E129 - Living with Bipolar Disorder (w/ Shreevatsa Nevatia)

Shreevatsa Nevatia is an independent journalist. He has worked as the editor of National GeographicTraveller, and has written for the NationHindustan Times, and the Mumbai Mirror and Outlook. He is the author of How to Travel Light: My Memories of Madness and Melancholia, which among other things describes Shreevata's experiences coming to terms with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in his early twenties. 

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome back. As you all know, we talk a lot about mental health conditions on the podcast. That makes sense. It's a podcast about mental health and psychology. It's really easy to bring on an expert who will discuss one or more mental health conditions like bipolar or depression or schizophrenia or something like that.

It's much harder and often much more valuable to bring someone on who can discuss their firsthand experience of what it's like to have a mental health condition. I. One of the easiest things to happen in psychiatry or clinical psychology is to objectify the patient or client to forget that they have their own world and to fail to at least for a moment, step into their world with them and truly understand it.

And so these lived experience accounts are really useful to help with that. We've done a few episodes on the podcast about this. Including people giving their accounts of what it's like to have anorexia, schizophrenia, other conditions With us to continue this conversation today is [00:01:00] Shiza Neva. Shiza is an independent journalist.

He's worked as the editor of the National Geographic Traveler and has written for the Nation Hindustan Times and the Mumbai Mirror and Outlook. He's the author of How to Travel Light, my Memories of Madness and Melancholia. This is Shiva's memoir where he talks about first being diagnosed with bipolar at the age of 23, and the book takes the reader through a whole decade of his life, what it was like for him to deal with this condition, to deal with his past.

The book's been described as part confession, part joy, ride, wholly enjoyable. Here Shaza presents a story of owning your own narrative no matter how difficult and complicated it is. Today we discuss Shiva's first experiences of having a manic episode, what it was like to be admitted to a psychiatric ward in India.

How he gradually over the years came to terms with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and how that's affected his life in different ways. [00:02:00] We discuss some things which have helped him manage his condition and some triggers he's learned to avoid. A bit about the relationship between creativity and mental health and why it's important, whether or not you do have a mental health problem, to try and engage with life actively and on your own terms.

This is the Thinking Mind, a podcast all about psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, and related topics. If you want to support the show, do check out some of the links and services we offer in the description. Thank you very much for listening. And now here's today's conversation with Shaza Neva.

Shaza, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for having me here. Of course, I'd like to set the context for our conversation with your wonderful book, how to Travel Light, my Memories of Madness and Melancholia, and we'll of course put a link in the description so listeners can check that out.

But it would be so helpful to [00:03:00] set the context for this conversation. What is your story? Where does your story begin? Where does my story begin? That's a tough question. It's certainly not easy to answer. I think in terms of my bipolarity, it begins in a very interesting place. This was the year was 2007, and I was all of 23.

I'd worked as a journalist for a couple of years and was planning to take a break. I go to Britain to do my masters. I'd initially done my BAS from Falmouth, and I was gonna go to Sussex in order to do my Masters. And just before leaving for Sussex, there was a friend of mine who used to facilitate writing workshops and asked me if I would be happy to facilitate writing workshop.

I stopped doing it. I, it was basically me and kids who were about 16 or 17, finishing school, going to [00:04:00] college, interested in writing, interested in storytelling, and I started facilitating this workshop and I. It was such a high, I somehow felt I was inside language in a certain way where I was being able to really inhabit sentences that I was reading, and one idea would lead to another one.

One exercise would give me ideas for seven other exercises, and I never felt like that in my life. And in that moment I felt that it was perhaps the structure. Of writing or it was perhaps the structure of this workshop that is making me feel so poyant that is making me feel so energetic. But really it perhaps was some of those things.

But what was really happening was that my mind was slowly unraveling and it, it was. It's the first signs of Meia that I couldn't [00:05:00] detect because I'd never known these feelings and the people around me were stumped and surprised by who I was becoming or who I was changing into, but nobody around me. At least not drawing the first days of hypermania.

Nobody had any kind of inkling that there was something wrong with me. Coupled with this, I started losing sleep. And the weirdest thing happened that I was losing sleep and becoming more energetic, both at the same good point in time. I, I was not tired at all and I was very happy. I was very euphoric. So the kinda workshop ended and, but my mania did not, I.

And it kept getting more and more intense and my ideas kept getting more extreme. What had begun with this kind of sense of levity, with this sense of expansiveness quickly started to become something far more. [00:06:00] I, I was becoming very angry with the world. I was wounding people I loved with words that I had out, and I wanted to hurt them with the words that I was using.

