How Considerably Is Me, and How Considerably Is My Bipolar Dysfunction?

I a short while ago acquired an email from a person of my viewers, who has just been diagnosed as bipolar. She is sad about the prognosis, she claims, simply because it can make her sense like she is absolutely nothing more than “a selection of indicators.” She worries that she no more time has an identity simply because she doesn’t know how to differentiate involving herself and the ailment. How a great deal is basically who she is, and how much is her bipolar disorder?

I get it. I’ve struggled with that very same dilemma, and I know a lot of other men and women have, far too. It’s extremely really hard from time to time to figure out whether my moods are in fact bipolar signs or symptoms. Take this morning: I was scrambling some eggs while listening to new music when a tune I like (“Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello) came on. I commenced to dance and sing along with a wooden spoon as my would-be mic. In tribute to the lyrics, I pumped my arms up more than my head and spun all-around and all-around till I was dizzy.

A truck went by my kitchen area window, and the driver noticed me gyrating by itself in my kitchen area. He grinned and honked. I stopped, disgrace-faced, mainly because I felt I’d been caught accomplishing something improper. Oh, no—was I sensation also joyful for no clear superior purpose? Was it only for the reason that I like Elvis Costello, or was it a precursor to manic euphoria? Yikes! Really should I get in touch with my medical professional?

The exact same thing transpires to me with disappointment. Through the recent spate of storms in Southern California, several trees on my hillside toppled. The rains look to be in excess of now, but I cannot prevent mourning the decline of those trees. Nobody was damage, my residence is intact, and there is no legit purpose for me to continue to be so unhappy. Yet, I sense an ache in my coronary heart that was not there just before. Is it feasible I have absent above to the dim facet and invited depression in?

When is it mental illness, and when is it just lifestyle?

Which is a single of the biggest issues of becoming bipolar: You always have to be on guard, cross-examining your inner thoughts to make certain you are not lacking some thing that genuinely ought to be medicated. But I know now—a awareness gleaned from several many years of experience—not to enable suspect indicators manifest for also long. I can do terrible items to my life when I’m full-blown manic, like shelling out actually all my funds or inviting full strangers into my mattress. It is improved to catch myself on the upswing in advance of I wreck my funds or my interactions once again. Likewise, if I allow melancholy to fester, I know from past background that I’m most likely to develop into suicidal, and I might even act on that despair. A phone to my psychiatrist and a tweak of my meds is a significantly safer alternate.

Some people today have instructed me I’m overreacting and that my acute self-recognition is truly an harmful self-absorption. I’d alternatively not have to confirm them wrong, so I’ve discovered to disregard that criticism. But it is taken me years to get to this point—years of questioning no matter if I’m being properly careful or irrespective of whether I’m just a covert narcissist who thinks way too significantly about her possess feelings. Bipolar condition is challenging sufficient without the need of having to defend your proactive habits to control it.

As for discerning one’s identity aside from the disease, that can be problematic, much too. Even for people without bipolar disorder, identity can be a condition-shifter, a trickster that is challenging to capture. For me, it is constantly evolving—and that helps make it hard to pin down exactly where I commence and my health issues finishes. But I really don’t really feel outlined by my diagnosis any a lot more than I sense defined by my love of Star Trek or my enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes. When persons simply call me a Trekkie or a Sherlockian, I know they really do not necessarily mean that is all I am. Why ought to remaining bipolar be any distinctive?

So to my reader who just obtained identified, I want to say, rest. Living with the illness gets simpler as time goes by. Once you study what your cycles generally look like, you will start out to really feel extra at household in your physique and head. The human being you were in advance of you listened to “You have bipolar disorder” however exists. She may perhaps just be hiding out between your indications, like a wildflower in a industry of grass.