If I stop pretending to be symptom free, will I become more emphatically bipolar than I am now? How would it affect my life? Would I become more, or less, likely to form strong friendships? Would I become more, or less, well?
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the word “stigma”. Stigma in the context of “erasing the stigma of mental illness”. What does that mean, exactly? What are people getting at? Do I feel stigmatized, and is it possible to feel stigmatized if I live in the closet, so to speak, about my illness?
I’ve always thought the idea of a public movement about stigma was a bit worrisome. Is the idea that we try to shame the public in to pretending that the symptoms of mental illness are not creepy, disturbing and disruptive to be around — that employers should be obligated to retain employees who may be quite unbalanced because they are mentally ill? The political independent in me thinks that’s hogwash.
Pretending not to have the symptoms of a major mental illness is dear to me. I become terribly upset with myself when I realize I’ve lost control over some aspect of that – that I have given someone a reason to wonder what’s wrong with me.
I have good reason to pretend I am normal. Attempting to introduce my symptoms in to a conversation (i.e., “Ug, I’m really feeling paranoid/anxious/unable to focus/suddenly demotivated/hypomanic/hearing music that isn’t there/having horribly intrusive thoughts/having racing thoughts, etc., etc. lately”) zooms me away from the person I’m talking to. No matter how comfortable I may have felt with the person up to that point, or even how intimate our relationship may be, I feel and see the freezing chill that suddenly surrounds us; the utter distrust thrown in my direction. The person loses confidence in me, usually forever. The person may, in fact, turn on me in the future. It isn’t difficult to imagine the rolled eyes when my name comes up, or the leap to conclusions about my character, or the utter dissipation of respect for or confidence in me.
Is that stigma at work? I’m not sure. It certainly may be. Is that a reasonable reaction? I’m not sure. It certainly may be.
What I wish for is compassion. I wish for encouragement to seek assistance.
In my last job I was up front with each successive manager about my mental illness. Each manager thanked me for sharing the information with them. One – the first manager I told – reacted in what I thought was rather the perfect way.
When I initially went to work for that company I was very ill. All of my symptoms were in the red zone. I developed a plan of attack to try to get them under control, but it required living with my parents in another town for a few weeks and making major changes in the number and amount of medications I was taking. It wasn’t at all clear to me that I would be able to work through that period, but I wanted to try to. I talked to my manager, explained the situation. As it turned out, one of her best friends was bipolar.
After getting approval from her own manager, my manager laid out the ground rules in a very open way: I would continue to work remotely while I stayed with my parents; I would remain under a psychiatrist’s care; I would continue to take my medication (“I’ll know if you don’t,” she warned); I would not work over time (I’d been working overnight at the office, sometimes 20 hours at a stretch). Last, but not least, was this simple rule: I would do my job.
Because of my manager’s support, I kept my job and I followed her rules — and I improved tremendously. Knowing that she understood that I had a major illness that could be managed made a huge, huge difference for me. I blossomed.
I approached my first annual review with resignation, expecting to be told that the special treatment I’d been given, and the severe troubles I had exhibited, would leave me in the bottom category of performance ranking. I was surprised, then, when the manager gave me a raise, handed me a bit more responsibility, and praised the way I had fought through my crises.
In the last two years of my employment at that company (I worked there for eight years), I began to become ill again. When I went in to a crises I told my manager (a different manager, by then) that I needed time off, and he begrudgingly gave me a week. He also made it clear that he didn’t want to be involved. He also made it clear it would be better for my career if I kept it to myself. He also sent me a phone number for some group in the HR department and encouraged me to “officially” register myself under a special designation of some kind, but he side-stepped the reasons for doing so. When I attempted to explain a little about Bipolar Disorder to him he interrupted me and told me it was inappropriate for him to discuss it with me.
I felt that the company had put a lot of faith in me, and I didn’t want to let them down. I’d been promoted. I had a big job I had been excelling at. The message was clear: the impression was that I was using a trendy diagnosis as an excuse to ask for special treatment.
