Category: Stigma
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Self-Care and Acceptance of Bipolar on WebMD
Thank you, Alan Smith, of Creative Cabin Studios, for filming me about self-care and acceptance of living with bipolar for WebMD. Alan’s videography is stunning. Check out the video on WebMD at https://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/video/video-bipolar-acceptance
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Bipolar Kicks My Ass
When I met with my psychiatrist yesterday, we discussed my diagnosis. I learned that since I’ve been hospitalized for bipolar symptoms, my diagnosis is type 1, not type 2. Since I’ve been ramping since July third, we agreed it was time to add low dose quetiapine (Seroquel), a sedating and mood-stabilizing antipsychotic, to my medication…
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I Spoke in Public!
Thank you, Lianne Sauvage, for inviting me to share my mental health journey at Belmont High School’s Mental Health Assembly! For my speech, I adapted content from My Bipolar Thoughts, my memoir work-in-progress. The speech was scheduled for 25 minutes! I plan to refine these speaking notes and use them again for future speaking engagements:…
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Stigma of Invisible Disability
Recently read Work Ethic, a post by bpnurse, in which she discusses her life since she stopped working and went on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). People judge those of us with invisible disabilities. We even judge ourselves. Someone once asked me if I questioned the ethics of receiving disability. I explained that my disability…
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I do not whisper. I ROAR.
Motherhood transformed me. My identity changed. Now it changes again. I have constantly reinvented myself over my lifetime. As a pre-med biochemistry major at UCLA, I was miserable and suicidal. Then I studied part-time at a community college, biding time to find my direction. Finding a niche as a legal studies major at UC Berkeley, I tried to…