And I, I was seeing someone, I was seeing someone I. Who's a little older to me, who lived in Cornwall, and it was a long distance relationship, and we were planning to lessen that distance when I came to Parton, but I broke up with her on the phone. I, I, I was very livid. I was very angry. I turned against my parents.

I was living in Calcutta at that given point in time. And my parents, I accused them of neglect. Basically told them that. So for four years from when I was eight to when I was 12, I was sexually abused by an older cousin. My, my parents didn't know of this. Nobody knew anything about this because I made sure that this [00:07:00] abuse was kept a secret.

But I told them that they had neglected me and essentially allowed me to be abused. And I was, I was really, to them, I left home in. I started flying from one city to another. From Calcutta. I went to Delhi. From Delhi. I went to Chand. From Chandhi, I went to Bombay, and it was finally in Bombay where a couple of really dear friends of mine who have known since childhood, who came to look after me in Bombay.

And they took me to a psychiatrist. I, I still remember that the first thing I told, I, I looked at the psychiatrist and said, so what's it gonna be Dr. Freud, the young Lagan? Where are we starting today? And I was just so cocky, uh, when I was speaking to her and it. Probably didn't take a long to figure out that I was manic when I left her.

When I left her room and my friends went in, she [00:08:00] informed them that I was having a manic episode and that I, in all probability was bipolar and that I needed help and that I probably should. Be hospitalized. My friends slipped in some kind of sleeping medicine in some ice cream that I was eating, and that night there were these male nurses and doctors who came and picked me up from my friend's house and took me to a hospital and I woke up tied to a hospital bed.

The next day and then came my diagnosis saying that I'm bipolar or that I suffer from bipolar disorder. I had heard about bipolarity and I'd heard about bipolar disorder, but I didn't really know what it was and. So it, it took me some time. It took me some time to, to guide, to gather my thoughts and come to terms with this new reality.

And that was the first time, and this was a [00:09:00] hospital, this was not an institution where I was, and I can tell you more about that doctor who, who treated me at that given point in time. But, but when he broke the news to me, he said two things. He said, you Wolf and Churchill have something in common. All of you are bipolar.

I think you also recruit DaVinci in that list. And he said you'll have to be on medication all your life. 'cause this is not something that can be cured, but it's something that needs to be managed. And I was obviously, I. Accustomed to hearing that madness is a sign of genius and desperately wanted to believe that reality or that idea.

It's only now that I know that for every Wolf or Churchill or DaVinci or Van Gogh, sorry, not I, I said DaVinci. I. Vincent, there, there is, there are so many people. For every one of them, there are thousands, if not millions of [00:10:00] people who are bipolar but do not are. The kind of haven't had the kind of opportunity in order to be able to contribute the way these luminaries have.

And it's, it's a terrible thing to tell somebody that you know, you are great because of your condition. I think it'd be little suffering and things like that. But then there was this, this other thing that I had to. Come to terms with, which was the medication. But when you asked me how did it all start, that's how it all started in 2007.

That must have been so bizarre in the sense that initially you're experiencing things which at phase value seem like they might have some positives, some euphoria, thinking in a very creative way, having ideas come to you very quickly. And then to be. Basically against your will, given some medication that makes you go to sleep and then waking up tied up in a psychiatric ward and then given this [00:11:00] diagnosis, it must have felt.

So, I don't know. You can tell me how it felt, but perhaps it felt punitive or quite like tyrannical. It sounds like I. It was horrific and I don't know what was more horrific, Alex. I don't know if, uh, that kind of fag end of my mania where I was belligerent far more than I was ecstatic. Where I. I felt like I ruled the world, but nobody around me was signing up for this kind of empire that I was creating with every sentence that I outed that, that had become very frustrating and I was, I was very angry.

I. And I was doing a lot of damage to my relationships. The relationships that I'd nurtured and people who I had loved. I wasn't being kind at all. I'd stopped being kind, whereas Arminia had just become, I was doing things like I, I was very [00:12:00] callous, I was very generous. I gave my laptop away to. A waiter who told me that he was trying to educate his daughter, and I said, she needs it more than I do.

So here you go. He has a laptop. So I, I was doing things like that, but, but it, but slowly, gradually, the mania had become something very horrific and I was, I. I felt great amounts of terror and I was also being very terrifying to, to a few people around me. When you were first given the diagnosis, did it make sense to you, like, yeah, a mental health condition could be an explanation for some of what, uh, I've been experiencing.

What it basically happened was that the diagnosis came along with medication that they were administered. I'm, I'm not sure really at that given point in time as to what the prescription was, what kind of meant. Medicines were giving me, but I would assume that there were mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic drugs that, that were [00:13:00] being administered in order to be able to calm me down.

