Hey Wild Coyote,
My diagnosis is also BP II. I started to really have problems and asked a colleague who is a psychologist to recommend a pdoc for me. I went to him completely wired and, in turn, I was put on Thorazine. It totally killed my gag reflex and my mom noticed changes in me. Can you say Thorazine shuffle? So I did some research on my own and found the mental health clinics and doctors that my insurance would actually accept.

The first pdoc was expensive. The first pdoc diagnosed a mood disorder, but the second got more specific with BP II. I had suspected it. It surely explained some of my behavior which extended back to high school, the late night study sessions and the explosive energy I had the next day, the hives, bouts of crying, and the flameouts that were treated with “mental health days” in which I stayed home and slept practically all day. I was in remission (if that’s what they call it) in college, and then fell down the rabbit hole again when I graduated.

I was kind of relieved when I was diagnosed, but then I realized that the umbrella of stigma was now covering me. It was now my “dirty little secret”. I think that I have come to terms with the diagnosis, but sometimes I feel like it’s not real and I’m not real. I can’t say that I alone helped myself come to terms with it. My mom was there, but at times I don’t think she fully grasps the ins and outs of the illness.

I tend to keep the knowledge of the illness to myself, although I’ve had a student who was also bipolar ask if I was bipolar. I avoided the question. I have told very few people about my diagnosis. I just revealed it to my best friend. She was with me when I was undiagnosed in high school, and she has been supportive. I thought about informing one of my coworkers who is a friend as well as my supervisor, but I deemed it too dangerous career-wise. So the illness is a little like Kali, the muse of creative discovery who gives energy and life to things mundane and spiritual, and the crone that works to curse my existence with despair and sometimes leaves pestilence and destruction in her wake.