Living with Bipolar Disorder

In this short post I highlight some writings of a friend of mine who writes about her experience of living with bipolar. I think what she says is very interesting from a couple of different perspectives. Firstly, it is comparatively rare for people with mental disorders to write about their experiences in their own words – in many cases, we get to hear ‘what it's like' but this is from the perspective of a mental health worker or organisation, not the person themselves.

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Living with bipolar – the same but different

Secondly, her experiences are, on one level, very relatable to most people's experience. However, on another level – the level where she needs to deal with the effects of her condition – her internal experiences are likely to be quite different to the experience of many others.

Funny and smart and hopeful and wise

Thirdly, I hope that what she writes here might help us understand that people who live with a mental disorder (and this is such an ugly term!) can be funny and smart and hopeful and wise – but still disordered. The differences are less than they seem.

– Tim Hill