#and also the bipolar disorder diagnosis

[daisydood]

dutch right after saying hes against the government and hates people in power: i have the biggest tent and a cool horse and i literally am in charge of everyone here btw

[heisttheblackflag]

I know someone on here posted Lindsay’s reel/clip from yesterday talking about their recent mental health diagnosis and the way that vtubing as RWBY has helped them deal with it and like. I have a lot of emotions about that as I’m sure we all do (and I’ll find it to rb on here later) but. for me personally this is extraordinarily impactful because there are so few people that are known creatives that are open about being bipolar that for them to just come out and say it absolutely floored me. bipolar disorder is probably one of The most stigmatized and demonized mental illnesses out there and it is so hard to come to terms with that diagnosis, even if getting the diagnosis means you can struggle less in your daily life thanks to medication and therapy, so I don’t blame anyone for hiding it or keeping private about it, but as someone who has made a point of being pretty open about being bipolar as part of my creative…mission statement, I guess, it’s deeply meaningful and impactful to me to have someone like Lindsay Jones be open about being bipolar as well. the only way we can reduce stigma is to keep talking about it, so I genuinely hope this can help reduce the stigma of bipolar disorder in the small corner of the world that watches Lindsay/RWBY because even that little bit can make a huge difference.

happy mental health awareness month!

support Lindsay, support anyone else in your life who is struggling with mental health especially bipolar disorder (I, II, or cyclothymia), and if you have any (respectful) questions about what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder my askbox is open with no judgement 💙

[suffercerebral]

me having gone to bed at 6 am every day for the past week and generally spiraling mentally while rotting in bed waking up this morning: a 4 mile hike in the heat is a really good idea right now, and while we're at it let's start like 3 art projects

[arionawrites]

decided to make a list of all my diagnosed issues and like fucking. god damn. how am i just living day to day.

[moodr1ng]

recently been seeing (and seeking) more info on moral ocd and its like wellll it does seem like i definitely have that but talking about the stuff i obsess over w my psychiatrist feels impossible bc i cant admit to thinking about it without feeling like a horrible person, so im just gonna keep sweeping it under the rug lol....

[pathologising]

Not to play doctor or seem like a stalker but I’ve followed your blog for agessss and I wondered how you have “just” hypomania if you’re schizophrenic….. gave me bpad 1 vibes

They think I'm just bipolar and borderline and not schizo anymore

[killmonk]

guy who's been 18 for 6 months but is so afraid of psychiatry he WILL be staying with the conduct disorder diagnosis and will NOT NEVER be pursuing an updated diagnosis. Not Never 🙅🙅

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[july-19th-club]

the first time my mother and i ever talked about it was after i tried and more or less failed to attend the calling hours for the mother of a school classmate who’d passed away. it was in ninth grade. and we got into the funeral home and i’d been lucky and never really been in one that i could remember anymore so i had no social script and it didn’t occur to me until we’d left but the thing that was fucking me up the most was the idea that i would have to see and interact with someone i saw every day in normal contexts (gym class, CCD, the bus) in a Grief Context and i didnt know how to be normal with him ever again because there were like, no established ground rules for that that i knew of and at this funeral home i just got. SLAMMED with the most massive and impenetrable wave of nonverbal that i’ve still ever experienced in my life, and i’m in there sweating and shaking and incapable of communicating why i’m being weird when it’s not my relative’s funeral and i basically only knew the woman from church. and mom puts our names in the guest book and gets us back out to the car pretty quickly and once i’ve come down a bit from the Edge Of Meltdown she’s like so i’d been meaning to talk to you about this at some point but it seems relevant now i have suspected for many years that you might be autistic. and at the time it was such a relief to have somebody else say it that i was like oh wow thank god i’m not insane for also thinking that. but in retrospect i’ve always been like, fuck, and you just didn’t mention it? nice nice nice that’s cool that hasn’t affected me you’re good you’re good what the fuck

anyway after that we sought out NO psychologists and did NO accommodations and it was only ever talked about between us as A Thing You And I Both Know but it never factored into all the things i still needed and just about every work-around i have is still something i had to develop myself

[subarus-gentle-butterfly]

what was miu’s father like?

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of alcohol, drug use, abuse, the not so pretty symptoms of bipolar. If you are uncomfortable with any of these topics, please do not read or interact. I am not responsible if you choose to ignore these warnings and cause yourself mental harm. I will be tagging each of these triggers in the tags of this post as well.

Mikuo tried his best in the beginning. He really did, and he was ecstatic to have a baby girl. Up until Miu turned around 6 or 7, that's when things got worse. Mikuo became unhappy in his failing relationship with her mother, the product becoming Miu's younger brother, Goro.

