The mental illness and bipolar video you need to watch

my name is Michael and today I'm gonna share my recovery story to instill hope give encouragement and inspire those who have a mental illness back in 2006 I was diagnosed with bipolar one disorder I had a eight month bout with full-blown mania and they ended up in a psychiatric hospital at the end of my stay in that psychiatric hospital my doctor said to me Michael you have a mental illness you're gonna have it for the rest of your life you're gonna be a medicine for the rest of your life he will probably go on disability you might have a hard time working the next year and a half was very difficult for me I tried to resume with my normal life tried to go back to work I was a schoolteacher unfortunately after a full-blown manic episode which I was in for eight months unfortunately you go down here to clinical depression and it was very very difficult to do anything so for the next year and a half I saw a psychiatrist 37 times and he put me on 14 different combinations of medicines I was on everything from seroquel to abilify to geodon to lithium to depakote to risperidone and the psychiatrist never ever mentioned the words hope he never worked mentioned the words recovery he would just change my medicines so after your year and a half of really struggling I made the decision to resign from my job and I moved back in with my parents and here I was 40 years old living with my parents sleeping and sleeping more and feeling sorry for myself and that's pretty much what I did for about two years it was very very difficult and after about two years of that my mother actually came down came into my room and said you know Michael I'm really worried about you I heard of a great doctor and I'd really like you to go see him he's very compassionate he and he knows a lot about mental illness so two days later I went to the doctor's office and when I went to the doctor's office the doctor's door was halfway open and I remember looking at the back of back of his head I could tell it he was old and he had these big old-school hearing aids in and I knocked on the door dr. he didn't turn around I knocked a little bit louder dr. he didn't turn around finally I was like dr. he finally turned around he looked at me with these big compassionate eyes big blue eyes and I don't know if you've ever seen eyes like that in your life it doesn't happen very often but you can just tell when you look at them that that person really cares about you so anyway I sat down and for the next 20 minutes I just went on and on about how sorry I was for myself where I felt sorry for myself and you know I had a house I had my career I had a marriage and now I had absolutely nothing so this went on for quite a while and I stopped and he looked at me and said Michael when you were teaching did you have any diabetics in your classroom and I looked at my said well yeah I did and I thought to myself you know what does this have to do with anything so you know he goes well tell me what you know about him so I did and I told him if they had you know problems with their sugar levels and some of them took insulin they had to really watch what they ate or they gonna get sick and the whole time I was doing this I thought why is he telling me this well after I told him about you know I'm tired diabetics he looked at me and he said is this any similar to bipolar disorder and I thought up for it I thought about it for a minute and I said well yeah it kind of is and he said well how so and I said well you know I have to take medicine I have to watch what I put my body because I know sometimes drugs and alcohol can be detrimental or not sometimes but you know all the time so I told him it was very similar and at that moment you know kind of a light switch went on for me and I just realized that you know it was something that happened to me I could control it I could manage it just like somebody who's diabetic and it made sense to me so after I was done talking to him he said you know Michael I want you to do one more thing for me and I said what's that he goes okay I know you're clinically depressed I know you're going through a hard time I want you to do three things for me I want you to get up at night in the morning I want you to take a shower and I want you to go for an eight minute walk things sound simple but keep in mind that I was clinically depressed and brushed my teeth taking a shower was very very difficult and he said you know Michael 9:00 in the morning tomorrow morning that alarms gonna go off and it's gonna be very difficult for you and he goes I want you to imagine you're reading the story to your daughter and you're both laughing and I thought about that for a minute and I just thought you know I know I'm doing the recovery for myself I want to get better for myself but I want to do it for my family I want to do it for my daughter and that was very powerful for me so the next day I did all those three things and that eight minute walk was one of the hardest things I've ever done I just thought one more step one more step and so he called me the next day and he says to me Michael did you do those three things and I said yes I did and there was carving on pause and I kind of smiled and I thought gosh you know the next time I'm clinically depressed I'm gonna do this or the next time I'm depressed I'm gonna do this I'm gonna set three small goals and I'm gonna accomplish those and it gave me quite a bit of confidence and he said good job he said I want you to do one more thing I said what's that he goes I want you to get everything you can about bipolar disorder I want you to go to the library and when she'd go on the Internet I want you to go to book stores and I want you to find everything you can about bipolar disorder so I did that I went to the library and welcome to