For our June Notepad, we share Celine Ruscher’s journey of living with bipolar disorder—a personal story that reveals the daily struggles of managing symptoms and confronting stigma.
Since I have started my journey exploring what it means to live with bipolar disorder, I have realized that my culture, the society I grew up in, and the misconceptions around mental illness have played a detrimental role in my relationship to my mental health. Working on stigma has helped me to revisit my own story and understand why I had to reach a crisis to ask for support. I want to share a two-part story on the emergence of my mental illnesses and how stigma shaped my decision to seek help. This is the first part.
“If you fall, you must have the strength to get back on your feet by your own means.” I grew up with this statement and many others, which aimed to show me that emotions should be minimized. I recently realized that they could be surprisingly summarized as “be a man.” Being strong, whatever your gender, was important in my family.
At 12 years old, I decided that I would never be depressed while reading the health section of one of my grandmother’s magazines. “Depression is for weak people. I am not like them. My willpower is strong.” At 14 years old, I started struggling with my mood, but aren’t teenagers supposed to feel anxious, sad, lost and negative all the time? I was functioning well after all.
This first episode resolved on its own, but bouts of depression or severe anxiety were coming back and forth. I was doing my best to handle them and pushing through. I took almost all herbal supplements on the market to reduce the intensity of my symptoms. My family helped me with this approach, which was healthier than medications. My family physician encouraged me to adopt a healthier lifestyle each time I brought up my anxiety during a visit. This reinforced my feeling that I was on my own.
During my time at university, I used painkillers and alcohol to sleep or feel better by numbing all negative emotions. I was feeling in control. Emotions were mastered. However, the episodes were more frequent and more intense. But I was still functioning. Periods of intense workload alternated with periods of low productivity. I was frustrated at not being able to reach my full potential, but at least I was maintaining the image of a hardworking woman. I should be able to do better. The only stigma I was diving consciously into was that of women in physics and academic research.
In 2019, I was 28 years old, and I had an episode more violent than the others. I could not stop the anxiety. My husband told me that we couldn’t continue like this and that I needed help. External help? This possibility did not even occur to my mind. I wanted to fix my anxiety by myself. I did not want to ruin our marriage, so I considered his suggestion. But no medical help. I was not someone taking medication. My willpower was not strong enough. I needed someone who mastered the mind. I booked an appointment with a clinical psychologist. After the first session, she told me that I suffered from depression and anxiety. Me? It was hard to hear. We worked together for 6 months. I was progressively feeling myself again without a single pill. At the end of the year, I went back to France as the best version of myself, free of all this emotional pain and with tools and a new vision of mental health and my willpower. I should be able to do better now.
End of Part One.
Stay tuned for Part Two, where Celine continues her story about living with bipolar disorder and stigma.
In order to offer you additional support, we would like to hear back from you. We’re offering a Q & A section for caregivers. If you have specific questions or inquiries about living with mental illness, please send them to support@pathwayssmi.org and we will do our best to address them in a future Notepad newsletter.