And these certainly did have, I, I remember the one feeling that I had when my mania had begun was that. I couldn't fall and, and it was soaring mood that that made me feel invincible. And suddenly all those feelings had left me. And what happened in that hospital in the nursing home was coming feeling a certain amount of guilt for the excesses of the mania, for things that I told people for.

I remember confessing love to. About a dozen different women around that time. And I was very embarrassed by this feeling as to my God, what have I done? So there was a lot of that. So I, I, I think it, it was basically this, the simultaneous kind of collection of things that, that was happening. But, but there was also that feeling of being incarcerated, [00:14:00] not being able to leave, not having that freedom.

And that make me feel very scared. I. About what? What has happened? Why am I not being allowed to meet my parents? Why am I not being allowed to meet my friends? Why am I being isolated? Why am I being kept in seclusion? So it was a very scary time as well. So one of the predominant feelings that I felt around that time was fear.

I, I felt terribly afraid about what had happened, and it seemed like something, something monumental was something mammoth, gargantuan had taken place, and I was just trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of I, to be honest with you, I, I don't even think that in those early days it had sunk in that I had a condition that I was gonna have to live.

With all my life. It was the short term that I was thinking about. Get out of this hospital, get back to people that you [00:15:00] love and, and hopefully that will make you feel better, more than the lithium perhaps. And looking back on that, is there a way you would have preferred to been given the diagnosis or preferred?

The psychiatrist or perhaps other staff in the hospital to, to approach you or to interact with you? Is there anything, like what do you think they got costly wrong? What do you think could have been better? Nobody, nobody during this manic attack told me that there might be something wrong with my mental health, that I might be mentally ill.

It wasn't it, I probably would've dismissed that idea, but I don't know. I never got a chance in order to be able to process that idea, I, I never got a chance in order to be able to say that. Okay, wait a second. Do I have any kind of self-awareness or being able to tell myself that what you're feeling is unusual and maybe.

Get someone to explain that to me in, in some way, shape, or form. So [00:16:00] what would I have preferred? I would've preferred that there is someone that sat me down and spoken with me and explained bipolarity, explain my condition in a manner that I might be able to receive it, and in a manner that it. Might be able that those ideas might have registered in some ways.

But like I say, I probably would've dismissed that person and said, wait a second. Hold on. I'm God. And how could God ever be mentally ill? Or something like that, or something to that effect. But the first time that I heard about it. The fact that I was bipolar was in that hospital and I hadn't gotten the opportunity in order to be able perhaps, to willfully ask for treatment or to ask for help.

I, I don't know if I would've, but it would've been nice for some part of my support system or some medical practitioner [00:17:00] to deliver the news. In a manner that someone, somebody's suffering an illness might be able to receive that information and make some good use of it. Yeah. It doesn't sound like there was any attempt at psychoeducation collaboration, assessing your level of insight or your level of self-awareness, and then like, as you say, not really giving the opportunity.

To be an active participant in your own treatment. Of course, as you say, perhaps you would have been dismissive, and that happens quite a lot, but not even being given the opportunity to think about, do I want medication? Does it, does it make sense? That's what I'm experiencing as a mental health difficulty.

Not being asked those questions at all is obviously setting up a scenario where you're, I think you used the word infantalized in your book. I guess it sets up that situation where you're quite, you're a passive recipient of, [00:18:00] of, of the medical system at that point. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's, it's, it's like, you know, in, uh, kind of recent, uh, pollens and, uh, I would be called a user, a service user.

A service user, and, and that. Suggests or connotes some kind of agency, some kind of volition, some kind of participation in the entire process, and at that given point in time there. There really wasn't. And I think one, one reason why might have been that, that people around me were really scared by my behavior and they wanted me to get help quickly and as quickly as possible.

And not resist and not fight back or, yeah. And I feel that's what probably happened, but the same cycle. Has repeated itself in my life a fair few times, mania and then hospitalization or institutionalization. [00:19:00] And so it, it, it wasn't just that one time, even after I'd been diagnosed, even after I knew that I had to manage.

This illness mania crept up on me and there were all those delusions of grandeur and all those feelings of euphoria, expansiveness and annoyance and aggression. But in, but none of those moods did I ever stop and say, wait a second, you've been here before. You know where this leads mania is. Seductive as hell.

And I don't know. I also wanna ask you that question that in your experience, people who are bipolar and are manic, do, in your experience, is there any way in order to be able to communicate to them that they should be a little more self-aware and control their ideas or their thoughts or their mind better?

And do people listen? I think it varies tremendously from person to person. I do think there is a [00:20:00] tendency when you're in a manic state that it's like you said, I'm really glad you used the word seductive. I think that's the correct word. It's very seductive. 'cause it feels good. You feel it's associated with that feeling of grandeur.

