Hello, World

This is Polarized Lens with Jennifer Merchan.
Polarized Lens is a podcast that explores life through the filter of bipolar disorder.
Created and hosted by a person living with bipolar disorder, its aim is to explore the challenges of that mode of life in this neurotypical world,
raise awareness, and help those who want to understand more about bipolar disorder.
Episode 1, Hello World. To see through a glass darkly, a dim mirror or lens, Plato's cave of shadows, this is life as I see it.
Days that seem crystal clear are just as filtered as those muddled with fog.
Twist the glass one way and the world becomes dark and filled with overwhelming contrast.
Twist it the other way and the world is blindingly bright.
I'm here to talk about bipolar disorder and share my more than 30 years of experience living with it.
I'm not a mental health professional, just a person with bipolar disorder in treatment, trying to live my life as best I can.
I hope to reach others with bipolar disorder and those who want to understand and support them.
I was 30 years old before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
I had been treated unsuccessfully for depression and anxiety for a few years before that and depression alone since I was 19.
I had known I was different since puberty, but I was well into adulthood before I was stamped with the right label and started receiving treatment that worked at all.
All it took was a mental breakdown, my life falling apart, and even voluntary admission to an inpatient mental health program.
I have since been undertreated, overtreated, taken off all my meds suddenly for no good reason, put back on all my meds with all haste, tried new meds, and have discontinued meds give me heart palpitations.
I have seen social workers, therapists, psychologists, prescribing psychologists, and psychiatrists with varying results.
I have used public mental health systems, public and private university mental health facilities, and private mental health facilities and hospitals.
Therapy doesn't work for me, and I really should see only psychiatrists because of the serious nature of bipolar disorder and dangers of some of the treatments,
but that has not always been an option for me because of my location and the scarcity of specialist doctors.
For the past three and a half years, I have been working in a full-time position from home.
The job started in an office, but three months later, COVID happened, and now my entire team works from home.
This is the longest I have worked full-time in the same position continuously.
My previous record was two and a half years as a teacher, the job that precipitated the mental breakdown that put me in the hospital for three weeks, but that's another story entirely.
Am I stable? I don't know.
It seems like I'm either slightly depressed or slightly manic, hypomanic technically, but that's also another story.
I recently discontinued Abilify on the advice of my psychiatrist.
I was taking the lowest dose, but having serial obsessions and going on buying sprees despite an increase in my lithium dose.
Am I functioning? Yes, for now.
For a couple of months recently, I would have had to answer not really, since I was barely able to curb my compulsions in order to work and sleep.
And by barely, I mean I was sometimes unable to keep myself in check, losing what little control I had in this slightly hypomanic state.
Even with the Abilify leaving my system, my spending is still a concern.
My concentration and ability to focus on work has improved, but it's certainly not at its peak.
And then there's the lithium increase, which leaves me tired and sleepy as well as forgetful.
So there you have it. A brief summary of me, my life in a nutshell.
Why should you care? Because we're going to take that polarized lens I talked about at the beginning of the episode
and use it to examine the life of a person with bipolar disorder, to gain a perspective that is not easy to obtain,
and to try to understand a disorder that bewilders and frightens many people.
We'll examine it straight on, then slowly twist that lens to reveal the multitude of facets that people with bipolar disorder face every day.
This episode is dedicated to Carrie Fisher and Sinead O'Connor, the heroes of my youth who became so much more.
Thank you for listening. This has been Polarized Lens with Jennifer Merchan.
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, don't hesitate. Call 988 and connect with someone who can help.
Don't go down that road alone.