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I was thought to be a hypochondriac. So much so that I questioned it constantly myself.

Am I sick?

No.

Why do I feel sick?

You don’t. Just ignore it and it will go away. Stop thinking about it and it won’t bother you.

You’re not that tired. You can’t be that tired. You slept for eight hours last night. Stop complaining.

If she is distracted enough, she’ll stop all this nonsense.

For years I was in a constant struggle of feeling awful a lot of the time and being constantly told there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. That I was just lazy and not focused. That if I just got my head on straight, had enough willpower, pulled myself up by my bootstraps, exercised more, drank less caffeine, didn’t think about it, then my life would be okay. I would be okay.

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Stealing the validity of the illness can keep us sick. When the people we love don’t believe that what we are going through is real, it makes us question our reality. It makes us question ourselves. When we don’t have our reality, we have nothing. The ground falls from underneath us. Questioning our reality doesn’t help us move forward. It keeps us in a constant state of uncertainty and pain. If the people we love don’t believe us, it must not be true. If it’s not true, then it doesn’t make sense. Our lives don’t make sense. Our minds don’t make sense. And it is when our validity is stolen that we begin to feel crazy. And the craziness we feel must be kept secret, because the people around us don’t believe what we are going through.

Oh, the pain of not being accepted by those you love. Of not being believed. When the symptoms are real. And you must hide them. You must lie. You must never tell them you have tried to take your own life. You must never tell them you spent the entire night lying in bed trying not to kill yourself. When they were in the next room. You must never tell them that you called the suicide hotline in the middle of the afternoon and said, “I think I want to die. What do I do? How can you help?”

People worry about us. They love us. They don’t want anything bad to be true. So, to counteract it being true, they just believe that it’s not. And they try to convince us that it’s not. Trying to convince us that it’s not keeps us from getting well. It’s important we receive support from those we love. We don’t want to go to the doctor and tell them we think we’re crazy. When the people we love don’t believe us, what doctor will believe us? And if the doctor does believe us, will that convince the people we love? Usually not. Sometimes they will even tell us that the doctors are duping us to make a quick buck.

Our sickness is an inconvenience. But remaining sick is the biggest inconvenience. When we are sick we cannot care for ourselves, we cannot help anyone else. We cannot function in the most banal ways. Often, we cannot go to work to support ourselves. We feel guilt and shame for being the way we are. When people don’t believe there is something really wrong, we begin to attribute it to personal character flaws. We think something just must be wrong with us. Why can’t we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps? Why can’t we pray our way out of it? Why don’t we have the willpower everyone else seems to have?

The confusion often becomes too much. When our loved ones don’t accept us as we are, acknowledge our struggles, we become trapped. When we are sick, our defenses are down. When our defenses are down, the mental and emotional aspects of the illness kick in. These, coupled with the physical symptoms, effectively trap us. And the more confused we become, the more trapped we are. It’s a vicious cycle in which the initial physical issue (the disjointed activity involving the chemicals in our brain) eventually inspires other physical issues (exhaustion, extreme “emotional” reactions, not eating, etc.) which eventually inspires emotional and mental issues (racing thoughts, paranoia, emotional discomfort, etc.) which may make the physical symptoms worse (making yourself vomit, feeding addictions, not sleeping, not eating, extreme anxiety and panic attacks) which wears you down more and makes the mental and emotional aspects even more dire. It’s a vicious cycle in which it is easy to get trapped. They say that depression and other similar disorders work on a downhill slope. At some point on your way down, you can still catch yourself and get help before it’s too late. If you don’t learn to recognize the symptoms and learn how to take proper measures to treat the illness, you will get past the point where there is anything you can do about it yourself. This time, I went half a second past the point. I was hanging on the edge of the cliff with two fingers. But a phone call to a doctor friend and immediate action helped me to slowly get back on the right track. Slowly. But I was able to skip quickly back from the point of no return. Because I’m acutely aware of my warning signs and because I am extremely educated on what to do in the case that my chemicals skip again. And mostly because I so desperately don’t want to be sick again. Not like I was 8 years ago. Not like I was for so many years of my life. I never want to get back to that point. I can’t afford to get back to that point. The fear of drowning in that terror again keeps me on the straight and narrow. In order to get better, we must, in a sense, leave them behind. We must mentally separate ourselves from the negative people who do not acknowledge our sickness. We must surround ourselves with positive people who are supportive of our journey to recovery.

