The Destigmatization of Mania in a Manic Culture
[Music]
thank you to everybody i feel honored to
be here
i wanted to first say that i am going to
share a very vulnerable story
so i may lose myself for a moment in
tears but i promise
i’ll pull it back i woke up in a
hotel room in mexico and i didn’t know
where i was
or why i was there a dear friend was
accompanying me
thank goodness so she was able to
support me while i figured
out the whole experience
two months before i was in mexico i had
had a significant amount of trauma which
included
my mother having a stroke and a dear
friend’s husband passing away
my grandfather passing my mother having
a subsequent surgery which
did not go entirely well she made it
through but it was difficult at the time
and then a dear friend passing come back
to mexico
my friend basically described what had
happened to me
i had a manic psychotic break from
bipolar one disorder but i never knew
i had bipolar one disorder apparently
i had a pretty good time while i was in
mexico i was
not there for about three days
at least one point i ran away i had a
nap
on a stand-up paddleboard and
i ended up buying a whole restaurant
dinner i found the receipt later
about a million people in the u.s suffer
from bipolar disorder
and that is only what’s reported
4.3 percent of women struggle with
anxiety and depression
and again that’s only what’s reported
and i estimate a lot of that has to do
with the stigmas that
surround mental health illness and what
ex
what people experience and that people
just don’t understand
and aren’t educated people who have
migraines or strokes
that’s accepted around the neurological
state of the brain
but with its with mental health it’s
just not yet understood
we see in our culture this
fight-or-flight situation
everybody’s running around like their
heads are cut off
there’s more to do there’s more to do i
want more
for us women we often are doing it all
cooking cleaning grocery shopping making
sure our kids are happy dropping them
off
at activities after school also holding
a 50-hour plus work week and
now teaching our children it’s too much
it’s unsustainable and it’s a lot like
what happens with
mania it’s unsustainable so our
experience is shared
eventually we tend to see people get to
that point where they can’t sustain it
anymore
and they crash cortisol goes up
inflammatory disease may go up we may
see autoimmune disorders
we may see people falling into you know
some sort of depressive state
or addiction alcoholism or anything else
because the body and the brain just
can’t
do it anymore that experience of high
and then low is very much similar to
what
i suffer from with bipolar disorder
my goal is to work with my therapist and
my psychiatrist
to feel and reduce those reduce those
you know excess mania and excess
depressive because it’s just not
comfortable
it’s not sustainable but our culture in
some ways induces this stuff
my story is excessive
mania drove a majority of what happened
in my life
i didn’t know until i was 44 years old
that i actually had
bipolar so i think a lot of people
spend their life with some of these
challenges and they never
know they lived or had that problem
i was did well in high school i had one
suicide attempt
but didn’t ever let anybody know i was
trying to escape from a dangerous space
at my home i went to college
i decided i wanted to do it all i didn’t
need anybody
i wouldn’t rely on anyone ever again
i signed up for rotc carried about 22
credit hours a semester
and when i graduated i was commissioned
to the us army because it was
responsible
and then i wouldn’t need anybody a few
of my jobs in the military were
interesting
and so representative who i am
one was a company commander i was
company command
of 180 soldier unit because that’s what
you have to do
obviously i also took
a role as operations commander for
all medical ops for an entire post of
fort huachuca
again why but i thought that’s what
you’re supposed to do
it was the only way i could love myself
was through success
and the only way i thought i was lovable
was through success
when i left the military i went straight
to my master’s degree here in
colorado i then got my doctorate while i
was working full-time
then we had our children and then life
went on
after our second child things sort of
went downhill
i started to feel this engine in my
chest
i call it the freight train i didn’t
feel well it started to feel like
i wasn’t fully in control of myself but
i didn’t ask for help
because why i was fine i started
two startups during that time while
working full time and raising two kids
my husband traveled a ton but i could do
it it was fine
finally i found nurture which is my
company that i have started with
two amazing people focused on self-care
here in denver
i’ll explain the irony later
we stand here now after one significant
psychotic break and a more recent
depressive break that happened but i’m
still
here the suicide attempts didn’t work
and i’m still here i want to say my
husband
my psychiatrist and my psychologist
saved my life it was the only way
that i could really be sitting or
standing in this red circle
you don’t know how excited i am that i’m
here today
my therapist has taught me a lot of
exciting things that i never knew how to
do
the first being boundaries and i want to
say that first because
when you live in a codependent situation
a lot of your life
you don’t know what boundaries are you
just don’t know how
you want to please everybody it’s been a
really fun journey and it will be a
lifeline
lifelong education
next is self-love for so
long that laundry list of things you do
more
than most people do at 11 a.m you’re
always working all the time why how can
you do all that marathons blah blah blah
everybody used to be so excited about
that stuff
i didn’t love myself i was running away
from it
she says love yourself like you love
your child
if you can’t get there yet do that
the other thing is self-care it’s hard
to even identify what is that
in my world view it should not even be a
name it should just be part of our
world and our lives but it isn’t it’s
looked down upon sometimes it’s shameful
it’s selfish which is nuts but
it’s how sometimes people think we’ve
been conditioned to
to me self-care can be a lot of things
first and foremost
if we don’t focus on our wellness we
will have to focus on our illness
that is profound statement that she
helps me understand
i see self-care now in so many different
ways than i used to
self-care equals things that aren’t
productive
taking a walk in nature nature’s feeds
your soul
enjoying music just sitting and
listening to music
i love music i go to live music but
i didn’t really think about could i just
sit down and listen to it
books and reading are magic to get into
something else that isn’t in your head
how fun and fun and laughter and joy
that is a waste of time that is part of
the human experience and if we can
basically tap
into that richness our lives change
forever
unconditional love i’ve learned finally
to surround myself and only maintain the
relationships in my life
that are focused on self care
unconditional love if i don’t live in
relationship
with unconditional love i’m constantly
pleasing i’m going right back to the
codependent
lifestyle and i’m done with it it will
put me in the grave
love if we can think as
christie was saying earlier that we are
connected by our hearts
that is everything to our planet to one
another
we share an experience it doesn’t mean
that it has to be bipolar
depressive manic whatever it is we have
a shared experience as humanity
and it’s important that we don’t think
about
the fact that oh somebody has this label
or somebody has this label or
somebody’s not good enough we are all
good enough as we
are i send love to you
you are not alone you are in community
all the time
thank you
[Music]
you