Struggling with Bipolar at University

[sihaya]

Hello, I suffer with Bipolar Disorder, but am stabilized on medication. Yet still, I deal with its intricacies everyday. I am an adult student who returned to university in my 30’s. I am a highly successful student who will be moving on to masters level studies in the next two years. Yet, as much as I achieve, underneath my emotions brew, and I rarely talk to anyone about them. Because I will be entering a field of work which requires a certain level of balance, I find it crucial to talk about how I feel. yet I feel cutoff from my family and friends, as I do not want to burden them. So here is the scoop.
I am ashamed of my illness, if my employers new about it they would not consider me for positions, I have to hide my high functioning mental health and it has become a pressure cooker. I feel alienated. My pain manifests in hypochondria, anxiety, self-hatred, among other ways. So as I work hard at my studies, I am accompanied by this cloud which follows me, raining negative self talk. Some days I fear I will truly fall apart and crumble, fail my studies, and be back at square one; a dependent ill person who feels helpless. I cannot afford a counselor, and the lists for free counseling are months long. My area of study is a field where I will be helping people, so I realize that to help others, I need to crack this shame shell. Inside I hurt very bad. I am terrified. I am here to just look for some friendly support and conversation. I am quite lonely and feel disconnected from my community. Thanks for listening.

[AJ]

Welcome to the forum Sihaya. I was also a university student with a mental illness trying to get my degree. I was a health care provider in my career days. Like you I was for the most part highly functional. In my whole career of 31 years I only told one person at work about my mental illness. For me, it was mostly about fear of prejudice. I also had feelings of inadequacy. Hidden behind my smile, was a fragile person that I worried would fall apart at any moment.

You will find the people on this forum very supportive. Feel free to share as little or as much of yourself as you are comfortable with. Feel free to ask questions or simply vent.

Know that you are not alone in your struggles.

[paul m]

Hello Sihaya and welcome. Feeling ashamed of your illness is quite common. However it is nothing to be ashamed of. Bipolar is not a weakness anymore than having cancer is a weakness. In fact like some cancers, breast, colon and others for example, bipolar can have a genetic trait to it. That is , if one of your ancestors had colon cancer, you are more likely than the general population to get colon cancer as well. Bipolar is different only in the fact that for many generations it was hidden so we do not know how many of our ancestors had bipolar or another mental illness, whereas we often know about a relative having colon or breast cancer.

The fear of prejudice is still very real and probably the main reason why people still don't talk about bipolar and for some I don't blame them. In the wrong job, telling people that you have bipolar can still be a real career stopper.

In regards to counselling, I've found that counselling has been of limited use to me. Most of the counselling that I found helpful was through self education and self examination. I know that statement is easy to say, but very difficult to do.

In order for me to get better, it was a matter of finding the right medications, the right life style, the right diet, getting to know my early warning signs so that I could head off slides up or down, learning all I could about the illness and last but not least, realizing that I have a difficult and serious illness that may cause me problems at times.

Like you I found the wait times for courses very long, but I took them when I could as they were offered. There are also many good websites that deal with bipolar, some of them in non medication ways. For example Crest BD is a B.C. think tank that deals with bipolar disorder and has done and is still doing a lot of research on bipolar. The best thing about them is they actually do a lot of research where people with bipolar tell them what they think and not them telling me what I think.

If you go to their general site you will see what they are like http://www.crestbd.ca/about/ and if you go to their tools area http://www.crestbd.ca/tools/ and then follow the link to http://www.crestbd.ca/tools/bipolar-wellness-centre/ you will find 14 webinars, 14 written summaries about various aspects of life and living with bipolar and I think 6 short videos. There is a host of other things on their web site and if you sign up for their newsletter you will find new information as it is released and possible opportunities to take part in research. There is very little about medication in the whole website.

It's a large site and you will not cover it very quickly. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to ask more questions, answer other people's questions and/or use the forum to vent out some of life's frustrations. Take Care. paul m

[quack424]

Hello Sihaya,
I write this from a student lounge at the University of Toronto, where I am in my second year of part-time studies at a Master's level. Back in May and June, as I wandered city streets in the middle of the night and watching moods rapidly swing from one to another, I wasn't sure if I would be here right now - though I had no doubt I would be continuing.
You mention a field where you would need to be helping people. Those are the fields where people with experience of mental illness need to be. Who would trust a doctor who doesn't know what a fever or cough is like?
if you are finding or concerned that your abilities to complete your work are limited, pay a visit to the accessibility office at your institution. They are there to help, even if they can be bureaucratic or just plain awkward sometimes. However, I don't have anxiety as part of my expression, and this probably sounds like "easier said than done."
I encounter plenty of graduate students who doubt themselves, think they are frauds who shouldn't be there and fear being 'found out.' These are what are usually called healthy people! For those of us with extra layers to add to the mix, it can be difficult to tell where the stress is coming from.

[unknownwonder]

I'm a university student in the helping professions as well. I very well understand the fear of being "found out" as bipolar and the fear of stigma. I'm afraid of going back to school/work after this depressive episode. I want to change schools to be less isolated but it's tricky.

You can do this! And I agree that we need more people in the helping fields who know from experience what it is like.

[Fullerp]

Perhaps you should change university, or just take a break from studying.

[Kohag]

In my opinion, the most importaing thing is to choose the right college for you, where you will be taken care of and also accept you for who you really are. For example, you can try to study at asa college hialeah. ASA College has a rich and diverse student body. Many of their students are immigrants from all walks of life. In addition, they have free English as a Second Language courses which can be very helpful for you. And best of all, they have an endless number of training programs, ranging from sports to medicine, and you can find what you really like.