To disclose BP or not ???

my employer was the one that had me involuntary put in hospital, a month of all day group and back to work, been over a year and all is ok , but I did lose my security clearance.

When I had to renew mine I was asked about hospitalizations. Do you know if being hospitalized on its own caused you to lose your clearance or was it other things? If you want to answer, but not on here you can PM me, I am really curious about how these things work.

Originally I only told partner, family, and 1 close friend near home, 1 at work. I wanted to tell my boss since i was having issues when first diagnosed and getting on meds and missed a lot of work. I told her it was a medication issue, etc. so that she would interpret it as being related to the migraines I had been having.

Then I hit a bad day (being laid off) and as a bunch of us from work drowned our sorrows in beer, I told a few of my closest (work) friends. That included some drunk texts to old friends to tell them too so the whole night was NOT a wise move.

When I was having a conversation with the friend near home that I told, he said something like "well I wouldn't want to take your advice because your crazy." The statement sounds bad, but in the context of our relationship, the crazy label wasn't bad (dark humor is my style). The problem was that I really think he thought that bp made me ignorant or illogical. I guess it could at times, though. I guess I was more upset that he doesn't understand the condition (despite many conversations to try to educate him) and was making an ignorant judgement.

I had a breakdown at work the other day as the end employment for so many of us is drawing near. I meant to just talk to my new boss to try to figure out how much longer I will be working and I just broke down. He was so nice!!!! Neither of us said specfic dx, but he mentioned things like needing to keep on meds consitenly "because the withdrawl symptoms suck," that he specifically set up meetings for the morning to force himself to get out of bed otherwise he would stay there until 2pm... etc. I was soooo relieved that he at least had some understanding of mental illness.

I feel like I was lucky that some people understood; most seemed indifferent, only one asked for more information about it to understand, but there were still the ones who just don't get it.

Sometimes I happy that people know so that if I am hiding under my bed for days they would help; but I do feel self conscious sometimes.

I didn't tell anyone but my close friends and family at first, but later on I spoke very openly about it thinking that I should stop being afraid and open the door to people asking questions and learning that we are still people, and just like them. I have stopped doing so the past year, as people really do treat you differently and it makes me so angry and sad and distrusful!!

Each has it's pros and cons. Best strategy is to tell the ones you think need to know. It's generally a bad idea to tell your coworkers or boss.

The other strategy is to tell everyone and don't care what others think about you. You will loose some friends with this strategy, but then the ones who walk away were never your friends to begin with.

I'm more inclined to opt for the second strategy in my personal life. Anyone who tries to use my diagnose against me gets cut out of my life, I won't tolerate that type of behavior.

It is a conceptualization problem, ie a problem with how you think of things in your mind. Your diagnosis is your private sensitive information rather than a secret, much less a dirty little secret. How does one decide when and how to disclose private sensitive information? According to the general rule that pertains to any sensitive information - on a need to know basis, as has already been mentioned above.

If you conceptualize this way, you may still make mistakes, as the person above who lost a job, so it is not a complete guarantee of smooth sailing, but it is a guarantee of your never feeling being eaten alive due to keeping secrets, since you won't be keeping secrets but rather will be safeguarding sensitive data.

I think that it's pretty safe to say it here