It's gonna be a long one! (Yeah, my blog isn't just a one hit wonder now!)

Hello again. Thanks to all for the overwhelming response to my invitation...I'm looking forward to sharing all this with you. I've been thinking about the implications of a blog like this, and I realize I run the risk of making some of you who don't know me that well feel kind of voyeuristic, considering the potential weight of the topic. But I'm hoping to be a little more objective and empirical about this, as opposed to awkwardly and painfully self-disclosing, though I'm not sure that can be completely avoided. For now I am an aspiring young psychologist and I'm going to study this...and I hope I can do it in a way that's appropriate and accessible.

I figured I'd start today by talking a little bit about how I was diagnosed - what was happening to me psychologically, physically, academically, relationally and spiritually prior to my pursuit of psychiatric evaluation. So I'm gonna have to start from the beginning.

Statistically speaking, the onset of bipolar is most common in my age range (18 to 22, I think) and typically follows some kind of traumatic event or experience. It's also overwhelmingly influenced by the presence of the disorder in the family line, but it usually takes something big in adolescence to get its disruptive symptoms going. Here's the start of my story, pulled from a paper I wrote in a Dr. Hartley class (the mythical Greenville religion department head, for all those non-Greenvillians.)

"Sophomore year of college I had what I can only describe as a “poverty epiphany," where my world exploded in literally an instant. I had been reflecting on a conversation I'd had with my friend Anna about her boyfriend Travis who'd been spending his semester in Africa. I was unusually challenged by her account of Travis' willingness to actually do something he believed in, and it just hit me, excuse the cliche, like a ton of freaking bricks.

I, within no more than a second’s time, understood with raging clarity the reality of poverty and human suffering in the world; it was the most supernatural thing that has ever happened to me. Unfortunately, this realization, in reaction with my kind of unusual tendency toward empathy, was a recipe for the most emotional “bleeding heart” ever (or, “baby hugger,” as professor emeritus Dwight Jackson calls us). It birthed in me the most troubling sense of personal responsibility I’ve ever experienced.

Suddenly I understood I was not only responsible as a Christian for aiding the dying and the destitute, but also to do everything in my power to live the Gospel. Unfortunately for me - a flagrant “all or nothing” type - this began to translate into some pretty extreme, probably irrational living. (And not in a “on the straight and narrow,” “the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world” type of thing, but a genuine pattern of unhealthy, destructive thoughts and actions.)

I began on a trail of very difficult, self-sacrificing decisions made in response to such an awareness, including the break up (though only temporarily) of a very committed relationship, the decision to cut off all my hair in order to overcome vanity, as well as the decision to spend the fall semester of junior year in Africa. Though deep inside I wanted to go to Europe or Australia, it was in Africa where I’d find the most suffering and was therefore where I belonged. I became obsessed, judgmental, legalistic and miserable, getting rid of most of my things and pinching every penny. It was radical, but I had very little notion of God’s love, and it certainly was not motivating me.

There was not an ounce of peace for me the entire time. No matter how hard I tried, there was never an end to feeling of guilt and anxiety that I had so much more than most of the world."

The existential turmoil that followed still haunts me. Everything I thought I knew about God and the world, and the illusion of safety I had cultivated in order to cope with how shitty the world can be, was jerked out from under me, and I was left with only the burning reality of death, meaninglessness, anxiety, despair. I began to dig further and further into the possibility that the world really is full of nothing but hell, every thing's damned, redemption and the whole power of the cross maybe exist, but they’re never enough to account for all that's tremendously wrong with creation. It sounds pretty dramatic - comical even, upon recollection - but this did a number on me psychologically.

I began to turn this new horror vision of the world onto myself, realizing my frailty - my own capacity for tremendously terrible things, or at least my capacity to become everything I never wanted to become. I had a homosexual dream at some point during that time, which sparked in me a consequentially long-lived fear that I was gay. (This is by no means implying I think homosexuality is tremendously terrible. This is not the forum for that discussion. I was afraid of being gay because I loved Chase and I didn't want to lose my sexual attraction to him...) I lost nights and nights of sleep over this, and I wasn't able to watch movies or TV for a long time without a sense of panic in anticipation that I would feel something sexually for another woman. (It didn't help that this was right around the time I chopped off all my hair and was feeling super androgynous.) I was a wreck, but it didn't stop there.

