Labels: A Cautionary Tale

Labels damage us. They steal our truth.

Until my diagnosis, I was unique. I was different, and I was proud of that. I forged my own path, discovered my passion, abandoned some of the dearly held beliefs of my upbringing, and set the world on fire. Well...maybe not the whole world, but my little corner was burning pretty darn brightly, thanks.

I considered myself a student of my own mind. I knew myself better than a lot of people twice my age know themselves, and felt that I had achieved a level of comfort with myself and awareness of myself that many people never achieve. I knew that I had highly energetic, productive periods when my sex-drive was through the roof and I needed very little sleep. I knew that I also had darker, more contemplative periods when my energy ebbed, leaving me feeling empty and leaden. I never really thought of this as a problem. It was just the way I was, the way I knew myself to be. The way I was comfortable being. Obviously, my writing drove my moods. If I had a project I was excited about, my mood was expansive. And if I had passion for nothing, then I lost interest in life and depression set in. Curing it involved the search for the thing that would spark my interest and get me writing again. Perfectly normal stuff for me. Writers, after all, are supposed to be a bit screwy, no?

That all changed when I was diagnosed.

When I was labeled "bipolar" I became "bipolar". I did not, at that time, really understand what that meant. My doctor insisted that it meant that my episodes, which had always been fairly far apart--a few years, at least--would become closer and closer together as I grew older, and much more severe. He told me that in order to protect myself and my family from these terrible, uncontrollable moods that I would experience, I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life.

He told me to educate myself. So I read all the books I could get my hands on, and I learned that there was no hope for me. I would, as my doctor had said, have to be on medication for the rest of my life, and even if I took my medication faithfully, I would still suffer from these episodes, although they would hopefully be farther apart and less severe. In addition, it might take years before the correct combination of medications was found. And during those years, I would have to put up with medications that didn't work well, or that had intolerable side effects.

Of course, I cooperated; I was too scared not to. Becoming "stable" became my new goal in life. I became a student of my moods, diligently charting every change, pathologizing every fluctuation, and frequently calling my doctor for medication adjustments.

The promised "stability" didn't happen. The medications didn't help, and in fact they made things worse. I had more episodes in the two years I was on medication than in the six years before my diagnosis. The side effects were intolerable. I was unable to write, hand tremors stopped me from most of my artistic pursuits, my short-term memory was shot...

In those two years, I completely lost myself. I resigned myself to spending the rest of my life overweight, mentally compromised, and in chronic pain...but deep down, I never really accepted it, and part of me was still in there, kicking and screaming and rattling the bars of my chemical cage. I should have listened to myself. I knew my own truth, once...

I talked to my doctor about stopping the medications, or at least lowering the doses to help relieve the side effects. He prophesied Doom and Gloom: "You are an intelligent woman," he said. "You know you will ruin your life if you cut back on your medications."

It took my husband nearly dying for me to realize how out of touch I was with myself. When he had his heart attack, I found myself unable to respond to this life-threatening, life-changing event with anything other than apathy. It was time for a change. It was time to take a break from medication and figure out how much of a problem being "bipolar" really was.

Turns out that it wasn't. (And when they cart me away, raving and delusional, you may all nod sagely and say I told you so.)

It has taken a couple of years, but my writing is slowly coming back, working its way into the corners of my life, and becoming part of what defines me once more. "Bipolar" doesn't define me at all...even if I start experiencing those high energy/low energy periods again, "bipolar" doesn't fit. Maybe it never did.

Labels should be used with extreme caution.

All a label does is take away your own truth and replace it with someone else's.