Watch and listen to Rebecca share her story in the video or you can read the transcription below.

I have bipolar disorder.

I have,

Bipolar disorder.

Once upon a time I might have said I am bipolar, but I am not my diagnosis, so I deliberately say have rather than am. Someday it may become a habit.

I was diagnosed 25 years ago after the birth of my second child. now I’d first come into the wonderful world of mental health care two years before that when I had my first child and postpartum depression. with my second it was postpartum depression with added hallucinations.

shortly after I began taking the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I bounced up really high which is why they decided to focus on bipolar. So that was the diagnosis.

But when did it start, that’s hard to say? I felt different all my life believing from an early age that other people didn't experience emotions the way that i did. Other people seemed to me to be so

remote from their emotions that I believed everyone else must be a robot, put on earth by God to test me.

I was very sensitive; I am very sensitive. “You gotta toughen up” people always say. “Oh” one of my friends once said to the other, “you know how difficult she can be”. that phrase still haunts me.

With adolescence and then adulthood came promiscuity shoplifting, self-indulgent poetry, a broken window, and bloody knuckles. Astonishing productivity, nightmares, a suicide attempt, insomnia racing thoughts, bursts of rampant creativity and many, many tears. For years I worked and trained as an actress which gave everyone a nice excuse for my heightened emotionality.

After the diagnosis, nothing changed right away except the meds. My first psychiatrist tried quite a few but the hypomania kept popping back up that was useful in some ways. I wrote my master's thesis in a single weekend. I wrote short fiction for my popular website all while in the process of divorcing my first husband raising two kids and working full-time. Now I I’ve been in England 22 years now I’ve been able to work about half that time. My psychiatrist is still tweaking my meds.

Looking back over the past decade, I reckon I’ve had three major depressions, multiple hypomanic episodes, many mixed states and one psychotic break courtesy of discontinuing a particularly

nasty medication. Now don't get me wrong, medication has saved my life, but I always felt as though it was something being done to me. I had no control or influence.

That finally began to change around have some cognitive behaviour therapy which seems to have been a turning point even if I didn't understand it all at once I could see that I could have some influence over my own mental health. Then I took a course at Solent Recovery College and began reframing my mental health as a recovery journey. The techniques I’ve learned at the recovery college have been very helpful, I practice mindfulness, I’m rebuilding routines, I keep copious lists and I try not to over commit. My family can be very supportive, but I still sometimes struggle to know what it is I need, let alone how to ask for it.

I began my involvement as a peer trainer at Solent Recovery College in April 2014. In July 2019 I became the peer trainer coordinator for the college. Early this year I took on the role of

team lead. I love having something I believe in to work for. it's liberating to have a job where you have to have a mental health diagnosis.

I don't have to hide my diagnosis, I don't have to be my diagnosis, I can be as different as I like.

Just like everybody else.

Videos:

Rebecca from Solent Recovery College shares her story, and how she took control of her mental health.

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