Professional chess player, recently diagnosed bipolar

Hi everyone,

My name is Luís Henrique, from Brazil. I'm a 28-year-old chess International Master and a professional chess player and coach. I have been suffering with a mental condition that's been haunting me since the age of 14, when I watched my mom's death (she died of natural causes at the age of 42... she had been fighting the incurable Chagas Disease for years but eventually she lost the battle). When she passed away, I turned into somebody else. We were so close, and so co-dependant. Maybe because she had been divorced from my dad since I was 3, she threw all her love onto me, and in return she became my world. Maybe a little too much so. When I lost her to this dreadful disease, the impact of the trauma was such that I started having periods where, out of the woodwork, I'd just isolate myself from everyone. Everyone. If physical isolation weren't possible, I'd become emotionally absent, which in many ways can be the very same thing. At the time I just thought I was grieving, and that my sudden urges towards isolation would go away eventually. But they didn't. They actually got worse, especially after my father died in a car crash when I was 19 years old. I've always believed deeply in God and have always had faith in the eternal process through which we've all come to spend a journey on this planet, and this unshakable faith (although I have no particular religion, except for the fact that I absolutely worship the Conversations with God trilogy by Neale Donald Walsch) is the responsible for me keeping it together during this rough period. I focused my energy in my career and I became one of the best chess players of my country at record speed, I became an International Master at the age of 21 and at the age of 24 I was already the most sought-after online chess coach in the world. But it didn't last for too long. The need to be isolated kept coming back, ever stronger, and I would end up ignoring my students, until I lost all of them. But not only my career went down the drain. As far as relationships go, don't even get me started. All I brought to my former girlfriends, some of them absolutely wonderful women, was pain. They would fall in love with the person they met (during my manic phases of the cycle, which have always been mild), but eventually a moment would come where I'd just start ignoring them. Completely. One day, our relationship is wonderful and perfect and we're making plans for the future. The next day I disappear from their lives, for 5 or 6 weeks. And it got to a point where, alone, broke and desperate, I gave in and decided I needed help. After a couple of years in therapy (on-and-off, because during my depressive cycles I tend to ignore my therapist as well) I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Instead of resisting the diagnosis or being in denial, I'm actually relieved I know what my problem is. But I'm now left with one big question: is there anybody out there that can relate to my specific case? Does anyone's depressive episodes come primarily with an uncontrollable urge towards isolation, more than anything else? Or am I truly the one-of-a-kind abnormality I feel like I am?

For me, not to your degree, but I do tend to stop doing things with friends and become very socially anxious, so I do withdrawal. Not completely, I have kids, a husband, and sm back in school so I push myself through. But udually my depressive episodes are mild while my hypo ones are more extreme.

I hope you can find a way to overcome these periods.