You feel it really, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression it feels like everything is going in the right direction. I think if you had to compare it to a drug, it'll probably feel very similar to cocaine. Yeah. Cocaine produces like a dopamine high. And the thing about a dopamine high, it's quite different from say the serotonin high you might get from ecstasy.

The serotonin high of ecstasy is something more like, my needs are all satisfied and I feel safe and I feel have arrived. In some sense, the dopamine high is like all the good things are coming. They're still coming with a dopamine high. And it's part to do with, I think, the functions of dopamine and, and serotonin.

But the dopamine high [00:21:00] is this feeling of anticipation and everything is going in the right direction. And so of course it's incredibly seductive and incredibly hard to feel like, how could I be suffering a mental health condition when, when I feel this way? But I think people's ability to have insight varies.

I think one rule of thumb is you should always give the person the opportunity to have that discussion, and at least to reinforce that message. And I think getting a, a consistent message between, you know, doctor, nurse, therapist, perhaps family, friends, and that message being very cohesive I think is the most helpful thing.

And then the crucial thing is for that message to be continued as the person comes down from the manic episode once they go back to their baseline and to try and deliver it in a way which doesn't like reinforce that guilt that you mentioned. That's so common when people do recover from a manic [00:22:00] episode that unfortunately they feel that guilt and that regret.

So I think it varies, but I think it's the consistency across time and across people that it's this, this condition that kind of takes hold. And I personally, I don't believe. People are really responsible for their actions when they're in the midst of that episode because you know, they're under the influence of all sorts of brain chemicals at that point.

No, absolutely. And even though this is something I've told myself many times, but hearing you say that I'm not responsible for what I do and say during those manic spells, it's very comforting. It's very comforting to hear because yeah, I, if I had to, if I had to give my, my. My memoir a different title. I would probably say something like, that is not me.

That is not me at all. That's, or just order to be able to say that. But again, there's the memory of what I've done and the fact that the [00:23:00] person on the other side thought that it was me who meant what I said, yeah. Or that I did what I did with some kind of idea of deliberation. That, that I was out there to hurt their feelings and or manipulate them in some way.

And I would never dream of hurting someone in my, in my lucid days and in my non manic life deliberately. It's one thing that I do struggle with, with a lot and perhaps. During the depression that follows the mania, that struggle is all the more key because the memories of what you've done and said are very recent, and you feel that you will never be forgiven and that your friends won't take you back, or that your parents will continue to be afraid of you and you would not be able to feel the kind of love and affection you did for them when things were better.

When things were good, but it's [00:24:00] happened so many times. I've, I've certainly lost a few friends along the way, but I think that happens naturally in the space of any person's life, that some friendships fall by the wayside. I, I, I. Certain people have, have chosen not to see past mildness. Certain people have certainly, I, I think, felt that I'm somebody that they would much rather not have in their lives and not want to deal with because I have the capability of turning against them in a medic.

Wound, and I understand that and I understand that entirely, that it's too much for peace for some people to take on. They people have so much going on in their own lives. Whether or not their mental health is, is, has suffered or not, that's not the point. But they have, if they have no space for, for a certain kind of madness in order to be able to express itself from [00:25:00] time to time.

That's something I'm very understanding of. But no, in, in a perfect world, I, it's, you are asked so often, right? Would you, would you not be bipolar or if somebody gave you a magic wand, would you wish away the bipolar disorder? Um, and earlier when the hypomania used to be very enjoyable. In my first, I would say my first 10 years of diagnosis, I would say no.

I certainly do not want to feel. That, that moment of elation, that feeling of expansiveness. But as time has gone on and it, it has led to me losing jobs or me just resigning from fairly good kind of journalistic work and jobs, it's. Having had wounded family, friends with language, having had taken lots of [00:26:00] loans from the bank, which I must say I've, I've needed help in order to be able to repay, and I haven't been able to repay them with money that I've earned myself.

It's wonderful enough to be able to have the love of people, to have the love of family, and to have the love of birds who pay those bills for you. But it's led to so much confusion and so much sadness and that now after all these years, I, I don't know if I would still say, Hey, if someone gave me a magic wand, I perhaps would want to wish away bipolar disorder because I think life might be simpler without it.

Do you ever worry that we're living in a culture that fetishizes mental health. That's particularly amongst younger generations, it seems to have become, there's almost like some prestige value attached to having a mental health condition, and particularly bipolar has attracted, uh, [00:27:00] almost some sense of almost prestige.

When you hear about perhaps certain celebrities who have had the diagnosis, is that something you've observed at all? This is, this is a tough question, right, because, 'cause I think the amount of I. Mental health advocacy that is out there in the world today. And especially I see a lot of young people who are becoming mental health activists and mental health advocates.

