I've never been a big fan of the term "disorder". It sounds like chaos is erupting somewhere. But in the case of mental illness, that's pretty much what's happening in our brains.

As for the diagnosis, I didn't really experience it as soul-crushing. It explained a lot about the way I'd been all my life. What was difficult was mourning the loss of the person I'd thought I was. Now I look back and see that I had this thing since I was very young, but I went undiagnosed until I was 53. My self-image was tied up in my work and my family, and getting the diagnosis changed everything.

Now I'm the bipolar friend, the bipolar blogger, the bipolar nurse (who can't work as one anymore thanks to the disease). But outside BP, I'm also a wife, mother, grandmother, church member, forum moderator (for another website), and all-around decent, if flawed, human being. Bipolar cannot ruin any of that for me. It took me quite a while to understand that.