Post-Psychiatric Diagnosis Depression

Getting diagnosed is an important step, but definitely not the end of the road.

By: Srihita Raju

I don’t remember exactly when it started, but it was probably around the beginning of sophomore year of high school. Something shifted in me, and everything felt euphoric. The bad in life felt lighter, and the good was heightened. Everyone I talked to, everything I did, I loved. For the first time in my entire life, I loved being in my own skin.

This shift was felt by the people around me too. I was a bubbly social butterfly who talked a mile a minute, when just a semester before I was shy and, at times, a little cold. My parents noticed that I had become more active at school, especially since I couldn’t drive yet and they had to pick me up every day after my clubs were done. Though my friends could sometimes hardly get a word in, they laughed at the dumb impulsive things that I would say and do. 

No one, especially me, thought that anything was wrong. I think we all just thought that I was growing up. At least that’s what I thought. I remember thinking, “This must be what it’s like to be a high schooler,” and thinking that I’d feel this way the rest of my life. What I didn’t know at the time was that the feeling, the euphoric high, would only last for about six months. 

Much to my joy, it would come back once or twice during my junior year. But this time it was bookended by something new. A new type of low, a low that made me feel like I was wading through water. I had never felt anything like it before, because it wasn’t sadness. It was something closer to indifference. Despite this new heavy feeling, it was manageable and never felt disruptful so I didn’t think much of it. Again, I thought that this was just a part of becoming an adult. Plus, the lows were rare, and almost always accompanied by the highs. Most of my days were a normal balance in the middle, so I thought that it was fine.

Senior year was when I began to get more worried. The lows started to feel lower, and the highs were few and far apart. The drop from being in a high to being in a low was disorienting. 

My senior year English teacher had us do a weekly assignment where we’d write a journal entry based on a prompt related to the book we were reading. Sometimes, instead of being related to class, the prompt would ask us about how we were doing. Most of these journal entries were just between us and her, and being an already open (maybe oversharing) person, I was honest.

I’d write about how I didn’t feel like one person, how sometimes my brain would “split,” and I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what I meant by “split.” I just knew the word felt right.

Outside of these journals, I kept these feelings mostly to myself. Occasionally I tried to talk about it with my friends, but I could never get the words out. It wasn’t because I was worried what they’d think or that I was scared. I just had no idea what I was trying to say. 

The last day of the semester, after most of my English class had filtered out the door, my teacher stopped me, put her hands on my shoulders, and brought me in closer so no one else would hear. She said, “I thought about what you wrote in your journals every night, and I know that whatever this is, you’ll figure it out soon. Be strong.” That was when I realized I had a bigger problem on my hands than just being moody sometimes. I never thought too deeply about the things I wrote in my English journals. I just wrote what I was feeling. Hearing my teacher’s simultaneous hope and worry for me validated all my feelings.

Still, it was a busy time at school and in my life, so I put off thinking about it. Then the pandemic hit. My rollercoaster of emotions began growing deeper falls, building higher slopes, and increasing speed as the months dragged on. I grew more distant from everyone in my life, and my friends weren’t sure how to act around me. I lost interest in all of my hobbies. And at other times, I became so obsessed with my ideas and goals I forgot about everything else, including eating or sleeping. Things were the worst in January. Looking back, I can’t actually remember what I did that month, but if I really concentrate I can recall some of the feelings. The chill hollowness, the pounding headaches, the near constant choke that at any moment threatened to unwind and force all my awful thoughts and feelings to crawl out of me. Looking back, I can’t help but feel a little frustrated with myself for letting it get that bad before actually doing something about it.

I began to see a therapist in February, and I remember that when I told my friends and family, everyone was excited for me. Even my parents, who didn’t completely understand my mental health issues, were happy to hear that something seemed to be helping. I knew that it could only get better from there.

After my first couple of sessions, my therapist suspected that I had some type of mood disorder and guessed that it was likely bipolar type two. This wasn’t much of a shock to me. Self diagnosing mental health can be dangerous and counterintuitive, but I knew what the symptoms were for bipolar type two and felt that they aligned with what I was experiencing 

My therapist referred me to a psychiatric clinic around March, and I set up an appointment for May 28th to get tested. In the days leading up to the appointment, I remember looking forward to it. Having a professional put a name to the ghosts living inside my brain for years would be so validating. Everything would become so much more clear, and I’d be able to get back to my life.

The morning of the appointment, I woke up extra early, put on my comfort sweatshirt, got my comfort coffee order, and drove to St. Paul while listening to my comfort podcast. I needed all the emotional support I could get. 

