Hi I'm Isa and I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder 6 years ago.
I had always had a lot of ups and downs and mods switches during my entire life and I thought I was crazy because I could not control it.
As a teenager I was a real rebel and besides my mother's attempts of making me go to therapy I never took much interest in it.
Nonetheless when I was 24 I had a very bad depressive episode that ended up with a suicide attempt. That's when I was first diagnosed.
I was very reluctant about taking the anti depressants and mood stabilizers. But by the end I started taking them.
The side effects of the mood stabilizer were so severe that I simply stopped taking it after 2 months. I never told the psychiatrist or my mother since the pressure and the demand of me getting well was so high.
I kept with Zoloft though, after one year and a half I also quit the antidepressant.
I just hated the idea of needing a medicine to be well, I thought I could manage by my own.
I did, with ups and downs, many episodes of uncontrollable anger. Until it finally hit me and my level of energy went lower and lower each day. I went back to Zoloft that got me out of the depressive mood but put me in a hypomanic state during the whole last summer. Afterwards my mood state was just so weird I could not keep up with it. Now I know I was going though mixed states which culminated with me 2 weeks ago trying to kill myself again.
I am now on sick leave from work, seeing a therapist once a week and soon enough I will start with Lithium, once my blood exams are checked by the psychiatrist.
Since the day I got the diagnosis of BD six years ago I have not really accepted it. In the beginning I just felt relieved that there was indeed some chemical unbalance in my brain, and there was a reason why I acted the way I did. After that I never really wanted to think about it and I thought just having the meds would help me.
Recently I'm trying to accept it and also understand I need more structure and discipline on my daily routine. It has been quite hard and it is still sinking in.
I thought joining an online support group would be very beneficial since I only talk about my BD with a friend of mine who also has it.
Since I have been living abroad for almost 5 years, it is easy for me not to mention what I'm going through to my family, specially to my mother.