And from the day I told that manager, really, my career began going down the tubes. And so did I. I loved my job in a very big way, and my identity had become wrapped up in it. I was afraid that if I failed it would mean that the pride I felt in having overcome the worst time in my life was just an illusion. And so I pretended not to be ill in a very big way. I tried getting off medications. I distanced myself from my diagnoses. I went back to my old habit of working all night in an attempt to make up for the utter loss of focus I was experiencing during the day. The project I was managing won a big award. I was given a bonus and a “perfect” rating at my next annual review.
And then my job was given to someone else.
And then I pretty much fell apart.
A few months before I quite my job I told my new manager about being Bipolar. This manager told me her sister, also, had Bipolar Disorder, but she said it in such a way that I thought she might as well have been saying, “You’re one of those people — one of those people who makes excuses all the time.” I got the feeling she didn’t particularly like her sister. And, like my manager before her, she advised me that further discussion would be inappropriate.
By the time I left I was unable to work, really, which was probably OK since I didn’t have any work to do. At all. I had been promoted to those nether regions of corporate America that are reserved for difficult employees who might have cause for a law suit if they are fired. I spent my morning surfing the Internet, and my afternoons drinking. I decided to leave the company one afternoon on a work day when I found myself shopping at Macy’s instead of sitting at my desk because nobody was looking for me any more. ‘Surely I have more pride than this,’ I thought to myself.
I guess, then, that stigma (to me) is really a lack of compassion. A lack of discussion. A general mistrust based on a diagnosis. A lack of support. A kind of shunning as a reward for reaching out for understanding and assistance that I’m not sure I deserve. Stigma means asking for special treatment and not being deemed special enough to get it.
I miss those days at the beginning of my career with that company. The thrill of working through something terrible in an appropriate and honest way. My boss rooting for me from the sidelines.
I don’t know which I wish for more: that I had done a better job of pretending I wasn’t sick, or that I had done a better job of standing up for myself because I was sick. But living in between those lines didn’t help. That’s for sure.
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Beautifully written and well thought out …
A thought. You ARE normal. Very normal. You simply have an on-again, off-again affliction that moves you to the extremes of “normal.” YOU are not someone whose name is “Bipolar.” You are simply a person who suffers (and suffer is an accurate choice of words) from “PP” — perceptual polarization.
Excellent questions. First of all, you aren’t bipolar; you have bipolar. That’s something I’m trying to remind myself every day. Ever since I’ve been unable to work, I began defining myself by my illness.
My blog isn’t anonymous because it’s my own small way of fighting the stigma of mental illness. I’m also open about having bipolar disorder. To me, stigma is being looked upon unfavorably for something one can’t help — like being gay, for example.
Part of this stigma is how mental illness is portrayed in the media, as in films. Often, the people suffering from bipolar or schizophrenia or whatnot are shown exhibiting extreme symptoms that would make anyone feel uneasy. Whenever I’ve been hospitalized I avoided those patients whose symptoms were to me, frightening. At the same time, I understood that it wasn’t the patient’s fault, that their behavior was a symptom of their disease.
I’ve never worked in corporate America, so I imagine disclosing one’s illness, particularly one that has such stigma attached, is unnecessary if the disease is being managed. However, mental illness is covered by the ADA and most if not all companies are required to comply.
I have friends who’ve turned away from me when I’ve told them about my disease. This shows me how true our friendships really were. I don’t ask for compassion or even understanding, but simple acceptance is fine with me.
There’s a blog you might find interesting written by Mark Grimsley, an historian and fellow at The Ohio State University. He is very open about having bipolar disorder and recently wove it into a talk he gave about an exhibit on Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant at Capital University’s Schumacher Gallery. He turned away from his initial diagnosis for years. Check it out if you’re interested: Facing the Demon. The post I mentioned specifically is called Facing Facts.
As I’ve pulled this blog together over the past several weeks it’s gone from being an online home for a decade of diary entries, to a clearinghouse for information related to the symptoms of mental illness to exactly what I think I always needed it to be: a place for me to explore what it means, to me, to actually have Bipolar Disorder.
I’ve been reading other people’s blogs, and I’ve been reading studies, and I’ve been reading allusions to mental illness in popular culture, and to Bipolar Disorder specifically, more than I have in ten years. The thing I didn’t expect was that my exploration would expose this hunger in me for recognition. It isn’t that I want people to feel sorry for me, and it isn’t that I want to trade war stories with people. It’s just that I’m in the process of coming to the conclusion that pretending not to be sick hasn’t made me well, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to compensate for the symptoms of this illness or disease or whatever it is with my youth (which has been over for longer than I care to admit).
