Images by Ben Ngapo
With bipolar moods become immovable.
Thoughts and emotions will combine to recreate our perception of the world for brighter or darker. A stubbornly grey day may transform into a world of fun and laughter and endless possibilities. A beautiful holiday can be a leaden prison of self-hating apathy. I think it is actually pretty amazing how much our brains colour how we see the world and ourselves. Amazing or terrible, agonising or blissful, these big moods that shape our bipolar life are definitely disruptive. It is as if I am a small sailing boat on an unpredictable ocean – an endless ocean frequented by exhilarating storms and deathly still calms. This is how I picture my bipolar life.
The trick is in navigating this bipolar ocean and moving forward without sinking.
If a person can learn how to navigate bipolar effectively, so that it can no longer throw them far off course, then the illness loses a lot of its power. I do believe that bipolar is lifelong, which is why I describe the bipolar ocean as endless, but I don’t believe that it has to be a lifelong illness. The late and very brave Professor Stephen Hawking said, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Bipolar really does bring change, it causes powerful change, and the change is often rapid and unpredictable but that doesn’t mean that we are powerless victims of it.
These big bipolar highs and lows roll into my life like the peaks and troughs of oceanic waves crashing over me. For so long I tried to cling to dry land, to this teenage idea of who I was and how my life was going to be, as the manias and depressions rolled through me. Eventually I realised that my old idea of life had become a myth, the Myth of Dry Land, and that my whole world was now an ocean. Once I knew this I found I could float, which was far more comfortable, and started moving to where I wanted to be.
I think it is important in life to learn to accept what we can’t control. It is beyond our control whether or not we get bipolar so, as difficult as it is, it is best to accept it. This process of acceptance can actually take a long time because each of us individually needs to figure out what our bipolar life really is. It may sound daunting but this is actually a very fortunate thing because it means that each time we come to know a new thing about our own bipolar we gain some control: and we can change those things that we have control over.
Sleep was a massive problem for me in the early years and I became a chronic insomniac. At first it seemed like there was nothing I could do to fall asleep and month upon month it was taking a huge toll on my health. I kept trying though, and eventually I learned to cure my anxiety around sleep. I also learned that getting plenty of exercise made a huge difference, so did a firm bed, and ironically just being in bed at night not even caring about falling asleep helped tremendously. I initially thought that sleeplessness defined my experience of bipolar but today it is hardly a problem at all. By gaining control over my ability to sleep I was able to change what my bipolar is. The same can be said for the intensity and duration of manias and depressions I experience, they are nothing like what they used to be.
What I am trying to say is that I accept I have bipolar for life,
but I never accepted that it is going to be an illness for life.
Neither should you.
I hope this article is useful to you, thank you for reading it! I believe that these articles will help to educate people with bipolar and give them skills for a future of mental wellness, not mental illness. Please consider Supporting KindBipolar and joining our email list (we never send spam). Be kind to yourself and have a great day.
