was not the case. I figured out that these feelings were cyclical so I just had to hang on until things got better. Knowing, of course, that they would get hard again. I shouldn’t have had to figure this out for myself.
Now this narrative is complicated because I was also a very anxious teen struggling with an unacknowledged sexually violent traumatic childhood at the hands of my grandmonster. This was all bound together so pulling apart the threads is nearly impossible. And not especially helpful because they are permanently melded into my life now. None can be cured so where something begins and something ends isn’t necessarily useful.
So I knew something was wrong. My mother was in the mental health system and she loved her therapists, so you would think my family would respond well to my request to see my own provider.
They did not. They downplayed my anguish and thought my good grades were a sign that I was fine. It wasn’t cruelty on their part. Now I see that their damage from the family’s sexually violent cult required protecting the predator and avoiding anyone breaking the silence. My mother had encephalitis as a child so that was likely a source of her depression. That was before she became part of the abusive dynamic. It was a legitimate and historic medical issue, like her seizure disorder.
It was not a source of shame. I was a source of shame.
My mother was aghast that she might have ‘passed down’ her disease. Ironically, it was far more likely I inherited this predisposition to bipolar disorder from my father whose undiagnosed mood swings and self-medication choices were red flags.
Either way, they could not admit their daughter might be mentally ill. I wasn’t claiming to be mentally ill, just asking to talk with a therapist. Life was hard and I wasn’t coping well.
My college was a Catholic school with a lovely health clinic for physical health. No mental health supports. No referrals. Nothing. They would send us to infirmary for a day or two to have a little rest. True story.
I was still a good student, a high functioning college student – good grades, PT jobs, activities, internship. I had grown used to the feeling of being broken inside. Clearly the lack of access to a therapist was just one of those things.
Being away from the abusive cycle was good, of course, but it loosened the ties that contained everything. I began to slip a bit here and there, I was feeling things. But I was in a safe college environment.
When I started grad school, I found a therapist. I was misdiagnosed with unipolar depression – quite common for us – and prozac trigged hypomania. I didn’t know that was happening.
In 1996, I was finally properly diagnosed. In 2003, I was more conclusively diagnosed by a mood disorder practice. By then I was broken inside from 33 years of living this cyclical, destructive life. I could manage my symptoms and I could talk with someone. That was better, but I could never get back those years, never truly recover.
I would joke that I was ‘lucky’ I made it that for in life without abusing alcohol and drugs, or with an unwanted pregnancy. That was the hypomania speaking, but it wasn’t wrong.
What would my life look like if my parents supported my intution and set me up with a therapist as a young teen? Bipolar disorder can manifest at that age. What if I had been diagnosed, properly medicated, and in therapy all those years?
The stigma around therapy and medication is still very strong especially for kids. Well, the stigma is in the hearts and minds of the parents.
It is up to parents to do better in 2026 than mine did in 1986.
Is your resistance about your stuff? Going to therapy isn’t likely to harm your child or teen. At the very leart, they build a trusting relationship to express themselves and learn skills to cope with life’s challenges. If you are afraid of what they might say, that’s a strong indicator that therapy could help you.
If you silence your kids, trust me, they are still saying those things in their heads, alone, and without any support.
Not going to therapy can do significant harm for some children. Of course not every child or teen needs to go or has a mental illness. But how could you know? Is anyone screening – pediatrician, school, faith community? It no different than screening for vision, dental, or hearing.
The weight of having to wait over a decade to get any treatment and another decade to be properly diagnosed for treatment makes me very sad. Having people snap at me about not needing therapy as if I’ve suggested they self-immolate isn’t great either. The underlying themes of shame and fear twist through our relationships – it is hard to watch someone suffer and reject help. It is even harder to think what they would say if their kid asked.
But nothing hurts as much as the memory of my parents telling me that I didn’t need therapy, knowing now they were protecting everyone but me.