S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. Today's show is about wellness , so we're focusing on awareness around mental health and bipolar disorder with a deeply personal discussion. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. March is Bipolar Awareness Month , with the 30th being World Bipolar Day. It's all to raise awareness of bipolar disorder , which is a mental illness that affects some 40 million people worldwide. The experience of bipolar disorder often results in intense emotional mood swings. From the highest of highs to equally powerful lows. It often goes untreated. And just to note , the following conversation talks about trauma and experiences from mental health struggles , which may be triggering for some listeners. Jane Rose is a local writer who wrote about her experience with bipolar disorder and the impact being diagnosed with it has had on her life. The self-published book is called So Heavy I Fell A Journey Through Wonderland. Jane Rose , welcome to Midday edition.
S2: Thank you for having me.
S1: I'm glad you're here. So. And I so appreciate you sharing your story with us. Can you define bipolar disorder ? Yes.
S2: So bipolar disorder as you actually described is , um , intense highs and intense lows. If stress stress is a trigger and you can go into manic episodes , which I did , and then deep lows where , you know , most people have depression and you get sad about things , you have anxiety. For someone who is bipolar , It's debilitating. You can't snap out of it. It'll last for however long the episode. So it could be a few days , it could be a month. And it's also can lead to suicide ideation. So it's it's pretty serious and becoming stable , which , you know , meeting and having a psychologist and a psychiatrist to help level out medication , that is what helps you get to a place where you are normal. For me , with bipolar two , my base is usually depression. So medication helps me go up a little bit and be able to focus. And you know , because thought processing and racing thoughts , I mean , it's a whole thing and it's something that is lifelong. So it really is helpful to understand. And as you mentioned there are so many people that go undiagnosed , which is why I want to bring awareness , because when people are aware , then you can notice signs around you. I have a friend who her friend ended up getting into hospitalised. That's a big part of manic disorder as the manic part of the disorder.
S1: Well , and I want to talk about that more because I don't I want to make sure that everyone has a sense of what manic , manic episode is.
S2: I'm a very sort of even keeled person. When I had my manic episode , I was shouting things like everything in my mind that I usually , you know , when you talk and then you think , oh , I should have said that. I just start speaking my mind and it's unfiltered. I'm making all these decisions that I normally wouldn't , because one of the side effects is you start doing a spending spree , and this isn't like going with your friends and , you know , shopping and maybe spending too much. We're talking about shopping that can affect your life. There's people who have purchased homes and couldn't afford it , people who , you know , taking expensive trips they can't afford , basically doing things out of the ordinary. For me , it was getting into crowds and doing things that were out of character for me. And I also had this. Like I said , I'm a very even keeled person , but I went into this real high , confident , I can do everything. I'm right. You're wrong. I've looked at my mom , some deep seated things that I carried with me through my childhood just came up and she and my sister in the kitchen are just staring at me. They've never seen me like this , and I don't even remember what was said.
S1:
S2: And it depends. You kind of have to write it out. And at the time I was , I wasn't diagnosed and I had spent my whole life knowing something wasn't quite right. I'd had I don't know how many therapists that I'd gone to. No one diagnosed me. I had lived apart from my mom for 20 years. Of course I left home and started my life. So I was staying with her. Um , I had basically fed fled a very abusive relationship. I had an 18 month old. I had a full time position. It the stress was really , really debilitating for me. And because of that stress , that's what pushed me into this manic episode. And my mom , who she actually is a Psychologists. She focuses on mental disorder. She hadn't seen me for so long , but she started to think there were some things in my childhood she was starting to put together , things that she observed me living with her. But when it's close to home , you know , you don't necessarily see it. But when she realized I was displaying a lot of symptoms that her patients were , she told me , she's a me , you might be bipolar. And I said , I actually I was excited because I knew something was wrong. And I just I'm kind of person. I like to get answers. I want to search for things. So I was like , okay , if that's it , great. I went and got diagnosed by a psychologist and I found a psychiatrist and it took me six months. But through my work I got stable. I always say that was that was the best gift my mother ever gave me , because now I can move forward with a thriving life. I'm more aware of my symptoms. Sometimes you need someone in your circle to understand when you go up and down , because sometimes you may not be aware of it. So I think it's really important to raise awareness around it to destigmatize what bipolar disorder really is and how it really affects people. And it can look somewhat normal , but it's not. Yeah. And when people say , oh , you know , the weather is so bipolar , it takes away from the importance of what that means. And I think that it's really important that it's yeah , shared the way that it's supposed to be.
