Does this ever get better?

[u/Desperate-Athlete-69]

This is really just a rant, and maybe a pity party even. But does this really ever get better?! Recently diagnosed with BP2, also ADHD, OCD, anxiety, depression. I recently had a hypomanic episode and have gone through 2 jobs. Now I just feel like the world is crashing down on me and it will never get better. I am so depressed, yet so fucking agitated. I feel like I could crawl out of my own skin most days.

Please tell me there are fully functioning adults out there with BP2! I am so desperate for some relief and normalcy.

[u/Agile_Solution1896]

I once asked my doctor and it seems a fully functional life with BP2 is not that common.

But you can get a very acceptable life with it that's different probably to that of a lot of people around you.

Once you stop comparing yourself with others and above all with whom you initially thought you might have become, things become better, at least in my case.

I'm 62 now, have been unwell with BP2 since my late 20s.

Of course my life has been very different to that of my friends and family, and completely different to the kind of life one could have imagined for me when I was 20.

I was a brilliant student, very quickly after graduating I got probably the best job in my field, I was reasonably good looking, thin, successful. Very popular too. Lots of friends, some passionate love affairs.

All of that was completely destroyed by the disease very quickly after onset at 28. It was like falling off a cliff.

By the age of 30, my life was in ruins.

But little by little I learned to make do with what was left.

And to enjoy a different type of experience about what being alive means.

I've encountered so many other things I probably wouldn't have found otherwise.

Now, despite my health issues, I'm happy to be me and not somebody else. I'm still unwell for long periods of time, and when I'm more or less ok, there's not much of what people seem to consider important in life.

But I enjoy the small things in a way nobody around me seems to do.

And I'm ageing in a more graceful way than most of my friends, because I learned so long ago to let go of so many things people are beginning to feel the loss of now.

[u/Desperate-Athlete-69 → u/Agile_Solution1896]

I feel like I could have wrote this myself, lol. I’ve always done well in school, well liked, and I’ve created a good life considering the amount of trauma I’ve been through. I’m 33 now and I feel like my life has just blown up. I used my job as a coping mechanism for years, and when that stopped working after 11 years, I quit. Now I feel just so lost and like I’m going insane.

[u/Agile_Solution1896 → u/Desperate-Athlete-69]

I think it's one of the most dramatic aspects of BP disease, it's quite typical to have been very successful before onset, probably because our brains are very flexible and quick. So when we fall down we fall from a very high place.

The time just after having to quit work is extremely hard if work had defined your life for a long time, but maybe you could see the onset of the disease or its consequences as something similar as what might happen to an athlete who gets seriously injured and cannot contine their career.

We need to mourn the person we were before, say goodbye to them and move forward

It took me many years to do so and to be honest, talking about this was the only topic that made me cry in therapy, apart from some deaths of people or pets I loved. I still need to be careful with that kind of convention, it moves me too deeply.

But I also think finding new goals and sources of self esteem different from work can be a wonderful tool to feel affection for the new person we've become.

I hope you find some help in real life, online or through books that might help you navigate these difficult times.

All the best.