Sometimes when we seek help our loved ones will have unreasonable hopes. Like the hope that someday we will be able to quit our medication cold turkey and be normal again. But what does it matter? If the medication helps us…if the other methods of recovery help us, how does that affect anyone? If we are willing to take responsibility for our illness so that we can function on a daily basis…so that we can learn to get by, to help others, to fulfill our full possibilities, why shouldn’t that be a miracle to be celebrated?

When I was initially diagnosed eight years ago, there were several very key moments that opened the doors to the possibility of my full recovery. (And when I say full recovery, I do not in any way suggest that one day the chemicals in my brain will be completely aligned and I will be able to magically stop taking my medication) One of these key moments was when I started being honest about my diagnosis. I remember talking with several friends…telling them the struggles I was facing…hoping to receive support. In return for my honesty, my friends stepped forward and said, “My dad is bipolar”, “My mom is bipolar”, or “I am bipolar, too.” These people I had known for so long. The truths that had been hidden from view. Like dirty secrets. It was common, though. These people that I had known for so long were like me. They were like me. I was not alone. What an amazingly freeing realization. I loved them right then for sharing that with me. So, since my diagnosis I have never hidden it from anyone. I will tell close friends and strangers alike that I am bipolar and never bat an eye. I don’t bring it up in unrelated conversation, but I am not ashamed. I do not hide it because I think that maybe sharing my diagnosis may help someone else some day. It may spark a light bulb in their own mind letting them know they are not alone — that there is someone else who faces the same struggles as them. There is such power in this. People see me and they know I am not crazy. They know that I am a fun, social and loving person who enjoys life. If I can be bipolar and not ashamed, then why can’t they?

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There is a severe cycle of guilt and shame that plays a significant role in any so-called mental illness. We wonder why we are this way. We beat ourselves up about it. We feel ashamed because the people we love do not acknowledge our reality. Our minds are worn down. Our physical bodies are worn down. And our thoughts pound in our heads. The guilt and shame are so dangerous. They keep us sick, too. The knowledge that other people are like us has the ability to lift the guilt and shame. Without the guilt and shame, we can get better. We can move forward. If we acknowledge this for what it is — a physical illness for which medicine and very successful recovery methods are available — then we have the power to get better. Once a friend in recovery told me that guilt serves no purpose. That too, changed my entire way of thinking. Of course, a conscience is important. We should not ignore the rules of decency as an excuse to forego our feelings of guilt. But it is commonly the case of those who suffer from “mental” illness to mercilessly beat ourselves over the head over the smallest of missteps. We punish ourselves too. Sometimes I will punish myself by not attending activities I enjoy. Often, I punish myself by not leaving the house. Then, I begin to feel so guilty for not leaving the house that it gets to the point to where I can’t leave the house. Sometimes I don’t always attend to my responsibilities in the ways I should. Then I feel guilty, too. And the guilt makes me avoid the responsibilities altogether. I begin to suffer sheer terror. This is when I go into necessary hiding. What purpose does this serve? None. Especially when most of the reasons I think I should punish myself have grown monstrously disproportionate in my head. As a result of the guilt and shame. So it is true that guilt, in and of itself, serves no purpose. It is not our job to punish ourselves. When we make mistakes, the only thing we can do is try to make amends in the best way possible and do everything in our power to try to avoid making them in the future. That is the only way to keep moving in a forward direction. And the most important thing to remember when we are sick is that we must always attempt to move in a forward direction. We have no other choice. We can’t stop to look at the messes we’ve made. We must always take action to clean them up as best we can and keep moving forward. We must remember that we all make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. We are merely human, after all.

Perhaps those who live with us, who love us, who want to be supportive wonder what measures they can take to do so. Well, in most recovery-based programs, they will tell you the first step is acceptance. You must accept the reality of our situation. You must accept that we are living with a disease that has the very serious possibility of being fatal. You must accept us for who we are. You must accept that we need help. And that it is okay. It does not make us bad people or crazy and it does not mean we will not live up to your expectations. We are who we are. Our illnesses, managed correctly, do not have to rule us. When we are left untreated, that is what they do. With treatment and education, we are capable. We are balanced. We are more than you may expect us to be.