Our positive stories of living with bipolar disorder

We all know that bipolar disorder can be a difficult, confusing and often seemingly ever- changing roller coaster to live with. And it can be easy to only see the challenges, mistakes, heartbreaks and disappointments we encounter as we try to manage our illness. But the truth is that there are also triumphs, sucessess and achievements both large and small in many of our lives. I believe it does us all good to hear about these as well. In my darkest moments, I found hearing/reading about others positive experiences and hard won joys inspite of their challenges, to be very healing and gave me the strength to fight thru the darkness.

What is your story?

I would like to talk about a story of how creativity grew.

I was always into music but very chaotic in terms of how I pursued this as a kid dependent on mood. Then initially as an adult I was the same. Passions came and went. When I was in hospital the first time ppl who cared harnessed the creativity that my changes in mood brought and encouraged me to song write playing a guitar that the hospital had bought for the OT department. This started me learning how to use my moods to inspire songwriting. I recorded 2 songs in hospital and went on to record many more. I also became involved in open mic nights and have even been asked to gig a few times on my own. All because someone saw how BP can bring creativity that can be harnessed. In addition I belong to a community choir for a good few years now which is doing really well. Again it is somewhere where the creativity that comes with BP can be harnessed and I am so grateful for it. All of this has also brought me friends and a social life and ppl who care about me. And it is really just because a nice guy called John came to play guitar on the ward and a nice OT called Katy handed me a guitar.

Cracked

being highly creative, understanding things that the rest of humanity will understand when they reach higher levels of existance, being through different enlightments, writing down metaphysics in economy and this way upgrading marxism in economy.. but what-fukk-so-ever if nobody understands it

Bipolar did me some good in life. When I was a kid and before my Dad got hurt, he used to be a mechanic for a Mercedes dealer. At the time I was 5 and he brought home a pretty old Benz that barely made it home lol. It ended up stalling right near the house and barely made into our neighbors driveway (he let it sit there till he fixed it). My dad was also Bipolar and had a shopping addiction when it came to old cars. The next week he got the car old Benz running and got it to the dealer and he had it on the lift. I was only 4 at the time so he let me go in the car and he put it on the rack and up in the air. He was the type of mechanic who could fix ANY car you gave him. I'm very proud of him always. I got interested in Mercedes at a young age and it's been my obsession for years now. Always going to the dealer with him on the weekends inspired me to learn about the old, the new Benzes and it'll most likely be my career now. I could probably fix an old Benz definitely if you gave me one to work on. I inherited my Dad's old Benz and now I'm just getting the title corrected now. I got it running with a lot of work and the help of my Uncle who's another mechanic. I've used my obsession for a career and it's paying off. I'm going to tech school when my health applies and I'm applying after tech at the Benz dealer he worked at. He made it a Master Technician in diagnostics. I'm going to try my best to be that good... I won't do anything else but fix cars. It's my gift. I always thank him for that. I still hope he's proud of me from above.

-- Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:35 pm --

Bipolar did me some good in life. When I was a kid and before my Dad got hurt, he used to be a mechanic for a Mercedes dealer. At the time I was 5 and he brought home a pretty old Benz that barely made it home lol. It ended up stalling right near the house and barely made into our neighbors driveway (he let it sit there till he fixed it). My dad was also Bipolar and had a shopping addiction when it came to old cars. The next week he got the car old Benz running and got it to the dealer and he had it on the lift. I was only 4 at the time so he let me go in the car and he put it on the rack and up in the air. He was the type of mechanic who could fix ANY car you gave him. I'm very proud of him always. I got interested in Mercedes at a young age and it's been my obsession for years now. Always going to the dealer with him on the weekends inspired me to learn about the old, the new Benzes and it'll most likely be my career now. I could probably fix an old Benz definitely if you gave me one to work on. I inherited my Dad's old Benz and now I'm just getting the title corrected now. I got it running with a lot of work and the help of my Uncle who's another mechanic. I've used my obsession for a career and it's paying off. I'm going to tech school when my health applies and I'm applying after tech at the Benz dealer he worked at. He made it a Master Technician in diagnostics. I'm going to try my best to be that good... I won't do anything else but fix cars. It's my gift. I always thank him for that. I still hope he's proud of me from above.

Best thing out of being bipolar was the music.

I studied voice, clarinet and music composition at a university in Oregon and received a bachelor of music degree in 2002. I have sung with many choirs, including one in London, England. Before my disease apparently ended my schooling in 2004 I made it through a year of graduate music school. I played in an orchestra in Rome, Italy in 2005. Today I am playing clarinet in a community orchestra and might join yet another chorus. I've been very unreliable in staying in my groups, but there's always the chance to try again.

I also played bass guitar in blues and rock bands and keyboard in rock bands during my younger years.

One problem with answering this question is: what part of you is you and what part of you is the bipolar disorder? I find it impossible to separate the two and the distinction is in many ways meaningless.

Enjoyable aspects of my life: my extremely visual imagination and my creativity. When in a good mood I can spend hours simply lost in my own thoughts in a delicious flow of ideas. its like dropping acid then running through the Amazonian jungle (sort of).

The instant, bizarre and sometimes brilliant associations one can find between completely separate things.

The sensation when working on some creative work when the pieces suddenly fly together and you know exactly what to do next.

The intense, passionate, utterly doomed love affairs I've had; the sex where my whole body felt like it was about to melt into a puddle of liquid fire.

Some stuff is definitely good.

darkroses, I agree -- that's why I don't feel so good about people who make a distinction between "I am bipolar" and "I have bipolar". This is not an illness like any other, that you can shake off after a course of antibiotics and be back to your normal self. It forms a large part of my personality, good and bad.

In my hypomanic period from end of 2011 to July 2012 I have made a lot of changes to my life. I have discovered what is the best possible job for me to do, and now I am learning it. I have met the best possible man I can imagine, and basically went and grabbed him, rather than shyly hope one day he casts a look at me. We will celebrate our anniversary in three weeks. I went places, met people, made friends and created things. I was fearless and could do anything, and I used that period to get over a lot of my phobias. I am changed forever as a result of this phase, and liberated from a lot of constraints and fears that held me down.

oliveira wrote:darkroses, I agree -- that's why I don't feel so good about people who make a distinction between "I am bipolar" and "I have bipolar". This is not an illness like any other, that you can shake off after a course of antibiotics and be back to your normal self. It forms a large part of my personality, good and bad.

Yes, exactly. Bipolar is an illness which is defined in extremely vague terms; its boundaries are in no way clearly defined. One can't say where the illness stops and one's personality begins. Any thoughts on the relation between this illness and the self inevitably lead to paradoxes.

I find it very interesting thinking about this kind of stuff - have become somewhat obsessed with psychology / neuroscience / cognition of late. I'm sure this obsession its not at all uncommon in people with mental health issues...

My bipolar, or rather the hospitalisations it resulted in, inspired me to train to be a nurse.
I was treat well by a lot of the staff while I was sick so now I want to give something back.

I used my mania to succeed in school today. The addition of extra flight of ideas and also the ability to reason faster allowed me to get a 82 on my test, and it allowed me to succeed at many other things too.