For those of you that don’t know, I created this digital magazine after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, when I was 21 years old. I’m now 36 and all this journey down the line have taught me to stay humble, work in silence, connected with my true self and whole. Easier said than done right?
I developed breathing problems during the pandemic (I have a deviated septum on my nose and sinusitis and rhinitis is basically my modus operandis). When you mix severe anxiety with bipolar you are leaning into a cocktail of problems: in your discourse when you’re about to be hospitalised and your broader well-being when you’re already discharged.
As for me, I’ve been on a mental yard three times in my life and I was five weeks on the last one (spending there Christmas and New Year’s Eve). I won’t play the victim card because I know it was my fault and what put me there in the first place.
Lately, I do mental evaluations regularly, as my process belongs now to the Court, attached to the Law of Mental Disease, here in Portugal. It’s exhausting to feel examined as thoroughly and sometimes, I dare to say, in a way that makes you feel completely powerless.
I’ve had post traumatic stress disorder, phobias and panic attacks lately that I’ve yet to address in a proper setting, in a psychiatry appointment.
It’s just harsh mentally to receive letters with people’s perceptions of you, no matter how accurate they may be. It comes to me the book “The four agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and it makes me find some peace within myself when he writes “Never take rushed conclusions” and “Don’t take anything personally”.
No matter how unconfortable I may feel, how sorry, how ashamed, I know I have the power inside of me to make a change and that is nourishing to me and to my soul.
Paula Gouveia
Foto de Ahmad Odeh na Unsplash