People talk about physical fitness, but mental health is equally important. Getting outside was a way I could satisfy both, my therapy. Sometimes my mind never shuts down, concentration is near impossible. Treatment for one condition has been proven to send me soaring into manic euphoria. The downside of euphoria, depression and suicidal thoughts. I see a community all around me suffering, and their families feel a sense of shame about it, which doesn’t help life. People need to be supported. They don’t want to pretend to have the flu when they can’t get out of bed. I am now working on an initiative to create awareness about anxiety and depression and help people by sharing my experiences with this amazing sport and the therapy it has provided me. So while my blog has, and still will be quirky at times; I want to share my experiences and grow this sport.
“Mental labels don’t define who I am, time and aging only gets me closer to those I love, will love, and have loved” ~ S.L. Cato
I’ve battle Bipolar disorder for at least 15+ years, toss in a couple more labels I’ve collected such as generalized anxiety disorder PTSD. This battle is pretty amazing and out of this world and at times a dark rollercoaster ride. The medication, the manic episodes, and mania can be pretty humorous. The hypersexuality, drugs, anxiety, depression, ghosts, and parenting. I’ve certainly felt the sting of the “crazy” stigma, but I’m here today. Bipolar is my superpower. I hope by sharing my musings it helps others understand the labels situation whispered behind closed doors. Please feel free to share my stories, rantings and musings. Read more about me in my post “Who is the Mad Woman”
Bipolar is my superpower. I hope by sharing my musings it helps others understand the labels and situation whispered behind closed doors.
Thank you!
Musings of a mad woman 
You liked a post of mine several weeks ago, and I’m just getting around to looking at your site, and reading your account of yourself and why you write. I’m sympathetic to your motto: Bipolar is my superpower. I was diagnosed ADHD by the therapist I saw after my daughter died, and the description fit me very well. Strangely, I consider it my best feature — it allows me a free-floating attention and strong associative network that helps my clients feel listened to and produces new or unexpected ways of their understanding their own “superpower.” I dislike diagnoses; they seem to be artificial creations for the sake of definitions for the purpose of billing insurances and staying in a medical model of the psyche, which is an extremely limited way of understanding people. The disease-treatment model has its place, but seldom seems to cut through to the root of whatever problem brings someone to see me in the first place. And that root is so hidden and underground that it doesn’t show up until about the 15th session or so, and then only in outline, or as a small window of understanding. But I would never get there with a client if I was a left-brained person who checked off all the boxes and followed all the protocols religiously.
My ADHD is so necessary to my work that I think it is really not a disorder at all. It’s only defined that way by the dominant left-brained orientation of the science freaks.
I get the same vibe from you about your passage through these states. You see something very valuable in them and I’ll bet at some level you also object to the “disorder” definition. It may be that, absent culturally-defined and sanctioned rites of initiation in life (something we have lost in the course of our development), “mental illness” is an initiation that takes us deeper into meaning and identity — not an identity defined as a disorder, but as a way of being that touches something other than the rational linearity considered to be the most desirable state by the rationality-linearity crowd. There are secrets in our illnesses, without which we would be most impoverished..
So I like your take and expression. Keep up the good work.
Paul True (“Shift Happens”)
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Thank you so much for finding my blog and liking a post. Hope you come back again soon
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