Miu was too young to understand the reality of what was happening between her parents and to realize that things were not normal. She loved having a brother, though, which her dad was happy to hear about back then. Mikuo never felt bad about cheating on Chisato(Miu's mom) and having a child with someone else, which is where things start to change. His true colours start to show a few years afterwards.

Mikuo was young and still had a lot of growing to do, and was trying his best to provide for his small family, but most of Miu's memories of her dad from this time would be him sleeping a lot and being angry and raising his voice at her over small things. Chisato was gone for a while and came back into the picture, but she was still heavily hooked onto drugs and alcohol, and she became obsessed with Miu to the point where Miu started to feel like she had to be the mom in their relationship. Mikuo didn't like this, but he knew Miu wanted a whole family, so he tried his best to keep her mom with him in the picture, but he was still very unhappy.

He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and anger issues, and was unmedicated for a long time, and when he was medicated, he wouldn't always take them. This is where things took a turn for the worse. His mania and depressive swings would get more extreme. He stopped playing with Miu asmuch and started to only find enjoyment in sex and money.

Over the years, he had steadily gotten to the point where he found a good job, one with great benefits and one that paid well. One that could keep him and the family afloat enough so they would be able to survive and at least look like a normal happy family. He was at this job for a long time, and he had moved up in ranks and was generally well liked within the company. This made him feel a bit more satisfied, and he really tried his best to be a good father, despite his misgivings.

Mikuo was then suddenly fired from his job over something that he wasn't responsible for, and he kind of exploded at that point. He became more cynical and angry and he genuinely couldn't find any happiness anymore other than alcohol. He took a lot of it out on Miu and Chisato.

Mikuo had no other outlet to vent his frustrations on. He had lost his insurance coverage which helped cover the costs of his medication for his bipolar disorder, and due to his drinking, it amplified the not so great sides of the illness. He turned into a total jerk, a horrible father, and an even worse person.

When he found another job that didn't quite treat him the best or pay him the best, he felt a little better, and was actually kind of happy when Goro was sent to live with them. He was excited to have a son and was happy to see his daughter getting along with him, but it wasn't enough to keep him happy or satisfied. He tried to shape up a bit, but never really thought about the gravity of his actions towards Miu and her mom. Goro saw bits and pieces, and really clung onto Miu afterwards.

Mikuo was still very unhappy with everything going wrong in his life, and continued to get upset and angry easily, often screaming at his kids to shut up when they were just playing together. He didn't really think about anyone else's feelings but his own. Instead of trying to understand or listen to his children when they wanted to tell him how they felt or if something was wrong, he was busy wallowing in self-pity, drowning in his sorrow and frustrations.

After Goro was taken away, he started to feel more hatred towards his life and how boring it was. He continued to take out his stress on Miu and Chisato, and started to see less colour in the world, he couldn't feel joy anymore and the only hint of pleasure he could ever feel was the amusement of seeing others more miserable than he was. He turned into a sick and sadistic man who found enjoyment in hurting the people who loved/depended on him. He couldn't understand what he was doing was wrong anymore, and he never wanted to be sober anymore. He had also started to get into drugs at some point but he wasn't so hooked on them like Chisato was.

[ikkan]

my new psychiatrist said there’s a possibility i could have schizoaffective disorder…but said it can be very complicated to diagnose properly.

[cupid-roses]

I’m so silly guys

[binders-and-beanies]

I never know when to draw the line between “I am exhibiting signs of potential oncoming hypomania” and “I am experiencing a hypomanic episode” bc I give a lot of fucks about words meaning things and it’s not a technical clinical hypomanic episode unless it lasts at least a few days to a week but also. That does include the beginning of that week lol and part of what I worked on when i saw a psychiatrist was tracking what oncoming episodes look like so that at or before the start of them I can be like ah yes all signs point to That. Even if it can be explained by other things too or ends up just being a mood swing I feel successful in learning to identify and verbalize these things which is, dare I say, neat

[moodr1ng]

talking to my mom abt mental health is so funny bc the more time passes the more disorders she seems to believe are fake. like when i was a teen she brought up that she thought i was borderline but i think now she thinks bpd isnt real. yesterday we were discussing symptoms i have related to autism and she mentioned my "up and down mood" and i was like well yeah but i think thats bc im bipolar. like im diagnosed w that. and she scoffed and went "yeah well bipolar...." like hold on does she think bipolar disorder is fake now too? yes my mom is a practicing psychologist btw

[psychoticallytrans]

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

[alondisstorm]

love all the mental illnesses I might have but can't get diagnosed for because that would endanger my career in teaching, so I just suffer in silence and hope that I won't be suffering too much