One Aspect on the Road to Bipolar Recovery

Recently, while speaking with my sister, the topic of conversation was my adult niece who has bipolar disorder. She needs to get into therapy, my sister said, but she keeps avoiding the diagnosis.

Although diagnosed in her twenties, she had been on again off again about taking medication, but at this point in time, she had finally come to terms with her illness; enough so that she now takes her meds regularly. It is the one concession she has made to her bipolar disorder diagnosis. If she would see a therapist also, my sister commented, she would at least get educated about her illness. My sister often laments my niece's lack of interest and curiosity about an illness that so pervades her life on an everyday basis. Our discussion carried me back to my earlier attitude then about my own bipolar diagnosis. It eerily rang similar to my niece’s attitude. This struck me as odd since I had read innumerable books on the subject and deal with the illness every day as a specialty in my psychotherapy practice.

Maybe she’s not ready for it, I told my sister.

But, isn’t that the preferred treatment, medication and psychotherapy? She isn’t taking care of herself and would be doing so much better if she’d just educate herself.

This same conversation reminded me of one I’d had with my wife early on in our marriage, more than 20 years ago. Upon asking me what I knew about my bipolar diagnosis, I answered, not much.

But, don’t you want to know more about something that impacts your life so profoundly?

I lived it for over twelve years, I said. I don’t care about learning, I just want to resume my life and be normal. That’s all I care about. I take my medication, and it works for me.

We now know medication and psychotherapy are the best combination for successful treatment of bipolar illness, and at the same time, I understand the reluctance to take meds and seek help, my niece’s stance, though it may conflict with my given wisdom.

Eventually, I did choose to seek education and treatment until today I have become an expert on the illness, writing and speaking publicly about it. Let me live my life; let me recover my bearings and move forward on the every day factors that mean the most: work, relationship, and social life. Let me just feel normal again. Stepping back from the abyss of mental illness and the chaos it brings, let me rejoin the world. Education can wait, until the first step in recovery — to feel human again. When the terror of life-long stigma and disability begins to subside, all things come in time. Patience, I counsel, Patience.