Maybe you’re right – maybe in some ways this is a lot like how it must feel to have been gay all my life and living in the closet. I don’t know who I am, in some respects, if I’m not pretending to be somebody who isn’t mentally ill.
I appreciate your comment tremendously. You are well written, you’ve provided a link to a wonderful post on someone else’s blog, and you’ve given me a link to your own blog, as well. I hope you come back and find something else to comment on.
Hey, Waco,
I can so relate to this. (See how I still hide behind my “Sooz incognito” non identity?) I’m hoping that once I “come out ‘mental’” it’s not going to have a negative effect on my career. Though perhaps being a writer and a teacher of writers, things will go differently. I can only hope!
I’m not ready yet, and I keep going back and forth about speaking to my boss. He’s the one who suggested I write a memoir (and that memoir is, Cosmic Wah willing, going to be ready to shop around for a literary agent by this coming spring). He didn’t, however, know that the subject matter would be mental illness. We were having a casual chat on the phone, and he was telling me that memoir is an “easier sell,” and that for a writer who has a good memoir in her, that would be the way to go. (Fiction is my field of expertise, but I’m loving memoir.)
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I only know that, if I find a good agent who believes in my work, and if the memoir is picked up for publication, the world’s going to know my identity. Because there’s no way I want to publish under a pseudonym. I simply couldn’t, after all these years of hard work, finally get a book deal and not feel what it’s like to see my name on the cover of a book at Barnes & Noble (all by itself, I mean, without a few dozen other author names listed on a journal; I’ve had that experience, and while it’s thrilling, I know it’s going to pale in comparison to my very own dust jacket).
Deep breath. It’s going to happen. I’m going to have to be ready for it.
By the way, I know that feeling of being in a conversation and suddenly realizing your mind’s taken flight. You’re a million miles away. You’re having inappropriate sex with someone you’d never have sex with, all in your mind, vividly, while he or she sits across from you wondering why you’re looking a little uncomfortable. Or why you’re wringing your hands. Or taking deep breaths.
Your blog’s looking marvelous, and I’m going to keep coming back to explore.
Take Care,
Sooz
Thought provoking and memorable question…
Excellent post! I tweeted it, and need to absorb the content!
By the time you stop pretending you have already lost who you are. You articulate exactly what I have been saying for years. I have never felt normal since being diagnosed with bipolar. I immediately felt like an outsider. Instant stigma. I wanted to be part of normal society not what “other” people perceive me to be.
I clearly understand the stigma you speak of. To me no matter how hard we fight, people are going to think we are nuts. Not just Hollywood exploiting mental illness but the people who commit crimes and holler bipolar. They are not helping us. They are perpetuating the stigma. So when we get 5 steps ahead of the negative images we are immediately knocked back down into the trenches.
It is rare how your manager accepted and gave you the support you needed to flourish. It is a shame people cannot look deeper. It isn’t like asking for special treatment, it is accommodating someone with a special need. There is a difference. Companies have to have wheel chair access, or other acommendations for those with special needs, but being an invisible handicap (not meant to be negative) we are fed to the wolves.
If we were allowed to divulge our illness on a job we might be able to continue working instead of going from A to B and finally disability. But instead we pretend we are perfectly fine when we are not, and eventually lose who we are. I am super manic and am hoping this makes sense.
Enjoyed reading your article. I found your blog today and look forward to reading your archives. Boo
Amen to that crazybeanrider, amen to that. I just went out to your blog and am thoroughly enjoying your posts. I’m so sorry you are manic right now. Is there a more horrible feeling than a mixed state, really? Awful, awful, awful. My heart goes out to you!
It is a great help to find well written blogs like this and Soozes (found yours through hers). I guess that for a longtime I never realized how much my illness was affecting me even if I was working (part time) and taking care of my girl. Since I have fibromyalgia the symptoms tend to mix and I would always blame everything on the fibro and hide behind that, being able to say that word even if there´s actually quite a stigma surrounding it too.
Thank you so much for sharing
Take care
Tóta
Hi Tóta, and thank you for visiting and commenting on my blog. I’m glad you’re here