I don't wanna be sick :(

I brought this up earlier in another thread, but it hit me very hard when I was sitting in a darkened theater and Tony Stark had a panic attack. You aren't deficient. You're different. Very few people are completely typical; you're a little further away from the mean than most. There are some ways that will hurt you. There are other ways it will help. Most things that could happen physically, you only have the down side to compensate for, so mental health is a different kettle of fish. I think it's a bit like being Deaf. You feel things differently than a lot of people do. You will need to learn to regulate that in ways that fit at least loosely within the bounds of socially acceptable, but you don't necessarily need to pass for completely ordinary. Stephen Fry is bipolar, as is Hugh Laurie. Chris Evans has talked about his anxiety problems. Merlin Mann, the 43 Folders productivity guy, has ADD and I suspect he probably wouldn't have gotten into the productivity stuff if he didn't. The thing about these people is that they have gotten into places in the world where being a little weird is pretty okay. There is a place in the world for us, too. It's okay to be a little crazy if you can manage it well enough to make your life work. It'll take awhile to figure all that out, but you'll get there.

I can only give you my advice and opinion as a mentally interesting person who has bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed with manic depression at age 19 -- I'm 47 now, you do the math. I've never hid it from anyone -- ever. Why? Because the stigma is social construct that is only allowed as long as people let it continue. I didn't ask to be born with a miswired brain and I'll be damned if I'm gonna feel guilty about it. I have four children. They're great adults. They survived their childhoods having a mentally interesting mother. Now, I did go through two husbands (while unmedicated I'll add) and quite a few broken hearts (also while unmedicated) before finding my current husband, but he is my match and he's here to stay. I also have a Master's degree - which I recently obtained. My college was more than willing to work with my mental interestingness. Again, I hid nothing from any of my instructors. They all knew of my bipolar as well as all of my other physical disabilities. I never once felt stigmatized by any of them. Though one suggested I might be better off not taking medications (but he was a hippy throwback). I just kinda ignored his non-medical advice. Other than that, nothing. They worked with me whenever I felt either emotionally or physically overwhelmed. Honestly? In my experience, being mentally interesting isn't nearly as horrible as it was back when I was 19. But even then I didn't care who knew. It's been my experience that so long as I act and feel as though I have nothing to be ashamed of... so long as I feel I am not "sick in the head" then people tend not to treat me as a leper. They treat me as the person that I am. And I am one heck of a person. Just ask me. :) If you had any other problem - arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc... would you hide your head in shame? Hell no! This is not something you should be ashamed of IMHO. It's not something you brought onto yourself, and if society makes you feel ashamed of your interesting, miswired brain, then shame on society. That's the way I feel anyway. And it's worked for me in dealing with bipolar and its stigma.

I have Tourette Syndrome, and I wrote a bit about the shame and stigma of it http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23124/Mental-illnesses-as-adjectives-Perhaps-not#1131252 (it should be noted I was having a really bummer time dealing with it when I wrote that comment). I'd like to address the concern that you'll never be good enough for a partner. I've joked to partners that they're getting a discount, like a floor model or a dented can; I'm so cute and such a good boo, but I'm broken. They always look at me like I'm talking complete nonsense. People notice my tics. I get stared at by strangers and I have to explain myself to people at parties. But, say, after a year of living with someone, they don't even notice my tics anymore. It's just background noise. No one will love you, and understand you, like the person you're supposed to be with. I think you have this idea that potential partners are going to be even harder on you, and have these standards for you: WHY AM I SETTLING FOR THIS CRAPPY DENTED CAN? That's not how relationships work, honeypie. I can get through a first date without screaming the c-word a bunch of times; you can get through a first date without having a meltdown. By the time you're together long enough for them to see your symptoms emerge, they're going to be in love with you. And after a few years or so, your illness will just be background noise, and no one will understand it or have more patience for it than your partner.

there is a standard to social behavior and you must match those standards; there are desirable traits I think the standard for social behavior is a much lower bar than what you're setting for yourself, and different people find different traits desirable. Would it be possible to hang with an edgier, weirder crowd who are all pushing the boundaries of normalcy in some way, or are magnificently far beyond abnormal? The John Hughes movies with Molly Ringwald might be comforting. The goal isn't to be popular; the goal is to find your niche. Maybe you're not a summer blockbuster; you're a cult classic, and that's OK.