S1:
S2: I had a great upbringing. I came from a family of eight. Have six. Uh , I'm the oldest of six children , but I would fall into these lows where I just felt like I couldn't get forward. I anything seems like such a huge thing to do. You know , just doing my chores or going to run an errand or even just playing with friends. It just felt like an extra task , and I just felt fatigued. And I think , you know , the world doesn't seem great anymore , but I didn't know at the time that that's not a normal feeling. So as I got older , I went in and out of depression. I probably had a manic episode at one point in my life , without realizing it , I've had plenty of hypomanic moments and hypomanic. It's not as severe as a full on manic disorder. It's more , you know , you have more confidence. You , you know , you're you're not quite doing things out of character , but you just have this different kind of energy and it's different from normally how you would be. So that's one of the signs to you when you see your friend or a family member who's just kind of not acting how they would normally. Yeah , it's probably a cue to figure out , hey , how's it going ? What's going on here ? Because if they're not diagnosed , maybe it prompts you to think , oh , maybe you should talk with a doctor and see how your mental health is.
S1: Yeah , well , I mean , and you're sharing , you know , what you've experienced. I know this is going to be so helpful to a lot of people. Talk a bit about the diagnosis , because you were very fortunate that you had someone who recognized some things in you that said , hey , you know , maybe you've got bipolar disorder and you need to go and be seen.
S2: You have to see that person and get it sort of a baseline. Um , also , you need to be familiar with what bipolar disorder is , because I would come in in different times with my psychologist in different moods , and she just kind of talked me down. And , you know , it was more the talk therapy as far as you know. How are you doing today ? You know , okay , let's focus on breathing , okay. Let's you know , maybe , you know , you're you're thinking have really down thoughts and okay , so let's , you know , focus on what the good things in your life. Well that's great. You know , that's important. But for someone who is bipolar. Like I said , you can't snap out of it. Someone needs to be able to help you understand ? Okay. How did you get here ? What stress is going on in your life ? Because that's what prompts a manic episode.
S1: Talk to me a bit about accessibility , right ? Yeah.
S2: And then that's that's the hard part , especially in San Diego. There are a lot of psychologists that do not want to deal with mental disorder. It's a lifelong diagnosis. You will be seeing someone the rest of your life. You will be working with a psychiatrist to help you with your medication. Bring it up , bring it down. And I think a lot of psychiatry psychologists would rather work with patients that they can get them to an endpoint and help them move on. So that is something my mother has encountered where she's basically one of very few , if not the only , psychologist that practices bipolar disorder in San Diego at least. And it is hard for access because , um , I'm very fortunate to be able to have access to a psychologist and therapist , but , you know , for people who can't afford that or even afford medication , I think they just need to be able to understand if they have bipolar disorder to go about figuring out what those symptoms are. Um , read up on it , because knowledge is power. And if your mental health is something where it's not something that you know you can fix with self-care , it's an opportunity for you to start asking questions and start thinking , okay , what's going on here ? I'm constantly feeling down. Or I get into these moments where I'm just doing things that are very out of character for me , and I just feel out of control , and I have racing thoughts and I want to , I need help.
S1: You know , it sounds like just awareness , awareness of your symptoms and for those around you to be aware is really key. You know , you published a book about your experience navigating your mental illness , and you say it is like a diary , a very raw work.
S2: It was more I was in a really bad situation in my life and it was a journal. I'm a writer. I loved write , so I decided , you know , writing my journal and poems and being able to express myself felt different in that medium. So one day all this inspiration just came to me. All these memories , all of these experiences , some of them that I had forgotten , just start pouring out. I started writing , writing , writing. In two weeks. I wrote 30 poems , and by the end of the month I had 80. And I remember thinking , well , I wonder if I have a book of poems here ? When I decided , okay , maybe let's put that together as a book. I realized as I was going through the different poems that it was telling a story , and I'd had friends and family members say , oh , you need to talk about your story , because there's a lot of things that I went through in my life that I know a lot of women face , but every time I sat down to write it like a novel , I just couldn't understand where to start , how much to talk about , what to talk about. But when I started going through the process of writing this book. That wonderful thing about poetry is it allows you to express yourself in a very different way than you would a book. I chose and decided that it was going to be very honest and revealing the good , the bad and the ugly. And one of the reasons I chose that is because I wanted someone to feel how I felt in that moment , and some of the themes in there. I actually have a content warning , because if you've experienced that trauma or you've experienced that those moments , you've had those thoughts , it could be triggering. So it's very raw. I wanted to say , hey , you're not alone. I know how that feels , and I want to validate other people who may not have a voice to share those very personal things.
