Ten Years Of Mania, Depression, And Being Told It Was My Fault.

They told me to trust the system. I had to fight it to survive.

Isn’t it strange that everyone who isn’t bipolar gets an absolute say in your treatment? We are told to “trust the system,” yet we are silenced when we describe our own identity fracturing. In that void, we are left powerless—handed a vision board and told to play Uno in indifferent clinics while our lives are on the line.

I’m not here to tell you to take your pills or show up to your sessions; I already expect that of you. I’m here because your “best” has still left you fractured. My stability didn’t come from being a “good patient”—it came when I realized fighting is not optional. I had to stop being a victim and start holding doctors to a higher standard than they held me, even when they reduced me to nothing more than a “walking timebomb” (to my sister: thank you for being there when I was exactly that).

I spent a decade in chronic mania and depression. Today, I experience neither. I’m telling my story to give you permission to stand up for yourself. We have to manage the psychiatric threat, but we don’t have to tolerate the ingrates who think they know our minds better than we do. They are dangerous, and you deserve better.

But this isn’t just about them. The most important relationship in this disorder is the one you have with yourself. We are going to dive into the existential nature of this disease so you can live unencumbered—especially if you’ve spent years blaming yourself for the burden you thought you placed on others.

You did not.