For me, I ended up seeking counseling because of how much my mental health was having a negative impact on my life. The breaking point for me is I was only getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night and was struggling with hypersexuality. I sought out a trauma therapist who, eventually, referred me to my first pdoc. This was a few years ago. My counselor was great, and helped me out a ton, but it got to the point where I chose to end counseling because I needed a break and my counselor was trying to find trauma within my bipolar symptoms, instead of just accepting my bipolar symptoms for what they were.

I don't really talk about my mental health with others though. When I was first diagnosed/hadn't found the right meds yet, hypomania had me telling a few people about my new diagnosis. I quickly stopped talking about my mental health with others though because what I had to say was often dismissed because, on the outside, I appeared to be doing fine. I had two people tell me they didn't believe my diagnosis. Since openly talking about my mental health clearly wasn't safe, I chose to just do the counseling work on my own. Now that I'm not in counseling the band Citizen Soldier, who's songs all focus on mental health, really help me express whatever is going on with my mental health at the moment.