S1: Was putting the book together , um , a healing experience for you ? Yes.
S2: And it still is. It was , but it was also more about revealing things. I had to get it out. It wasn't in the beginning so much about healing as it was about just facing my myself , really digging deep. It's very hard to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest. You know , I had changed over the years. Who am I ? The choices that I made , my mental health , putting and tying that all together. It was. I wouldn't say it was healing in the moment. I would say that it was helping me discover myself.
S1: It was therapy.
S2: It was therapy , and I'm still healing. So it's a road to healing , but you have to do the work first before you get there. And so that became my work.
S1: How is is you know , you just mentioned that you put a trigger warning on the book because it can trigger things in so many people who have experienced the same thing.
S2: So I've gone back and I've read things and I get different emotions. Sometimes I'm numb. Sometimes I start crying because the reality of what happened , and I'm processing that because there's a lot of things , trauma , people who experience it , you just kind of bury it. And then when it comes up , you want to bury it again. But like I had mentioned earlier , I'm someone I'm always I love to learn and I want to learn about myself. And so it was important for me to be honest about that and for anyone reading it to really understand , if you've been through it , to validate it of what that was , and to be able to know someone else out there. Oh yes. Okay. Experienced that too. And then for someone who's never experienced that to go , oh , that's how someone feels when they're dealing with that because it's easy to just say , oh , you know , we talk about sexual assault and we talk about , you know , suicide ideation , but we don't often go into the details of what that feels like. And it's it's , you know , it's sad. It's deeply personal. And I wanted to bring awareness to my mental health because bipolar disorder shapes a lot of your choices. I own my choices. It's not an excuse. Oh , I had a mental disorder. So this is why this happened. I made those choices. But bipolar disorder influences choices that you wouldn't have made otherwise. And because of that , it is important to understand and give yourself grace because you can't help it. And that was something that was really hard when I started working with a psychologist , for her to say , it's okay , it wasn't your fault. And you go , well , I did that. I was there in the moment I made that choice. I hurt those people. I did those things. She said , I know , but you have to give yourself grace and understand it's not your fault. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: We have a lot of fear about being honest. And we talk about , you know , I want to be my authentic self , but what does that really mean ? You know , is it a projection that you want to share ? Well , this is who I am , but we're not really sharing what is deep. So I would say , don't be afraid. You want to do your work , you want to heal. You want to move on. You want to understand. You have to face yourself in the mirror. It's not hard , it's ugly , and I'm still going through it. This is not a book where I said , oh , I wrote it and it's good. And this is I've got on the other side of it , so I'm sharing it with you. There's things in there that I still have to process. Um , in fact , I'm still going through a divorce. So some of the things that are raised in the book are very real and and raw for me because they are still recent. So it was fearful for me to share those things. But in sharing those things , that's how I'm starting to get over the other side. So you can't be afraid. You have to decide to go through. The only way out , they say , is to go through , and the only way out of the forest to the horizon is to walk towards it.
S1: Yeah , you got to go through it. Wow.
S2: Now I can make different choices. I can pay attention to my mental health. I can move forward and thrive. You know ? I can understand who I am. And that's the most important thing. Finding your purpose in life can't happen until you actually are able to understand who you are. So what I would want to leave anyone who's listening to this with is that life is hard , but it doesn't have to be hard when you build a community , and when you build a community , that's where you can start to thrive. And I've started to meet with different groups , bipolar groups that have asked for me to come and share with them. And sitting in that room and going , oh my goodness , she had that experience that happened to me too. That's validating , you know ? So don't be afraid. Get out there , do your work , find out who you are , because then you can move forward and find your purpose. Your true purpose.
S1: I've been speaking with Jane Rose. Her book is titled So Heavy I Fell A Journey Through Wonderland. Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your story with us. Jae in.
S2: Thank you for having me.
S1: And if you're experiencing a mental health or behavioral health emergency , the number to call for help and resources is 988. That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
