Hello, I'm Cecilia.

I grew up with a mother that doesn't believe in therapy, in telling your problems to others, in showing emotion. Unfortunately for her, I was always a very emotional child. When I was little I would watch the Discovery Channel and bawl my eyes out for endangered species. When I was older and began reading books, I would become so emotionally invested in them that I would laugh and cry and yell along with the characters. When I was happy, I was the happiest kid on the block. When I was sad, well, I was the most sad.

By the time I was twelve, I was exhibiting symptoms of both depression and hypomania. My moods came in extremes that no one knew what to do with. I started missing school because I was too desolate to leave my bed. I began having physical manifestations of my emotional pain. This is when my mother took notice and had me thoroughly checked out by many doctors. None of them, however, could find a specific medical problem.

So life went on, with everyone telling me that I was going through a phase, this was part of being a teen, all the typical slogans of denial. When I was fifteen, my boyfriend killed himself. This event sent me into the worst depression I had been in, and I attempted to kill myself. This was the catalyst for my diagnosis. I finally saw a psychiatrist and she found the reason for my intensity. However, I had as well developed a pretty severe Panic Disorder at this point, and only several months into our sessions was unable to leave my house unaccompanied. I stopped going to the psychiatrist, and she terminated our sessions permanently.

For a year and a half I was unmedicated and out of school. Between the Bi Polar and the anxiety, I couldn't handle being in school. I was home schooled for one year, the other year tutored. Even this presented problems, and my grades dropped significantly. Finally, I began again seeing a therapist after my mother saw the gravity of my situation and forced me to. Slowly, but surely, my life went back on track. At seventeen I enrolled in a different school that catered to teens with problems. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. The support system in that school was immense, and I was able to salvage my life.

Today, I still am struggling a lot. I'm going to be turning twenty in a few days, and am still in high school. Sometimes I feel like my disorder stole years from my life, and other times I'm grateful to have the extra time before University to be sure of what I want to do. Either way, at least I'm now kind of coping

Sorry for the length!
I'm happy to have found this site. It feels like it is something I may need.

c