It's obviously a good thing that more people are talking about it. And I definitely feel that now when I confess to, to being mentally ill or telling people that I have bipolar disorder. Yeah, I would say more and more people. Deal with me with a certain amount of compassion, which is perhaps in some cases invented and not naturally felt.

But I definitely feel that if,

even if they are, [00:28:00] I. Being compassionate to me in order to be able to be woke, for instance. I think it's the performance of it that might lead to some kind of self-realization about that. Actually, I just said it, but it might be good to actually mean it too. The other thing about the fetishize. The fetishization of mental health that you were talking about.

Oh, I definitely feel that a lot of that happens. It really does. It's, I, I can't tell you the number of people who have come and told me, but aren't we all bipolar? So that's what I mean. So when you say, when you say people might. Approach you with more compassion than they otherwise would, and perhaps that's not natural for them, but they're doing it somewhat performatively.

I kind of see that as a good thing. Like I'm a big fan of politeness. I do too. Even if it's, even if it's a bit contrived. Politeness is this wonderful social lubricant that allows strangers [00:29:00] who might otherwise have gone to war with each other 10,000 years ago. To get along. So in terms of the, the actual mechanics of interacting in a nicer way, even if it's a little performative, big fan.

I think again, when I'm talk, when I'm thinking about the ization I am, it's the subtle way that I see the culture where like almost posing it as a goal to suffer, like suffering is the goal or some sort of martyrdom or having some sort of, um, some sort of problem, whether it's with your physical health.

Or, or your mental health. Uh, and I, I see that quite a lot. No, I, I, I do too, Alex. But I think there's one kind of distinction that it's important to make here, that a lot of the mental health conversation that, that we, you know, essentially encounter on social media or in, in the mainstream press or on, on TV and things like that.

There. I think there are some illnesses in particular that people find hard to [00:30:00] fathom. I think it's easier for people sometimes maybe to get their head around things like depression or anxiety, and a lot of the times when people talk about mental health, these are the kind stereotypes that come up. The stereotype of the person who's not being able to get outta bed, or the stereotype of the person who's having a panic attack about.

Some kind of assignment that they're late in delivering or something of the sort. So it comes easy. A lot of the people find it, perhaps young people or even older people, easier to relate to those kind of illnesses and, and sometimes the problem that happens because that kind of relatability is that you end up having people talk about mental illnesses like a fractured leg.

Or something of the sort. That's the kind of equivalence that people draw that if you can talk about your leg, that that was fractured. You can also talk about your mind that is depressed. I think the problem with. [00:31:00] Bipolarity is that for care for caregivers, people who have been on the side of the caregiver, or somebody caring for someone with either bi bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, or things like that.

Their lives have actually actively been inconvenienced, whether it's somebody I called, whether it was a boss I called and yelled at, or whether it was some friend who I was just obsessing over and about and was calling every three hours and being an absolute nuisance so that the levels of inconvenience also differ.

And because every time that my mania acted up, somebody else at work had to. Pick up the pieces after me because I certainly wasn't being able to fulfill my own responsibilities and somebody else had to step in. And I've had such wonderful colleagues who have been able to do that. But I wondered that after having had these kind of experiences, [00:32:00] if these people who have been inconvenienced by me, I would think that they perhaps would not fetishize the suffering.

They, they would know that it's a difficult spot for anyone to be in, whether that person is me or whether that person is them. And this doesn't get talked about enough. I have a couple of friends who suffer from schizophrenia, and when we talk about our experiences, which is. Having no money in the middle of a foreign city where we don't exactly know how we've ended up there.

People who we love not being able to find us thinking that they have to go to the cops in order to be able to trace our location in steps. Expenses like that are scary. They really are. And I don't know whether those scary experiences fit in very well with the mental health conversation that. Most people have, or whether those kind of conversations make room [00:33:00] or whether they can actually include experiences that could be actually as traumatic as the one I described.

In what way do you think they don't fit in? Like how do you see the conversations around mental health happening at the moment? How do they not leave room for those more sort of severe or distressing experiences do you think? I, I, I really feel that, you know what, what happens with the mental health conversation sometimes is that it it in some certain way many a times, even though there, there might be the acknowledgement of the fact that these conditions can be cured.

I. The betterment is looked at as some kind of cure, that if you are better that, that you will move from point A to point B. Point B will be a better place than point A, point C will be a better place than point B. There's. This leaner approach to recovery that the fact is that there have been so many PO points in time where I'm at C or [00:34:00] D, but then very quickly I've come back to a and a being the point where I was suffering a, being the point in time where I was manic or a being the point in time where I was depressed.

