Living with Bipolar Disorder – HealthyWomen

July is Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.

As told to Shannon Shelton Miller

Four years ago, my husband found me lying in a fetal position on our bedroom floor, hysterical and in tears. I was having one of the worst depressive episodes I’d experienced in years.

After struggling for more than a decade, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder almost 20 years ago, and I thought I had everything figured out. I’m in therapy, taking my medications, practicing self-care and doing all the “mental wellness” steps we hear about. Life and work were going well, and my husband, kids and I were healthy. But for two weeks before that episode, I’d been fighting and clawing my way through the day when all I wanted to do was sink into the darkest, deepest hole.

Pamela Price’s children during family weekend at Virginia Tech, 2022.

That breakdown led to one of the first real conversations my husband and I had about what it’s like to live in my head. It also made me even more adamant about wanting people to know what it’s like on this journey and to understand that we will have moments where we just won’t be OK.

The signs of my mental illness were already there when I was 13. My grandparents were raising me because my mom was struggling with drug addiction, and I barely knew my father who continues to battle alcohol addiction today.

My grandparents were very strict, and there wasn’t space to express how I felt about my mom disappearing for months at a time. I was angry, resentful and hopeless, and our family simply didn’t have the awareness or tools to properly express love, care or concern for me and what I was dealing with at such a young age. I was convinced that I would be better off dead, so without hesitation or regret, I took half a bottle of my granddad’s muscle relaxers.

My suicide attempt didn’t work, and I woke up in the hospital a week and a half later angry and upset that I was still alive, and I felt even more hopeless. To make matters worse, no one in my family asked me why I tried to kill myself or what was wrong. Once I got out of the hospital, I saw a seemingly unconcerned therapist twice, and the incident was never spoken of again. We were all expected to simply get back to our lives.

I felt even more alone and like nobody truly cared about me. I became adept at hiding my issues and started perfecting the many masks I would go on to wear throughout my mental health struggles. My goal became just to make it to 18 so I could join the military and get out of there.

In many ways, becoming part of the military was one of the best decisions of my life, but it still didn’t lead to me receiving help. Instead, I became even better at hiding my issues. When suicidal thoughts returned when I was in my 20s, I knew something had to change — by then, I was a mother and my daughter depended on me.

I saw an older doctor who simply said I’d had a rough childhood and was depressed. He didn’t give me a diagnosis, just an antidepressant prescription and sent me on my way. He was hyperfocused on the fact I grew up poor in low-income housing. But everyone around me was poor then, so I never had any sadness or depression about that. I often wondered if poverty was his focus because I was a Black woman, and if he would have asked more about what I was feeling and experiencing if I had not been a woman of color.

I continued to struggle and saw a therapist who diagnosed me with major depressive disorder. But something felt off because depression wasn’t what I struggled with most. I was bouncing between rage and irritability and feelings of euphoria. I didn’t want to go to sleep and sometimes I had paranoia and didn’t hear the world around me the way everyone else did. Sometimes I responded by lashing out in a way that was unsafe for those around me, including my family.

Once, when I was in my late 20s, I hurt my daughter. That was my wake-up call. I confided in a good friend, and she recommended her therapist who practiced with her psychiatrist husband. They put me through a battery of tests, which led to a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder with psychotic features.

Surprisingly, I was at peace with my diagnosis. It was the turning point that gave me a path forward. I was able to get on the right medications to address the disruptive mania and other symptoms, and I stayed in therapy with that practice. My manic and depressive episodes decreased in severity and I experienced them — and the voices in my head that had plagued me for so long — less frequently. Really good therapy and the right medication helped things not escalate to the point where I needed to be hospitalized or have my husband feel like he had to call someone for help.

Even so, the breakdown on my bedroom floor a few years ago was a reminder that I might still have these episodes even with the correct treatment and medication. I’m 45 now, and my therapist told me my depressive episodes could be more intense as I get older, so we’re open to making medication adjustments and increasing therapy sessions as needed.

Pamela with her husband.

When I talk to my husband about what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, I ask him to consider the physical pain he feels from his time in the military and imagine feeling that pain mentally — and he does his best to understand and support me. We also try to be proactive with our kids and ask them ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘How are you doing?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’ Questions like those would’ve gone a long way for 13-year-old me.

My message today is about being mentally well, period, and learning how to be resilient emotionally and not come from a place of emotional deficit. Especially as Black women, we’re always trying to push through and say everything is “fine,” but we are being strangled by the very superhero capes that we put on to save others, when we may be the ones who need saving.

Yes, I’m a Black woman and I have bipolar disorder. But I’m also still a mom, a wife and a director of a nonprofit organization. I’m all of these amazing things, and bipolar disorder is just a part of my life. It’s my condition, not my identity.

Every Sept. 10, World Suicide Prevention Day, I sit in front of my camera phone and record a message to the girl who was adamant she didn’t want to be here. I remind her of how far we’ve come and how beautiful our life is. I’ve been doing that every year since 2018, and this year I’ll tell her that my oldest daughter is now a college graduate, pursuing a career as a licensed therapist, that our family is taking amazing vacations, and that I’ve been to almost all 50 states.

I tell 13-year-old Pam life turned out all right.

Have your own Real Women, Real Stories you want to share? Let us know.

Our Real Women, Real Stories are the authentic experiences of real-life women. The views, opinions and experiences shared in these stories are not endorsed by HealthyWomen and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HealthyWomen.