The tests were a series of cognitive exercises followed by a questionnaire about my behavior. Although I was anxious the entire time, I felt comfortable enough to be honest with my psychiatrist about everything I was experiencing. Before I knew it, we were finished. He stepped out of his office for about 20 minutes to retrieve the printouts of my report and go over my results. These twenty minutes were the most nerve wracking for me. I felt like I was at a turning point in my life. Everything before that moment was over, and now I was on to brighter days, and an easier life. I felt proud of myself; I knew that diagnosis was a big step, and I had done it. At the time, I thought the hardest part was over. 

When he walked back into his office, he told me that the results indicated that I had bipolar type two. For the rest of our appointment, he walked me through what that meant and what my next steps should be. We wrapped up the appointment and I walked out of the clinic, got in my car, drove home, and got in bed. I stayed there for the next three days.

I wasn’t expecting to feel worse than I did before the appointment, but I felt strangled, empty, and hopeless. I didn’t want to eat or sleep or read or go outside or talk to anyone. For the rest of the day after my diagnosis I was getting texts and phone calls asking about how it had gone. I told them the diagnosis. They told me how happy they were that I now knew what my issue was and said that they were there for me if I needed them. I told them how much I appreciated it. Then I crawled back into bed and cried until there was nothing left. But I wasn’t crying because I felt sad. I wasn’t sure how I felt. Lost was the only word that felt right. All my friends were supportive, but it wasn’t enough. I needed answers to questions I hadn’t thought of yet. I had no idea what having bipolar type two meant for my future. I was in a depression like nothing I had ever experienced. If every low I had before was painful and stormy and filled with dark thoughts, this was dry and overcast and foggy.

Up until I left my psychiatrist’s office, I thought diagnosis was my end goal, the moment that I needed to fix my life. And of course, it was important, but no one told me about how many more questions and mysteries pop up once you hear the name of the ghosts in your head. 

Having nowhere to turn to, I went online. I can’t remember how, but I ended up finding the bipolar2 subreddit, and after leafing through a few posts, I decided that I may as well post my own. I asked for advice because I didn’t understand why I was feeling this way. I mentioned how I had never felt this way before, even during my worst depression. Everything just felt so different now that I was diagnosed, so I asked if anyone else had felt that way when they got diagnosed and what to do about it.

Within a couple of minutes, I got two responses. I wasn’t expecting much, maybe some empty advice, or maybe some weird reddit spam stuff. But instead, I got advice from two strangers that completely shifted my thinking.

They both said roughly the same thing: that this weird new feeling was grief. Grief for what you thought your future would be. Grief for knowing that this will never go away. It feels so weird and new because while the “black dog” of depression is familiar, the “gray dog” of grief can be disorienting. Grief for the way that you used to view yourself, knowing you’ll never go back to it.

For anyone who is left feeling lost during their mental health journey, I’ll end with what I would say to myself the morning of my diagnosis and what I try to remember now. You’re going to have moments that feel disorienting, days that melt into each other, like they’re running on a track that is separate from your own sense of time. There are going to be thoughts that cause you to unravel, headaches so painful that it feels like someone forced a screwdriver into your forehead and is attempting to split your brain in half, wrenching it back and forth. There are going to be nights you can’t sleep and mornings you can’t get out of bed. Sometimes you’ll be too hypomanic to get anything done or you’ll impulsively do something so stupid that you’ll have to spend all your remaining energy fixing it once you’re back to normal. Sometimes you’ll feel so alone and so small that you wonder if anyone would notice if you got sucked into the ground and buried beneath the earth. But you’re also going to have amazing days. You’re going to have days that make you forget all the bad ones. You’ll have friends who’ll hold you during your bad nights and who’ll make your stomach hurt from laughing too hard the next day. You’re going to learn things and create things that make you feel so lucky to be in your skin, that make you so proud of who you are.

Your life may be different than you imagined, but of course it will be. We never know what is coming our way, especially when it comes to our mental health. So just remember to enjoy and cherish the good and take care of yourself during the bad. Take your treatments seriously and learn to lean on your community when you need to. The ghosts in your head will always be there, but they were there before you could shine a light on them. But most importantly, they’re not you. They are something you’ll have to spend the rest of your life dealing with, but they aren’t you. There’s a quote from Matt Haig, one of my favorite authors, that I keep thinking about: “Mental health problems don't define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and you feel the rain, but, importantly, YOU ARE NOT THE RAIN.” 

Mental health is not something that should define us, but it is something that we need to take the time to understand. It is okay to give yourself time to grieve. And once you are able to, find what works for you and keep going.