This is the thing that, that I feel what the conversation likes to do sometimes is. Draw a line, draw a neat line under your suffering and say, you have suffered. We acknowledge your suffering, and now we've given you the tools in order to be. What it doesn't take into account many times I find is the cyclical nature of these illnesses.

Depression, be it anxiety, be it bipolar disorder that I feel is a problem that I have found sometimes when I read articles that come out when I read social media posts, where I have people when mental health is equated with physical health and I. Equate mental health with physical health. And as much as that, it's important for people to be able to talk [00:35:00] about what is ailing them and why they're suffering and what they can do.

And not to make sense, feel better, but I also don't think that you can equate it by saying that I. The fractured leg will not be fractured anymore after a week or after a month. But the person with a mental health illness would probably be living with that same mental health in with different kind of varying degrees of intensity.

If they're lucky for a few months, for a few years, and mostly, and most of the times it's for their entire life. So that I feel is, is. Somewhere that I feel let down by the mental health conversation that it assumes a cure sometime. It's like a linear process of recovery. Yeah. Very often I imagine people rolling their eyes when a mannequin saying, oh no, not again.

There goes, how many times will you do? But the thing is that really don't, I cannot always control [00:36:00] as to how many times does the. How, how have you, what? What has the process been like of like coming to Thames with the condition and learning to manage it better? How has that been for you? I used to think about it a lot.

I used to think about it a whole lot, like even around 2 20 17 when, when my book came out and when I go back and when I read my book sometimes and when I see how vividly I remember things around that I strangely don't remember those things as vividly anymore because suddenly life has. Fortunately, become more about the living of it without having to think that I'm living with this illness.

And that might be a sign of the meds working well, that might be a sign of the therapy working well, but I've, I've [00:37:00] definitely seen that change that has happened in my life. But your question as to how do I manage it? I think what's happened with time is that one has been able to recover from the disappointments that the bipolar disorder has led to.

So be it, loss of employment, breakups, loss of friendships, family trouble. And to have all those people in your life again or back in your life is suddenly lovely and. Allows one in, I think, in order to be able to manage one condition, manage one's condition better, but I think it's a, it's a bunch of things.

It's if the meds that I was taking wasn't actually doing what they should be doing, or if they weren't doing what they should be doing, I would not be able to manage my illness. So it's, it definitely helps in order to be [00:38:00] able to. Go to a psychiatrist who's spent enough time with you in order to arrive in some kind of permutation combination of jobs that seems to be working for you.

I think that's very important. It's, I think it's becomes easier to manage with age because just, I, I think as you grow older, you're perhaps not as ambitious as you. As you were once, but also more than ambition you, it becomes easy for you to, because you become accustomed to highs and you become accustomed to lows and you are, mm.

It's strange, right? Because after every kind of manic attack and. For me, what basically happens is that my mood swings towards mania and then from mania, it's this terrible dark depression that follows right after the mania. And then there are these spells of lucidity. So what, what I really feel is that what I.

What has [00:39:00] happened is that I've now really become used to making the most of lucidity, making the most of the time that I have when I'm not manic or I'm not depressed. And in order to be able to use that time in order to be able to prepare myself for some kind of inevitability and for me to be able to see, and for me to be able to just tell myself that if your mood shifts, if you start losing sleep, look at that as a sign.

Reach out for help. And maybe alert people who you love and people who love you, that there might be something wrong. And I, that's working towards that awareness is probably the most important thing in my life right now. The idea that I can be manic, but I can still be aware and not upend my life the way my life has been affected in the past.

Yes. And was it therapeutic for you to put your story in writing in the way that you did? Oh, incredibly, incredibly. Language is just so lovely, right? Because, and, and, and [00:40:00] I, I, I could talk about this for hours really. I mean the, the kind of relationship between language and bipolarity or the kind of language or the role that language plays in bipolar disorder, but it.

I, I still remember there's a chapter that I write. It's chapter three. It's called The Invention of Sex. That's a chapter about my abuse that I have written. I remember getting done with that chapter and bawling like a baby. I. And no mind of bawling has done me that much good ever in my life. It was just so cathartic in order to be able to cry like that after having processed all these memories of abuse.

But it's not just that it's, it certainly helped me come to terms with it also. The idea that I could confess to these things and I could say that yes, this was me who did it, or this was me who said it, and I'm not doing that only to ask for the reader's forgiveness, but I'm also doing that in order for [00:41:00] people to be able to understand that there might be a distinction between moods and that a very important.

Part of being able to understand fellow human beings is to be able to understand moods and moods better, not just for people who are bipolar, but for anybody. And I feel if we are more understanding of people's moods, we would be living in a much better world. Where, where I think there would be less, and hopefully there was, but would you encourage someone to put their story in writing even if they didn't publish it like you did?

