The Hidden Illness: Bipolar II

I am mentally ill. That’s the official diagnosis. It’s a genetic predisposition and can’t be “cured” because the medical community is still researching the connection between genes, the wiring of the brain, and the interaction of the previous conditions with the environment. Materialism has disconnected medical “experts” from the wisdom of the ancients.

I didn’t start out ill. I started out with that different sort of wiring.

In the time of the Druids, my parents would have presented me to the Lady of Avalon. There, the wise teachers would have protected and molded me during the most important milestones of my young life. I would have embraced my gifts instead of hiding them. I would have been groomed to teach the Mysteries to other young girls.

I read the histories of objects, read and interpret the energy fields of people, and within nanoseconds I can calculate and articulate the likely outcome of a plethora of possibilities. My mouth always got me in trouble because the first thing I thought would pop out. People don’t like truth, especially when it’s spoken by an eight-year-old girl who shouldn’t know any better.

We’re not psychics, just different. People wired this way can do similar acts to a greater or lesser degree. We’re emotional savants. We’re a silent minority in a world that suppresses messy feelings.

Society brands us as “weird,” “touched,” or “crazy.” We are none of these but we are different from most people. Misunderstanding and improper handling creates walking disasters. This society does not know how to handle people like us and often abuses our sensitive natures until we are dead inside a living body.

It took over ten years for the medical community to define Bipolar (previously known as manic-depression) as a mood spectrum in the DSM-V rather than a set definition of symptoms. Either you had Bipolar or you didn’t. During those ten years, I was misdiagnosed and continued a pattern of self-destruction that was only exacerbated by the anti-depressant that was supposed to help.

Fortunately, the right medication has returned me to not only baseline but to greater health—without sacrificing my sensitive abilities.

It took twelve years for my “condition” to be diagnosed properly. During that time, I lived with the weight of the emotions and issues of others. My bright and positive disposition was snuffed by a miasma of heart-crushing depression and terrible irritability. My formerly active, even hectic, social schedule was reduced to an agoraphobia and social anxiety so severe, I couldn’t leave the house without several pep-talks. The moment I arrived wherever, I wanted to go home and hide. If I couldn’t, I’d lash out or hide in the bathroom.

This is the norm for people with a similar position on the mood spectrum, or what’s known as a hyperthymic personality. After bouts of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, our boundaries are shot full of holes.  The bombardment of technology and materialism leaves us defenseless so that we are wrapped tightly in spider silk and slowly, daily drained of our essence. We are trapped in concrete jungles, assaulted by proverbial beasts of claw and fang, and there is nowhere to hide from the cruelty of this existence.

The symptoms are many and Bipolar II is often diagnosed by its co-morbidities such as PTSD, General Anxiety Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder.  I have been diagnosed with all three co-morbidities in my psychiatrist’s efforts to figure out why I wasn’t responding to anti-depressants.

If your mental health provider is unable to help you and no medication seems to work the way it should, you may have this mood disorder. It is not a moral weakness, as Dr. Phelps emphasizes, but an actual condition that responds to treatment much the way diabetes responds to insulin.

I want to bring awareness to the mood spectrum and the disorders that can develop for different types of personalities. I want people crippled by this condition to find relief. I want their family members and friends to understand what happens inside a person with this condition.

Below are resources cited via hyperlink. Read up, arm yourself with knowledge, and make the world a better place so that you and those like you will thrive.

©2017 I.O. Kirkwood. All Rights Reserved.

RESOURCES/Citations

Psychiatry.org and the DSM-5

Jim Phelps, MD, leading authority on Bipolar II and author of psycheducation.org

Russ Federman, PhD, ABPP, and author of Misdiagnosis of Bipolar II article, Psychology Today

Psycom.net and Lamotrigine (home page includes mental health tests)