Internet I went to a bookstore and I bought several books about bipolar disorder and I you know immerse myself in the process I learned about triggers I learned about sleep I learned about all the medicines I was on the seroquel the abilify the lithium the depakote the geodon and many more and I learned about what those medicines did to my body and did to me and it gave me power and I know they say knowledge is power but in this case it really was knowledge was power so you know after that I just got more confidence and I would set little goals for myself every day sometimes there would be three goals sometimes they'd be four goals I got more confidence I would exercise more and my recovery started to go uphill and so you know Here I am today I have a full-time job I have my own place and I know what I need to do to improve my recovery it's you know always have recovery for the rest of my life but I know what I need to do to stay healthy will it be easy no mental illness is horrible it's it's not fun at all but I know what I need to do to manage it looking back over the last 11 years I have learned a lot about myself I have learned a lot about mental illness and it's kind of interesting I could have got diagnosed a lot earlier in my life I got diagnosed when I was 37 years old and when I was 22 years old I was in boot camp and a lot of the stressors in boot camp triggered me to go into mania and actually I was diagnosed in boot camp and actually sent home I was diagnosed with personality disorder and I didn't realize I didn't know much about mental illness and I just kind of ignored it I just thought to myself I don't have a personality disorder so for the next 15 years I lived with bipolar undiagnosed bipolar and that was kind of interesting my life would have been a lot different if I was diagnosed you know what 22 I don't know what it would have looked like so anyway looking back over the last 11 years I've learned a lot and I'm just going to share some things I'm some observations some insights some opinions that I have about mental illness I'm not a doctor but I have read a lot about mental illness and I've lived with it and I of course still live with it now talking about medications I really think that medicines affect people differently you know I think people of course have different body compositions DNA you know chemicals in their brain different brain composition and it really affects everybody different it took me probably four years to get the right medicine cocktail and I really think that people that are struggling with that just need to be patient and need to keep trying and keep trying second thing I want to talk about is depression depression is a horrible thing and for those people that haven't experienced it it's really hard experience and for me what depression feels like is it feels like a piano a weight is on your back and you can't get that piano off your back whatever you do you can't get it and you almost feel like a noodle like a wet noodle where you just you know it's hard to explain but you just feel lethargic and you can't get that weight off you so as far as depression goes you know a lot of loved ones will try to help when people are depressed they might say things like suck it up pull yourself up by bootstraps I don't know how many times I heard that pull yourself up by the bootstraps if I could I would they also may say things like oh you know other people have it worse and I know people are trying to help when they say those things but really what I needed when I was depressed was somebody to say would you like to go for a walk would you like to meet for coffee and just listen and maybe just say to me I'm really sorry that you're going through this and not give advice and I like I said I know people are trying to help but sometimes they just say the wrong things the other thing I want to talk about is recovery what does recovery mean well I think recovery encompasses a lot of different things it encompasses being on the right meds it encompasses knowing your triggers knowing what to do with them it is being healthy and making widest wise decisions but to me a lot of recovery is accepting the fact that you have the illness you accept the fact that it's not your fault and you accept the fact that you want to move forward and do whatever you can to stay healthy just like a diabetic they want to watch what they eat they want to make sure they take their insulin and they know what they need to do to be better and I think that's what recovery is to me so that's kind of the things I wanted to talk about and share my opinions about looking back in the last 11 years going back to 2006 when I got out of the psychiatric hospital this is what I wish that doctor would have said to me you have a mental illness that does not mean that you can't live a happy and successful life you will however have to do some things you will have to watch your triggers and know what to do with them you will have to not self-medicate with drugs and alcohol you have to stay positive you will have to have a good natural support system when things are going wrong you can call your mother your father your siblings your friends you will have to keep reading about your illness and be knowledgeable about your illness and I wish he would have said to me hope is possible recovery is possible never ever give up and be kind to yourself thank you [Music]

Channel: Chris Thompson Photography

Views: 504,138

Rating: 4.912364 out of 5

Keywords: bipolar disorder, bipolar, bipolar recovery, hope, mental illness, Michael Skillingstad, NAMI, Mental illness awareness, mental illness help, mental health, clinical mental health, personality disorder, spokane, washington, mental break, anxiety, stress, demi lovato, mariah carey

Id: LuFbEKQME4A

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2017