How My Childhood Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis Affected Me Growing Up

Oftentimes, I hear people with any kind of health problem, mental or physical, express the wish that they had been diagnosed as a child so that they could have learned to handle their disease better.

• What is Bipolar disorder?

Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder type I at age 12, I can say that no — a childhood diagnosis is not always better. A childhood diagnosis does not always help you learn to better care for yourself because, well, you’re a child. And if you’re like me, it actually ruins your life by killing your body and numbing your mind with meds you’re personally not ready for. I personally became reliant on medication I couldn’t get off of, and depending on your parents, your diagnosis may be a tool for abuse.

The thing about being a child is that, for one, you’re just a kid. When I was 12, I figured there wasn’t anything wrong with me and had no idea what the word “bipolar” or “schizoaffective” meant. I wound up in a psychiatrist’s office because I was being bullied at school and my parents never believed me. They would have believed me if I had gotten into a fistfight (OK, boomers), but because I came home crying every day, they assumed I was mentally ill. Despite the diagnosis and my vehement denial of it, as I struggle with it today, I was put on heavy antipsychotics at a very young age and began my path down to destruction.

I took my meds as prescribed, mainly because when we came back from the pharmacy I refused and my mother shoved them down my throat. As in, grabbed me and held my mouth open. From then on I learned I had to take my meds. By the time I graduated high school, I had been conditioned to believe that if I felt a negative emotion, it was because my meds weren’t working and not because I was a teenage girl.

At college, during my freshman year, I stopped taking my meds completely cold turkey. That year, I felt amazing. I was finally a “normal” girl. However, I also met the man who would become my abuser, and the following year entered a toxic relationship that would leave a permanent scar. 

During this relationship, I went back to taking my meds and found a psychiatrist. This time I really did think I was “crazy” – how could this be happening? Why was I treated like this?

I eventually got out of the relationship and developed chronic migraines, which a neurologist attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At this point, I dedicated myself to a medication regimen and journaling, and eventually gained a glimpse of stability.

This stability, however, was smashed. I cycled through a couple of therapists, many of whom didn’t believe I had bipolar disorder, but my psychiatrists did, until I developed fibromyalgia. Chronic pain broke me, and my long-standing psych meds took the blame for causing it. It was agreed that I needed to be taken off them, but each time an attempt to wean me off the meds was made, I went dangerously manic. I ran away from my new husband three times without warning to destinations hours away. This time around, I received a bipolar disorder and PTSD diagnosis, and was tasked with finding some powerful way of managing it for the first time in my life.

I may have been diagnosed as a child with schizoaffective disorder, but I had no idea what self-care or self-love was. My feelings always took the back seat to biochemistry, and growing up I was denied therapy by my family because my psychiatrist believed I was too unstable for it. The entire time I thought I was just a kid, and I probably was. But I had become dependent on the medications, as I had been on them for 17 years at this point. Now I was trapped in a miserable body.

I always struggled with a lack of self-love. How could I now? I was the most unstable I had ever been, doing the strangest and most hurtful things I had ever done. The psych meds and the pain meds were not working. When I looked in the mirror I cringed at what I saw. No longer athletic, my dream of being a yoga instructor felt impossible. These psych meds and my “poorly managed bipolar” (to quote one of my many psychiatrists) was killing me.

In all honesty, the average person with bipolar is diagnosed with it as an adult. I honestly can’t relate to that experience as someone who can barely remember life before psychiatry. But I do know that in my experience, once you get that label as a kid, you aren’t a kid anymore. That’s because bipolar is so stigmatized, and children can be crueler than adults.

My father is a preacher, and I was forced to hide my diagnosis from everyone in the tiny town I grew up in as he was a public figure. Mom and dad told me no one would understand, and because of this I was in the “crazy people closet.” I understand the word “crazy” is offensive, but this negative self-talk was taught to me. As I write a book on disabilities, I am trying to unlearn the berating language directed at me I accepted as “normal” because, well, I was a child in the boonies. I had nothing else to compare to.

About four people outside of my immediate family know of my diagnosis. It will probably always be that way, as I rarely come out of my “closet.” I’d more readily talk about chronic pain than bipolar and the injustice that taints it in my past.

Whenever you get your diagnosis, I know it hurts. But you get it when you get it. To my bipolar kids and teens, I see you. To my adults, I have some war stories to swap if you need some comfort. It’s hard to learn it’s OK to be bipolar, and we’re all in this together.