Is Having Bipolar Disorder An Excuse to Be Out of Order?
From one extremity to the next...
In this world there are many cases of depression, either diagnosed through professional help or just through obvious symptoms. Often due to exposing children at a young age to traumatic experiences, they develop not only a range of different severities of depression, but sometimes delve into the serious stuff.
What exactly is Bipolar Disorder?
Bipolar Disorder is frequently associated with depression symptoms, and according to the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) it is also known as a manic-depressive illness, that causes shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe.
As a child with many close relations to this mental illness (specifically my mother), I grew up with thinking this extremity of mood changes, intense emotions and reoccurring swings of the mood were all part of being human, or in other words: being normal. As one would imagine, I heard the typical excuses given to children whenever I asked why Mommy was so sad or so angry. Those expected Mom answer’s like, “Well, Mommy’s sick”, “Mommy has problems” or my personal favorite “Mommy has problems in her head that make her moods crazy”.
Whatever the case, it all fizzled down to the very raw fact that my mother had Bipolar Disorder. However, later, when the relationship between my parents fell apart and I was left with my mom temporarily, I noticed more and more often as I grew old enough to comprehend the human nature that she tended to use her illness as a good thing. How you ask? Well, in certain situations, like fighting with her own mother for example, she would immediately blame her irrational reactions or responses to her “disease” as she liked to refer to it as. Another case is whenever she was in court (for custody of me), trying to defend herself by claiming it was all because of her “disease”.
By doing this, she was already ahead of the game, taking the first step past denial, being her admitting freely to having it. Yet, those next steps to putting it under raps were never put into effect. Why? Well, through people willingly falling into her trap of sympathy, they began to think of her illness as the perfect explanation for her acting so outrageous all the time. It came to the point, where even I, at the time only 10, became aware of the enabling taking place all around me, just for my mother.
What is enabling?
Enabling, when used in the proper sense for terms such as these, is when you give discretion for someone to do something, letting them believe it’s okay, and allowing them to continue doing it freely.
So, in other words, the family was alright with enabling my mother. Healthy? Absolutely not. Through doing this, it only makes matters worse, and the person being enabled will only dive further and further into their mindset of thinking everything is okay, when really, it’s not. As a child growing up with these occurrences close by, I’d like to think I have enough experience to say that blaming your mental illness is never a healthy thing, and in the end, only results in more problems than you started out with.
Perhaps one day, everyone with problems (more so Bipolar Disorder) will come to realize it’s not alright to always blame the things around you, and actually start to focus on fixing it, rather than using it for the believed “better” good.
