Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Best of Times, Worst of Times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.--Tale of Two Cities. (--Charles Dickens, 1859)

Amazing how powerful this sentence is. I often think of Dicken's words, and I wonder did he chose the wrong profession? Maybe he would have made a better psychiatrist.

I guess I should start this being my first post that I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences with my own recovery from mental illness.

I have been struggling with the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder since 2006, my senior year of college. I was 22 years old at the time and had no idea what the signs and symptoms were. It was a long road, and has taken four years to get to where I am now. Having successful employment, a healthy relationship with my boyfriend of almost 2 years, a very close relationship with my family, and most importantly learning to accept myself, who I am and love the person I have become.

Now, my passion is helping others through an organization called NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) through facilitating a weekly support group, instructing educational peer classes, and sharing my story through our outreach programs. I have worked for NAMI the past three years and now work for NAMI San Diego as the Peer Recovery Programs Coordinator. My job entails coordinating all of the consumer programming, scheduling and preparing everything.

So for me these are the Best of times...but there are also times that are simultaneously the worst. I happened to be having an extremely stressful past week and a half. So now I am forced to take a day off tomorrow for my own sanity, mental health. If I don't I am afraid I might end up back having more and more symptoms and back in the hospital like I was a couple years ago at my worst.

It seems that it more often than not happens this way for me with my moods. There will be something good, but then comes along the bad. It is hard to find balance when you have Bipolar Disorder. Something that you constantly struggle against.

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