I was thinking about my journey with acceptance of having bipolar 1 disorder. I think it took 5 years, two major episodes, and a whole lot of minor episodes to come to accept I had mental illness. However there have been many levels of that acceptance. Accepting that I couldn’t survive without meds has been something that I’ve come to; accept and deny, and accept and deny, and accept and deny. I think that is pretty normal with bipolar disorder. There is even a medical term for it, anosognosia. Well anosognosia is more not thinking you have the illness at all. But I think it qualifies to think you don’t need treatment. 

It’s taken me 23 years to go from accepting that I have bipolar to actually following the rules of treatment. I didn’t fully accept that I needed meds for 17 years. It took about the same amount of time to accept that I had to sleep for 7-9 hours a night. It took 23 years to know I need to sleep from early in the night to early in the morning on the same schedule. If I drink or use drugs I will have episodes. That realization has taken me 24 years. The preventative activities, of which I neglect, took 23 years to accept the need for are; self-care (shower, brush teeth, eat healthy, exercise, haircut, wash sheets, laundry, chores, do pleasurable things, etc.), take a prn for mania if cycling, see therapist and psychiatrist, consult crisis plan if needed, help others, pray and meditate, practice gratitude, talk with friends and family, and chart moods. 

My illness is progressive, every episode is worse than the one before. If I want to live a productive life that I am content with, I have to follow my rules of living. Everyone should have rules of living, but mine have much higher stakes than the average person. If someone without mental illness like mine misses a few nights of sleep it will certainly affect them but they won’t end up cuffed with five cops pining them down with a shot of ketamine in their ass.