bipolar
Bipolar disorder; understanding the highs, the lows and the in between.
Touched with Fire
I had read the book, all 260 pages, in a day. It was at the recommendation of a friend of mine, who was, like me, diagnosed bipolar. Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison explores the marriage between artistic temperament and mental illness. It is never specified in the book as to whether the fire is the creativity or the illness, or both. Mind you, the book makes no attempt to romanticize insanity, neither do I in writing this article. What it does do is document the clinical and quantifiable presence of psychotic illnesses in poets, artists, writers, playwrights and even mathematicians.
By Ezra Berkman4 years ago in Psyche
How I Lost and Regained the Sparkle in My Eye
Upon my diagnosis of bipolar 2 at 21, I no longer knew who I was. Everything I had thought about myself shifted through the lens of insanity. For example, I viewed my excessive energy to work 40-50 hours, sing in a choir, perform a play, and attend young adult activities during summer breaks as mania, and moments of anger, irritability, and tears as depression. Were my creativity, brilliance, and spontaneity only a product of mania? Did that mean depression was my "normal"?
By Eileen Davis4 years ago in Psyche
The Pain in My Heart Pushed Me to Start the Speaking Bipolar Site. Top Story - December 2021.
“And he's bipolar. You know what that means.” My boss was 10 minutes into his gossip fest. Today's victim was one of his oldest friends. I heard a litany of all the things his friend had done wrong, and all the poor choices he had made. My boss boasted of their 20-year friendship, but I couldn't help but wonder if it really was a friendship.
By Scott Ninneman4 years ago in Psyche
A Moment in my Mind
She rode that feeling like it was wind beneath her wings, carrying her high over the mountains until they became too modest and insignificant to notice. This was pure bliss, she thought. She finally grasped what everyone else seemed to have, but that which she could never acquire. Granted, it was a small taste, just a sample. She knew how precious and fleeting it could be but feared the harder she held on the faster it would slip away. She wanted to embrace it, nurture it, trust it…
By Falynne Johnson4 years ago in Psyche
Manic Marti (Part 1)
October 2018. Los Angeles. It was a difficult time. The #metoo movement was in full swing. I remember looking at Facebook and seeing the stories pop up, one after the other. It was powerful and devastating, important and triggering. Like so many other people, my own sexual abuse was very difficult to process because I couldn’t remember most of it. So when the stories started flooding in, it made me want to remember more, so I as well could participate in what looked like a cathartic way to release my own story while inspiring others to speak up.
By Marti Maley4 years ago in Psyche
Grad School and the Beast
I was originally accepted into University of New Mexico’s Master of Public Archaeology program starting fall of 2018. I was extremely proud of myself because I felt that all my hard work in undergraduate university had paid off. At the same time, however, I was very confused and anxious about what I wanted to do or how I wanted to tackle the immense task of attending graduate school. When my professors and peers from undergrad would congratulate me for my admittance to grad school, instead of excited I felt… disassociated… like it wasn’t real. And not in a “too good to be true” kind of feeling, but in a nonplussed kind of feeling. I would even say things like “yeah, that ought to knock me down a few pegs”. I said this because during my undergraduate career I had been in honors societies, been the president of the anthropology clubs, assisted professors with their classes, mentored younger (and even sometimes older) freshmen, been an active member in local archaeology societies and clubs, served as a crew chief for my field schools and as a lead lab tech for my work study gig in the archaeology lab, and had even started working in cultural resource management before I graduated with a bachelors. All as a non-traditional student in my late 20s and early 30s, while working and taking care of a grandmother with dementia. But now, things were getting real. Especially the imposter’s syndrome.
By Sarah Foster4 years ago in Psyche
Snow In April
Snow on my birthday was the best possible gift Denver could have given me after the past five birthdays here. That is not to say that the others haven’t been beautiful in their own way, but instead to say that now, finally at 32, an age that I never thought I would reach, a blanket of soft, fresh, silent snow, is exactly what I wanted from Mother Nature.
By Kymi Parker4 years ago in Psyche
