Beauty in the Breakdown: Bipolar Edition
A note, before we begin: This is my experience. It's not everyone's. There are as many ways to experience this, as there are people. My views and theories are in development and they’re here to spark ideas, inspiration, questions and conversation, rather than treat or diagnose.
The sadness starts to come over me in waves, like nausea. I'm making breakfast one minute, and the next I’m doubled over, sobbing on the kitchen floor. Along with the sadness comes a new friend I don’t recognize; she takes my hand and drags me upwards, like we're travelling up the ascending axis of a roller coaster. The voices in my head become ceaseless and demanding, a cacophony of compulsions, all vying for attention. There is something I have to do, and I have to do it now. Every choice I make feels like a matter of life and death. Even picking out what to wear becomes a monumental task. The ideas for every video I'm going to film, book and post I'm going to write come flooding through me. The energy is frantic, panicked and tortures my heart. My hands shake and my mind runs on overdrive. I bounce between tasks - frantic. Urgent. From above, I imagine I look like a cartoon, whizzing through every room in the house, never stopping to finish one thing, before I move onto the next, but no matter how much I do or how fast I work, it’s never enough. Sleeping it off is out of the question. I don’t remember what it feels like to be tired. I walk, a lot. And run, when I can. This is beyond the usual highs and lows I’m used too; the swings are disarming. It’s a hostage situation, with two states alternating power over my constitution, like parasites arguing over who's going to occupy the host’s body. I wake up each morning and quite literally have no idea how I’m going to feel. A part of me wonders if I could enjoy riding the highs and lows for the thrill of it; anything to escape the dull monotony of complacency, but after a few hours, I'm begging Life for a way out. Most days I collapse in an anxious heap on my bed – mentally exhausted, emotionally drained and completely distraught. - Holy F*ck
I first noticed symptoms of bipolar at 25. I grew up with a father who had it, so I knew what to look out for: excessive risk taking and disregard for personal safety, irritability and hyper sexuality. I found stability in my late twenties but in 2025, admitted myself to hospital after stress triggered another manic episode. Like an explorer going between ends of the earth, I was running myself ragged going back and forth between different worldviews, ideologies and identities. Rather than choosing where I went, I felt pulled and caught between.
In my experience, an imbalance in the mind, body and soul are an invitation to look deeper.
Observing my experience over the last eight-nine years, I’ve noticed patterns that helped me break free and I hope help create a new narrative around this particular mental illness.
A few years before my first episode, I went through several massive identity shifts (as you do in your twenties). I was working with a tantra coach, consciously connecting with my sexuality, learning how to feel and honoring my bodies signals. This came into direct conflict with the message I was getting from the world about how a woman should be. As I tried to reconcile who I was with the expectations I’d internalized, my sense of self, like my moods, became a roller coaster. I moved from my body to my head and back again, feeling torn.
Am I a well-rested woman or a social entrepreneur? A priestess or a sacred slut? A masculine builder or a feminine creatrix? Can I be deeply spiritual and intuitive and still operate in the physical world?
Feeling like I had to choose created a horrible tension; I knew I couldn’t sacrifice parts of myself. Like a Soul in a glass jar, I ricocheted between extremes, rather than dancing between. At some point it struck me:
What if instead of being either, I accepted I am all?
I am the high and low
left and right
there's nothing to fear anymore
there’s good in all of it
there’s God in all of it
I am the one I've been waiting for
My key to freedom was acceptance and allowing. Instead of bouncing between aspects (or poles) of myself and life, I became the bridge. I embraced the gift of versatility my Soul came in with and learned to bring different aspects of myself to different situations and relationships. I went into my body, and carried what I felt, heard and saw into my mind. I made sense of it and, with the help of others who’d gone before me, found language to conceptualize, contextualize and express it. I felt and processed sadness, I expressed joy. I danced between archetypes, without judging myself.
In the same way depression was a gateway into authenticity and addiction was an initiation into my creative power, bipolar was an invitation to accept my multi-dimensionality as a woman in a culture that says a psyche must be split in order to fit in.
What if madness isn’t a sentence, it’s a point on the way to equanimity?
Today, my well-being is my number one priority. I have daily non-negotiables including meditation, exercise and creating. I made the switch to a (mostly) vegan, gluten free diet. I take supplements (B12 and blueberry juice have been game changers), stopped drinking alcohol and switched to decaf almond-milk lattes instead of my usual double shot.
I also see a therapist once a fortnight.
As the supplements work on balancing out my gut bacteria, I work on my psyche. How am I contributing to the imbalance? What would happen if I approached my perspective on the world, myself and emotions with a little more equanimity?
I’m loosening my white-knuckled grip and practicing traversing the valleys and peaks of a creative life, holding myself through the cycles of success and failure, without attaching too much to anything. I balance out the highs by allowing my idealism and creativity and the lows by exercising my emotional sensitivity: refusing to fall asleep to suffering in myself and the world.
I realised I’d been taking risks, pushing myself to greater heights and lower lows to signal significance and prove my worth. Now, I relax into the relief of knowing I don’t have to be extraordinary to be worthy of love.
When it feels like things are getting out of control, I practice yin yoga to massage out the tension and stitch the pieces of my soul back together.
Bipolar isn’t weakness of the mind, it's a strength. The mind is so strong, it can transform our perception of ourselves, our lives and the world.
As hellish as it was, I can also see the gifts.
Having such a vast emotional range means I can guide people into places of euphoria and sit with them in the depths of despair. In a culture constantly trying to polarize, I deeply value my ability to hold multiple realities, ideas and worldviews, see the truth in all of them and, most importantly, the human behind them. As I see through the illusion of division, bring the pieces of my psyche into balance and experience wholeness within myself, I can create healing in families and communities.
I think we'll look back at bipolar in a similar way to the nineteenth century diagnoses of “hysteria”: a wild, free, deeply feeling human breaking free of ecological chains, a powerful, passionate, innovative psyche coming to terms with its seemingly contradictory nature in a culture that has prescribed it only one “correct” way to be.
If I could say anything to the me experiencing a manic episode, I’d say… You have a lot of natural energy. Accept the experience and channel it to change the world. Clean up your diet, lighten your load.
As you balance out, your capacity might not be what you thought. That’s okay.
Diagnoses aren’t sentences.
Value the parts of you the world has taught you to reject. Break the spell that you have to be either/or and see conflict as an invitation to embrace the paradox of your personality and existence.
I love you.
