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Outside of being in the midst of an episode (and I'm fortunate that this happens maybe a couple of times a year, though it's depended on the time in my life) or having a lot of trouble with meds (sometimes), I don't particularly identify with it. (Being on this forum may bely this, but this is my sense of it). I feel like the way I have experienced bipolar is as unique (as it is for all of us, I think) as other aspects of myself are, and in a way, I think it's become integrated, over time, into who I am, another piece of a rich, complex puzzle.
I 'am' so many things, identify with so many things. I read a good novel or see a great film and I get immersed in completely different worlds, utterly different from my own, and I read and see struggles that may not have a mental health label, but are just as intense, and compelling, and painful, and tremendous as anything I could ever experience through/having this illness.
I lived in Europe and South America for several years and also experienced there things so outside the realm of my own experience. It's all somehow helped me to get out of my own head, the vastness and diversity of human experience comforts me a great deal, somehow.
[I'll insert here, that I can have this perspective here because now, at this moment, this day, I'm in a good place, I cannot always, unfortunately, feel so positively about things].
But when thinking of labels, something comes to mind with my experience living in Colombia. I knew people there who witnessed and/or were the victims of violence countless times in their lives. [I myself was witness to and victim of violence there]. But when I think about it, so many people I knew there, here, would be diagnosed off the bat with PTSD, be labeled as such, perhaps as broken, as victims, as destined to a lifetime of pain because of this, put on meds, etc. I never saw these labels there. I saw people cope how they could, seek out support, suffer, move on. No labels. No treatment either, but maybe that wouldn't have been helpful to some people either. I saw people live very full and healthy lives without it.
Not only did people not get caught in such things, I don't think it would ever even occur to them to label their experiences or their emotions in this way (and I'm referring mostly to middle-class, educated people, not people who perhaps wouldn't know about 'mental illness' due to lack of education, etc.). I think also, people had a sense that there were always people who had it worse, watching the news and seeing the massacres, etc. What would be called 'trauma' here was part of life, a part of their lives like so many other things, but not who they were, not by a long shot.
Some rambling thoughts...
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