Get Over It

Mental illness is not real. It's not a proper illness. 

Bipolar disorder is just a label they stick on people because its fashionable. No one really had Bipolar before all these celebrities got on the bandwagon. Just snap out of it. If you try harder you can get over it. 

I've heard it all before.

People don't tell someone with a heart condition to stop taking their tablets and get over it. They don't tell someone with diabetes that they can live without insulin. They don't tell someone with a leg missing to grow another one.

Bipolar disorder is "real" and without the proper treatment can be deadly. 

Bipolar disorder is an illness that affects thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviour ... even how a person feels physically. Its a mood disorder.  It's probably caused by electrical and chemical elements in the brain not functioning properly and is often found in people whose families have a history of one or more mental illnesses. While we're at it, let's be clear about something: a mental illness is one that affects the mind, not one that's all in the mind.

Most often, a person with bipolar disorder (manic-depression) experiences moods that shift from high to low and back again in varying degrees of severity. The two poles of bipolar disorder are mania and depression. 

Of course that's putting it in very simple terms. It's different for everybody. It affects people differently and everyone copes in their own way.

I'm not an expert on Bipolar but I'm becoming an expert on my own Bipolar.

I have to be mindful of how I live my life in order to keep well. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's not an easy thing to deal with.