And have it out for public consumption. Would you encourage someone just to write down, you know, this was my story just for themselves and their own internal processing? I must tell you, I'm terrible at journaling there. I've been asked by so many therapists in order to be able to mm-hmm. Keep a journal and I, I I, I, I, I used to bend down a few diary entries earlier [00:42:00] in my life, but for the last couple of years I haven't been doing a great job of it.

But I definitely feel that. Being able to, the thing that writing does is that it allows you to look at you from outside yourself for a while in order for you to be able to distance yourself from the emotions you are feeling, from the thoughts that you're thinking, and in order to be able to examine them slightly from afar.

And that is just. That is such a sublime experience and that can be so helpful because, and also. So that you're able to look at yourself honestly, but also with a certain amount of generosity and a certain amount of kindness and a certain amount of compassion, and I think that generosity and kindness does sometimes come very easily with the writing of.

One's one story. It's a hard story to write many times, and it's [00:43:00] difficult in order to be able to articulate into words, but I think once you've actually done it, you might find that there are more keys that you have in order to be able to unlock the mysteries of your condition and the. Tragedies or comedies A few days.

Have there been many triggers? You've identified four manic episodes. You know, I've met people who say, you know, a trigger for them might be stress or the weather, or even an intense bout of exercise, or a few sleepless nights. I know in the past 18 months you've made the decision to remove some stress from your life.

Any huge triggers for you in terms of, you know, triggering manic episodes. It's, I, I think one trigger that, that I must talk about is cannabis and I, I think that it's happened so often in my life that sometimes I've reached out for cannabis while I have been manic. It's hard to say as to which came first.

Did the [00:44:00] cannabis lead to the mania or did the mania lead to the cannabis? But I suddenly don't think that it has held my mental state very much and has done me a world of good. So I would definitely look at that as a trigger. I think pressure, work, stress that tends, that leads to me. Sleep kind of deprivation or some kind of loss of sleep that definitely do identify as a trigger.

Sometimes relationships and when they go south and when that leads to some kind of loss. I have found that one of my coping mechanisms mean. When I'm dealing with heartbreak, so that is certainly something that I, and not even heartbreak, but also simple things like boredom or feeling trapped in a relationship and really wanting to be free of it.

And one way that my mind has responded to that pressure has been through media. [00:45:00] And that has also certainly been a trigger. Uh, sometimes I also feel the feeling of achievement of having done something really good. Uh, like, you know, I mean, there was a piece that I wrote that got published by The Economist, published.

I found myself being manic, and it was possibly the feeling of that delirious that comes with thinking that you've succeeded. Massively in your work life or in any other kind of capacity language. I sometimes felt a bit high after being immersed in a project for many days and then coming out of it when, where suddenly your days were filled with words and then suddenly there was a void and there was nothing to do and there was no word to think of.

And the thing that has taken up that vacuum has been. Or psychosis or [00:46:00] So, yeah, I'd say these are some of the triggers that, that I can identify. But it's also Alex I, I must admit to something here, I've also become afraid sometimes of living my life fully. Because I feel that if I were to do that, if I were to immerse myself in the world and let the world do to me what it does to every other human being, I feel that I would be, leave myself vulnerable to bad, to mental illness or to bad mental health.

And I go around life sometimes wearing an armor of stoicism. Where I don't want to be affected by things too much, where I don't want to feel things like anger or sadness or things that I feel might tip me over the edge. I, and I don't, and I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. I don't think it's a great way to live life in [00:47:00] order to be able, in order to live it in such a manner that you're afraid of it.

But I must confess that I definitely do feel scared. About extremities, and I think that's not talked about enough either. That's kind of, you know, forced temperance that someone with a mental health condition might have to do because they recognize, Hey, I've got some vulnerabilities. And that vulnerability, those vulnerabilities mean I have to be really, really careful, not just from the lows and necessarily the dark stresses of life, um, but even some of the positive aspirations because positive aspirations can, of course.

Come with stress. If you want to have a really successful career that might come with stress and a few sleepless nights, and I guess you're recognizing that you're in a situation where you just have to be extremely careful. And I, and I can hear the sadness as you're describing that. Yeah, no, it, it. It definitely truly is.

I mean, you know, I, I, I, I, I feel [00:48:00] that there's a kind of cocoon that I've been able to invent for myself, and living in that cocoon saves me from any kind of mood swing. I. That might happen or that might result from circumstance or situations. Does that affect creativity as well? A lot of people might be afraid that if they got treatment for a mental health condition, I see it quite a lot with A DHD actually, that people with a diagnosis of A DHD might be worried about taking medication because they feel it might stunt.

