The doctors told me that I had major depression. In some ways this came as a comfort. I now had a name for my sadness. It was a clinical term that took away any blame I might feel about being so damaged. I assumed that if my sadness was a biological problem it should be pretty simple to find the medication that provides a biological solution. A few months later, I was coming off my third medication so that I could take a shot at a fourth. On no medication, I felt myself for the first time in a very long time. I was positive, energetic, creative and confident again. It seemed that I did not need antidepressants after all. My psychiatrist had a name for these wonderful happiness; mania and he rediagnosed me with bipolar disorder. "This is good," he told me. "Now that we know what the problem is we can give you the right medication." Being diagnosed with bipolar disorder completely changed the way I saw myself. I'd been given a new name for my sadness but I had also been given a name for my happiness. I found out that the whole time I had been concealing a secret weapon- mania, my own personal performance enhancing drug. The person who I identified as the real me that was bright, bubbly, sharp-witted and expressive was actually a sickness. I was able to work like a crazy person because I was a crazy person. Most of my achievements were only possible because I was manic and the only things that people liked about me were actually symptoms of mania. But the impact of this diagnosis was more than that. The cause of my distress had changed. Before I was diagnosed, I thought a lot about why I struggled to cope. There seemed to be obvious causes. My brother had cancer when I was young and I still struggle day to day with memories of his illness. My distress was intensified by the discipline I received at home. I spent a lot of time reflecting on how my past was affecting my present because I felt that understanding was the case to easing my sadness. But now I was told that my distress was not caused by my past, it was embedded in my genes. It was caused by chemical imbalances in my body. No amount of personal reflection was going to change that. I completely lost hope. I started to educate myself about this sickness that I had. I became particularly fond of the list of symptoms on the Black Dog Institute site and would read the list of symptoms of bipolar disorder over and over again. As I looked at each symptom, I would think that's me and that's me. It's all me. Before long, that list of symptoms became my identity in its entirety. It was as if all other parts of me disappeared. All parts of me were broken, and the meds weren't working. They had taken away my happy moods but not my sadness. My meds really knocked me around too. I had a tremor. I felt like a zombie. I'd put on a lot of weight and I struggled to follow conversations. I didn't have the relief of my happy moods anymore. So my social anxiety raged out of control. Once, I was a creative and engaging teacher but now I had no passion for my job. And it was a struggle to come up with teaching strategies at all. Unlike before, I didn't fight my sadness. What was the point? I was sick and I was always going to be sick. When my mood began to drop, I would give up immediately and sit down, drowning in my own distress. This meant intensive care units and mental health units. None of this happened during the first 15 years of my suffering. During my last hospital admission, my partner and my parents told me something revolutionary. They said, "You know you don't have to be a teacher." I thought about the way that teaching intensified my distress and I took a very important step in my recovery journey. I quit my job and thought about other passions. I thought I could help other people who have a mental illness and I enrolled in an online course to get a Certificate IV in mental health. During this time, I worked closely with a wonderful psychiatrist to find medications that worked without giving me bad side effects or robbing me of my personality. He didn't tell me what to do. He provided me with information and journal articles so that I was informed and could work with him to make the best choices for me. He never gave up despite the fact that I was having a bad reaction to most of the medications that we tried. It was like a collaboration and I completely trusted him. The whole bumpy journey was worth it. We eventually found a combination of medications that really helped.