I'm going to mention this as an option, because it's what I ultimately did: reject the diagnosis. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at 21. I was given the usual story and the usual drugs, and went along with it. At around 32 I realized the usual story and the self-conceptions that are encouraged by it and the drugs that are administered with it were, at least in my case, the apparatus of a radically distorting fiction which had discouraged me from grasping or grappling with the actual problems -- cognitive, moral and spiritual -- while pushing me into otherwise pointless patterns of behavior. Abandoning the social institution of being a mental health care patient is unfortunately a tricky business, to say the least, and I did not finesse it. I tried to go too fast, and there were further difficulties. It's a long story and not exemplary. I eventually found a psychiatrist who was able to listen to me. And now, at 46, I am four months away from being drug free. (I'm still taking a trace dose of clozapine -- 12.5mg per diem -- of which I have been very patiently stepping down the dosage for about five years.) My conclusion has been that, in my case, a vast amount of suffering and waste of time would have been avoided had I rejected the diagnosis and rejected the treatment proposed to me when they were first introduced, 26 years ago. After 26 years of dealing with mainstream psychiatry, it's plain to me that it is a profession in almost total ignorance about its purported object -- madness -- and that its methods of classification and care are on the whole more destructive than they are helpful. (Please look at a http://ask.metafilter.com/249909/Tool-kit-for-treating-mental-illness on a somewhat related question -- scroll down -- for a fuller statement and some references.) What I would urge you to do is familiarize yourself with the contrarian literature. Entertain the possibility that the concept of a major mental illness as something neurologically and biochemically characterizable is flawed to the point of being pseudo-scientific. You are absolutely right about there being a real stigma; one that the psychiatric profession more or less, in effect, seeks to enforce. (They are enthusiastic classifiers and assigners of levels of 'functionality'.) One way to get beyond the stigma, at least personally, is to see through the entire enterprise of materialist psychiatry. Otherwise put: to see that, whatever your no doubt very grave problems are, you do not 'have' anything properly called a mental illness. Also I'd advise you do a lot of introspection about what is actually going wrong when your psyche is going wrong. The story you are being encouraged to tell yourself by the professional help -- there is this mood disorder -- is probably introducing unnecessary scripts and meanings and obscuring what has actually been happening. Reading in psychoanalytic and spiritual literature may give important clues. (For me, the book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465020224/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/, which is a little of both, was extremely useful.) I hope this perspective helps one way or another. I know a lot of mefites accept contemporary materialist psychiatry as being basically valid, and feel that one ought to organize their lives within its confines, but you do not have to.

Hi. {BIG HUGS} You are not alone. I've recently discovered the work of http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php I don't know your background, but I found her writing extremely helpful in gaining insight into how my own "condition" works, why I think/do what I do, a possible twist to the origin of my "helping" tendencies - and found a lot of relief in the understanding I got from her work. You may also find the site http://reappropriate.co/ of some use. All the best!

Watch "David & Monica" on Netflix. It is a nuanced portrait of a young couple who both have Down's syndrome. They contribute whatever they are capable and no one faults them for that. They are not deficient; they are who they are, with various skills and challenges. You may have pictured a different road for yourself but this is your road and you are doing what you are capable of. Think evolution: if there truly was no point to mental illness, it would have evolved itself out somehow. It must have some role or function in society. Finally a word of hope: I am, I suppose, what you would call "a handful", as is my sibling, and we've both found people who adore us just as we are. Everyone has their shit, no one is perfect, & it sounds like you have a good heart so focus on that.

(2) even if you just understand and have felt the same way, and can share what caused a change for you, if it has changed. Or even if you understand and feel the same way right now. I can relate to a lot of what you're talking about. I don't know what to do about any of it really, but I just wanted to let you know I hear you. One thing that I do and that I think you're doing, too, is to see yourself in black and white terms and to strive for extremes. So either you're perfect or you're broken, either you're perfectly competent at everything or you're perfectly incompetent at everything. If you are like me in that way, if it turns out that you're not going to be "perfect," you'll force yourself to the very extreme of "imperfect." Try not to do that, try not to force yourself to be the worst out of despair that you're not the best. I say that I am bad at intimacy with human beings in general, but she says I am generalizing from failed romantic relationships (with men who have felt that I am emotionally too much to handle... and I am!!) This sounds pretty similar to me -- I'm also prone to going from zero to sixty (and back) when it comes to intimacy, which has frankly not served me (or anybody) well. Something that's been useful to me with that is thinking about it using the framework of the abuse cycle, which can also involve (the abuser) pulling someone in very close, and then pushing them away very hard, over and over. Since I don't want to be abusive or hurtful to people, being conscious about not creating that cycle in my relationships has helped me keep a more even keel with people altogether. by having a major mental illness, I have a HUGE red flag just waving over my head. I am an emotionally imbalanced person and now I have a label to confirm it... I hear you. You're not just this label, though, and neither is anyone else who it applies to. You already felt marginalized as a kid, you didn't only begin feeling alienated after you were given this label. Without a diagnosis, what would really be different except that you'd be at least as alienated as you are now, except that you'd have less support and more confusion? For what it's worth, I also have so much trouble "owning" any diagnoses or labels for myself, and not just in things related to health. I'm just *so* not a joiner, I guess? What gets me over that, at least sometimes, is the desire to show solidarity with and support for people who are dealing with similar things as me or in a similar context and who *do* want to own that label.

Yes, I've read about Synesthesia...it's really interesting! I watched some youtube video and a guy tastes words, including names. So he didn't know how to tell his best friend's wife that her name tasted awful to him, like shit. Nothing personal. Just the word, haha. Through my schoolwork, I've learned a lot about the weird ways that the mind works, from taking classes on psychology and neuroscience. And when I actively learn about it, it does give me an appreciation for the range of human mental/psychological/neurological experience. I guess I just...wanted to be closer to the mean?? But I am beginning to radically accept. I also shamefully observe, as has been demonstrated above, that I have become overly self-absorbed during this entire process of monitoring, introspecting, etc. so I am signing up for NY cares to volunteer and just get out of my head into the world, and care for others which usually gives me feelings of connection and proper "worthiness". Thanks for your well wishes and suggestions. And virago, I have seen that title when I went to check out the aisles in the "psychiatry: bipolar disorder" section, which is the first thing I did after my diagnosis haha. I will check it out as well. I have been considering whether I want to read it or not, bc at first I wanted a scientific rather than experiential/autobiographical text, but maybe the connection with another would be more helpful. Thank you for the rec