Creativity. What, what has your experience been like in that regard? No, I, I definitely feel that when I was on a lot of things like Depakote and Lithium and, um, just. I, it was like I was almost this kind of lobotomized rat where there was one bill being given to me for every symptom of mine. So there were mood [00:49:00] stabilizers, there were anti-psychotics, there were things I was taking for side effects.

There were things that I was taking for depression and so on and so forth. So I was taking some 12, 13 pills a day, and now that's come down to about four maybe. Three or four pills that that I take, and these pills seem to be working for me in as much as it's not the pills that makes me feel that I'm not able to be creative.

But it is. It is the fear of. Feeling I, two years ago, I used to be passionate about very many things, and then I realized that perhaps one way of living life is to temper down these passions and my excitement that I feel what I'm writing or what I'm reading or do doing something else that requires me to flex my creative muscle.

I definitely think that in my case, it's not the medicines, but it's me who. [00:50:00] Tailored for myself a certain kind of life where I'm not feeling too excited by by stimuli of, of any sort. So be that a relationship or be that narrative or be that music or any of that. So it's. And I definitely think it's a lesser life.

I don't think it's the best way of living. And for the last few weeks, at least the last month or so, I've been chastising myself and telling myself that, no, it, it is important to at least dip your toes into, into that kind of lake and pot of life, uh, and see whether might lead, because you know, just.

Refusing to feel the water on your feet is no way of living life. I must be that very careful process of trying to find that balance. And maybe if earlier in your life you swung too hard in the direction of [00:51:00] passions. Now perhaps you swung the other way in terms of trying to retreat from those passions to protect yourself.

And maybe now you're trying, trying to find that, that place in the middle perhaps. And, and there's so much to take up your time now, Alex. You know, I mean, there's, uh, there's work, there's work that I do every day that certainly takes up a few hours. And when you're not working, really engaging with your mind and making sure that you're able to write, making sure that you're able to read, you can simply just spend half an hour scrolling.

Down Instagram and just to seeing random reels that don't lead to any kind of in illumination or any kind education, but it. Become a convenient way of spending time and wasting it. So yeah, I definitely feel that creativity and for me, creativity has a lot to do, like I was saying earlier with language, because it is, [00:52:00] I've, I've primarily been creative as a writer, as a journalist, somebody who's loved.

Just writing sentences that I write in the hope that it might please somebody or that somebody might read it and feel happy or understood or something of the sort. But it's also, the more that I realize that my lawful language also takes on a particular form in where it's all about. How witty I'm and how many puns make, and it's all about the jokes and it's all about being clever, but it's also about being happy.

It's about when language opens itself up to you like that, where words are much lighter and actually carry more acoustic significance than they do, meaning it's a lovely way of being for a while, and I think it's that opening up of that language. [00:53:00] Makes me feel invincible. And it's that also, which lends to the grandeur where you feel that you've got this, you've got this.

'cause you can understand words as well as you can. But, but yeah, no, I, and depression is just the opposite because it's Aly not about acoustics anymore, and it's only about meaning. Right where it's mostly just looking at yourself and calling yourself hard kind of names and words and saying that you don't deserve to live or that you, you don't deserve a good life.

What, I'm curious if there's any advice you'd give to someone who might be themselves where you were in 2007, who might be noticing something's wrong. I'm not entirely sure what that is. Some people are telling me might be my mental health. Yeah, they might, they might perhaps be dismissive of this advice, but what advice would you give someone in that situation?

I, what advice would I give someone? [00:54:00] That's a tough one, but let me try and answer that. I would perhaps recommend, or I would perhaps suggest that even if it's for a minute, or even if it's for five minutes, that they slow down a little that rather than think of. The people in their lives as an audience, as people that are there just in order to be able to hear their jokes and respond to their cleverness, that they're actually people with feelings and emotions and fears and concerns and what their fears and concerns are.

For me during that given kind of point of time order to be able to stop to try and imagine that and to be able to see that, that if. My support system is feeling fear for me, or if they are feeling afraid of me, why is that? And that I am not [00:55:00] the only person on this planet, that there are other people and I.

And it's funny because in many, you're constantly thinking about other people, but other people are only there to serve a need. And that's the need of approval. And that's the need of just validation. Validation. Exactly. But beyond that, I'm, I'm, I. Am I being able to see people in their, their in a certain kind of way that is complete and am I being able to interact with them as human beings who feel as much as I do and fear as much as I do.

But yeah, in order to be able to look. Look at myself through their eyes and whoever is suffering in order to be able to look at yourself through the eyes of the people you love. If you're able to do that in a moment of slowing down, that I think might really help. Shiza, thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your experiences with us.

Oh, thank you. I, I, [00:56:00] I hope this has been helpful in some small way.