Welcome to the Jungle. Hilary T. Smith
WITH THE DX
Being diagnosed with bipolar disorder is akin to waking up after a wild night of intoxication to discover that at some point during your (fuzzily remembered) antics, you went and got a tattoo on your bicep. Not just any tattoo'you got a big old snake-eating-a-unicorn tattoo. That sucker's six inches high and three across. It's kind of badass, kind of hideous. You stare at it in shock. You vaguely remember going to the tattoo parlor, but why?! You frantically think back to the chain of events that might have led up to you getting a tattoo of a snake eating a unicorn. You feel guilt, anger, embarrassment, denial, nausea—the whole ride. Eventually you realize you're going to have to live with this thing for the rest of your life, and from here on, your attitude towards your new tat is entirely up to you.
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
The field of psychology has words for everything. It has a word for when you talk too fast. A word for when you talk too slow. A word for when you smear your feces around your bedroom.
It even has a word for your reaction to being diagnosed. Reject the diagnosis? You're “underidentifying” with being bipolar. Want to make sweet love to it? You're “overidentifying” with your bipolar characteristics (“Ha ha, that was just soooo bipolar of me”). The endless labeling is alienating, but since you're going to run into it, you might as well be prepared.
THE SNAKE-EATING-A-UNICORN GUIDE TO OVER- AND UNDERIDENTIFICATION
So you wake up with this tattoo/diagnosis. How do you react?
Underindentification: “Ho ho ho! This is surely but an amusing temporary tattoo placed on me as a prank. It will certainly wash off in the shower.”
Medium-Low: “The tat is real, but I'm going to wear long-sleeved shirts for the rest of my life to cover it up.”
Middle: “Living with this tattoo is going to be a bitch and a half, but it's also kind of dope.”
Medium-High: “Short sleeves for me, baby.”
Overidentification: “This tattoo defines me, man. I'm going to tattoo the rest of my body with snakeskin and have a horn surgically implanted on my head.”
THE NON-METAPHORICAL GUIDE TO OVER- AND UNDERIDENTIFICATION
When you underidentify with your diagnosis, you reject it and don't want to integrate it into your identity. You might think there's been a mistake. Or you might accept that you have a disorder called “bipolar,” but don't want it mentioned ever again.
When you overidentify, you attribute too much of your identity to bipolar disorder. Maybe you go over your past with a fine-toothed comb, ferreting out clues that everything you've ever done was a result of having bipolar genes. Or you drop all your other activities and spend all your time on bipolar message boards, interpreting everything anyone says in terms of GABA receptors.
Many people experience the full spectrum of under- and overidentification over the course of the first year, or several years, of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. One day you accept you're bipolar, the next day you weep bitterly over it, the next day you don't even think about it. Even though I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder several years ago, there are still mornings when I wake up and say, “Really? Really?” Then my boyfriend rolls over and says, “Really.” And I say, “Oh, yeah.”
LET'S TALK ABOUT FEELINGS
However you're feeling about your diagnosis, there's someone out there feeling the same way. There's another newly bipolar skater punk grieving over her “lost self,” another type-A personality feeling guilty for “screwing it all up,” and another nerd who's done his research (helloo, Medline) and who feels that in his professional opinion, the doctors are right, but more research needs to be done in the area of gabapentan interceptors. You might even have every one of these feelings at different points throughout the year and throughout your life:
“There's no way this can be true.”
“Finally, an explanation!”
“This is a mistake.”
“This is my fault.”
“This is so cool.”
“It's my parents' fault!”
“I should have been stronger/smarter/more careful.”
“This makes sense.”
“I can't believe this is happening.”
“Is my life ruined?”
“Can I still graduate/be a poet/find a boyfriend/have a career?”
“Am I going to die?”
“I wish I could turn back time.”
“I shouldn't have dropped so much acid.”
“I shouldn't have left the church.”
“This feels like a dream.”
“This is completely ridiculous.”
“I can't tell anyone.”
“Bipolar's for pussies. Real men/women don't have bipolar.”
“Bipolar's not a real disorder. Psychiatry is a conspiracy.”
“What the hell?”
“Scientology! Kaiieee! Kaieeee! Take me, Lord Xenu, I'm a level one clear!”
“I guess the only thing I can do with my life is become a belligerent hobo.”
“I was already a belligerent hobo.”
“What am I going to do with my life?”
“I can't live with this.”
“Why didn't someone tell me sooner?”
“Will people just shut up about this?”
“Am I going to be on meds my whole life?”
“Does this mean I'm crazy?”
“This is unbearable.”
“This doesn't really make a difference.”
“So what?”
“What a blessing!”
You're going to go through long stretches of your life when the fact that you have bipolar disorder never crosses your mind—and there will also be the odd stretch when you can think of nothing else. Trust me: you'll get used to it.
WHY DO I HAVE BIPOLAR?
You didn't get bipolar because you're weak, lazy, bad, or because Zeus wanted to smite you (though a meditation instructor I talked to claimed bipolar was due to bad karma from a previous life; people, don't step on ants!).
You probably got bipolar because you were genetically predisposed to it, and something triggered those particular genes to light up howling. The triggering of that genetic time bomb is called “onset.” The age of onset for bipolar disorder is generally between the late teens and late thirties, though nowadays kids and old people are getting diagnosed too.
If you're feeling guilty about developing bipolar, don't: there's really nothing you could have done to avoid getting it, short of strangling yourself in the womb. Some people who have the genetic potential never develop bipolar (just like you can have a family history of breast cancer without developing it yourself). If the sucker happens to break out, well then, you did nothing to cause it except simply be alive.
People who have bipolar always have a certain narrative about how it developed: “I'd just gotten my first job and my first