What It's Actually Like To Live With Bipolar Disorder

mental illness equals weak or mental illness equals ugly or bad I would use drugs alcohol people food - like just numb it out yeah it got muddy hi my name is Becca Brown and I am a person living with bipolar - I am an actor a musician a writer I do comedy I've been performing since I was a little kid one of the just best things about my life is that I get to get on stage or in front of a camera and play a character or even be myself when I was in middle school I would get these like bouts of just existential dread and sadness and terror and wanting to isolate wanting to be alone but since I was in school I didn't have that option and I would just really feel in it and didn't really have the words to explain what that was but then that matched with like anxiety and like little spurts of like rage and at times just a day or two in a row a feeling amazing the first time I felt mania I felt hyper and I felt energized and like just ready to go and it sometimes feels like you've just had like a lot of caffeine and it's not fun sometimes in a manic episode I would just like decide to clean my entire house rearrange the furniture stay up all night writing something and then the next day I would like look at all the things that I wrote and be like none of that makes sense none of it is good there's a common stereotype that like when a bipolar person is in there like mania like it's it's like their fun side might look fun but it's actually just really exhausting and impulsive and you're like why can't I stop and then the crash this shortly after that every person's depression looks different for me just isolation despair and sometimes paired with agoraphobia like I don't want to be around other people I don't want to go outside you know the only time I'll get out of bed is to like go use the bathroom self-sabotage just thinking terrible things I really just like felt these feelings but like couldn't really talk about them because it just wasn't something that we talked about in our family nobody talks about it because I think that there's this internalized stigma of like mental illness equals weak or mental illness equals ugly or bad a lot of people in my family dealt with mental illness on both my mom and my dad's side my mom I think struggles with depression for sure and I remember just when she was in it my dad would say something along the lines of she's in one of her moods just leave her alone and that was kind of how we dealt with her mental illness so when I started to think that I might have similar patterns to my mom like I just wanted to keep it on the down low and I would use drugs alcohol people food - like just numb it out and just try to be like everything's fine look at how hard I'm working and look at this relationship I'm in and look at how fun I am there's no way I'm going through anything dark or bad but eventually that caught up with me and it became harder and harder to fight that and to numb it out I hit a pretty low emotional bottom and when I was 19 I tried to commit suicide I was hospitalized for a couple of days and my dad told my sisters that I had a stomach ulcer to protect them from knowing the truth even though everyone I think kind of knew the truth and I think that like lying and pretending and manipulation is kind of what triggers it even more and like makes it even harder to like be open about this stuff over the course of college til when I was about 25 it got pretty dark and eventually after just like knowing there was something wrong with me for so long I reached out I asked for help in the winter of 2017 I went to a psychiatrist they suggested that I might be bipolar but they wouldn't be able to really diagnose it if I was continually using drugs and alcohol so I stopped drinking and using drugs and a couple months later they were able to diagnose me with bipolar - the difference between bipolar one and bipolar two it's determined by what the mania looks like for somebody with bipolar one the mania is much more intense longer periods for bipolar - it's called hypomania where it's a shorter period of mania but we do still have the very high highs and the very low lows but thank God I have therapy for that I see a therapist regularly and then every once in a while I'll see a psychiatrist to talk about my medication to discuss whether I need to go up or stay where I'm at just to keep everything regular not numb not perfect but manageable when I first got diagnosed I thought like how am I gonna be a good artist without all this stuff that I like needed I thought I needed to be funny I thought I needed to be depressed all the time to write good comedy I thought I needed to be wild and have crazy experiences and go on these like drug benders and like you know sexually impulsive sprees to write good material but the material I've written now since getting sober and has been so much better than the stuff before I like actually sometimes I like listen to old sets of my stand-up from before and like I kind of feel bad for me three years ago it was just like obviously screaming for help that like didn't know how in a healthy way today living with bipolar 2 is much more manageable because I know I have it and I know what to do when I start feeling the symptoms when I start feeling the mania maybe I need to meditate or when I'm starting to feel depressed maybe I need to step outside or go on a hike or go for a long walk with my partner so it's it's not perfect it's not all sunshine and roses and rainbows but I don't want to kill myself and for me that's like manageable that's huge for me so if you think you're bipolar if you know you're bipolar if you know you have any mental illness or you think you might have a mental illness you're not alone there are a lot of us there are resources out there don't be afraid to ask for help I know it's awkward to ask for help but you know sometimes that's all it takes to like feel a sense of relief I ask for help every day there are people that are out there that are willing to give you help having a mental illness is not ugly it's not a sign of weakness and just know that you're never ever alone [Music]

Channel: Goodful

Views: 1,061,830

Keywords: K_fe, anxiety, bipolar, bipolar 2 disorder, bipolar depression, bipolar depression symptoms, bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder symptoms, bipolar ii disorder, bipolar symptoms, depression, goodful, health, how bipolar disorder works, how to know if you have bipolar disorder, mania, manic depression, manic symptoms, mental health, mental illness, pItY, signs of bipolar, symptoms of bipolar disorder, types of bipolar, what is bipolar disorder

Id: Rp5SeMrivRA

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020