I began to wonder if (since I hadn't completely resolved that I was straight at that point - which I have now. Very straight. I mean, look at my husband. How can any girl be gay around him :):):):):):):):):):):):)) there were other potential impulses that to be afraid of experiencing. What if there was a psychopath somewhere inside me? What if I started feeling sexually attracted to young children? What if I became everything I didn't want to be? I entered a period of paranoia, the lowest part occurring spring break junior year where I spent the majority of the week in st. louis with Chase. I spent most of the time devastatingly panicked and worried that I was going to try and stick a knife in Chase in his sleep, or something unbelievable like that.

This is called having an anxiety disorder, with at least some obsessive compulsive tendencies. These thoughts sound absolutely absurd to me now, but I was a complete and total mess. I’m still amazed at how awesome Chase was through all of this. He never once made me think he was questioning either wanting to be with me, or whether or not I was quality and worth putting up with all the bullshit for. He’s awesome. He really is.

Anyway. I got better for a while. I started this program called The Linden Method, which is basically a cognitive behavioral therapy in disguise. The power of the Linden Method is that it tells you you're a.) not a really sick, perverted person, 100% guaranteed b.) you’re going to get better, 100% guaranteed, and c.) you can't reason yourself out of terrible thoughts and fears, you can only block them.

So I got a lot better. Better enough, in fact, to decide to spend a semester trekking through Uganda and Rwanda. This ended up being it, though. My time in Africa was the final straw, the breaking point, the last chemical in a long and complicated formula that eventually reacted into this ridiculous bipolar explosion.

Africa wasn’t the best experience for me, which is unfortunate considering the potential awesomeness of semesters abroad. It was kind of terrible and traumatic, in fact. Most of every day was spent fearing death, fearing injury, fearing a failure to return home. On top of that, I spent every day surrounded by poverty, sickness, death. I spent three weeks doing nothing but studying the Rwandan genocide, interacting with people who lived through shit that no one should ever, ever have to even imagine.

To reiterate, I really do think Africa was the icing on the cake, the bipolar solidifier.

So that’s how it all began. Back in the States, I sought psychiatric evaluation once I realized how difficult a time I was having adjusting to home, though the problems I was most conscious of and concerned with were academic. I was having a really hard time concentrating, reading (which is hard to not be able to do in philosophy and religion classes) and absorbing information. I was also struggling with some pretty intense self-esteem issues, but those weren’t at the forefront. I went into the psychiatrist’s office convinced I had ADHD or something, and came out with a bipolar diagnosis, which makes sense. Symptoms of intense depression, ADHD and anxiety disorders are completely common within the bipolar experience.

What solidified the diagnosis, apart from the prescribed treatment actually working for me, was my description of this uncontrollable pattern of low-self esteem vs. grandiose thinking I was living. What amazes me is that it’s kind of obvious now. I even spent a semester in an abnormal psychology class studying bipolar, and I never put two and two together. I really think it’s the stigma. I didn’t want to be bipolar, I didn’t think I was “that crazy...” so it was never even a consideration.

It’s pretty much a dangerous situation all around, and, if any of you ever experience something like what i’m describing, and you begin to feel worse and worse, don’t leave the bipolar possibility out, even if your Dr. is pretty adamant that it’s not an option. I had a pretty unfortunate experience with a different psychiatrist regarding bipolar (especially type 2) before I started treatment, who I don’t think really understood the disorder...I’ll talk more about that next time, I think.

I'm also interested in opening a discourse on the pharmacotherapy (medicinal programs) for a bipolar diagnosis, as this is one of the core reasons I'm interested in starting this blogging, so that’ll be next too! Stay tuned, friends and lovers. Thanks for your support, affirmation and encouragement.

Love, 
Caitlin