Tina's Story
Hi, my name is Tina and I'm bipolar. Some people don't like it expressed that way. People have suggested to me that to say 'I am bipolar' suggests that I am my mental health condition, but I don't see it that way. Yes, it is part of me, but it's not the whole, and at the end of the day it's just an expression. I've been diagnosed with bipolar for about 14 years. I was a medical student at the time, and had suffered from serious bouts of depression without anyone realising that's what it was but as soon as I started to get high everyone noticed.
I subsequently spent periods in hospital for mania and eventually dropped out of medical school for a variety of reasons. In my experience medical school is not particularly supportive of it's own getting ill, particularly with a stigmatising mental health condition. This is why the work of MDF The BiPolar Organisation is so important in getting rid of these stigmas. After all it's just a health condition.
I heard about MDF and that there was a local self help group, but I was dubious about attending at first, and I didn't really have much information about it. Much later I heard more about MDF The BiPolar Organisation and the Self-Management Training Courses they ran. I also started attending a local self help group. At the time MDF had just run out of a large amount of sponsorship money they had been given to run several of these SMT courses. Places were limited and much sought after, but MDF have since managed to enable local self help groups to fund these courses, and last year I managed to get a place on one.
It costs £350 to provide life-changing self-management training for someone with bipolar disorder. We appreciate that you may be on a low income and not in a position to to make a gift, but any donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated and put to good use.
I thoroughly enjoyed doing the course. Receiving the letter that we had to write to ourselves at the end of the training and that was sent out 3 months later, was a very positive experience for me. The course doesn't provide all the answers, (nothing does!!), but it gave me some great tips and lots of useful ideas and pointers. A great thing about the course is that we all bring to it our own experience of living with the condition. I don't consciously follow all the things that I have learnt from the course but from time to time I will catch myself doing something or thinking in a particular way and realise this is something I picked up from self-management training.
Attending the self help group has also been a real eye opener. For a start it's a space where one doesn't feel the need to be ashamed (of the condition) and partly because of that, it's a space where we can explore the condition and ironically be reminded that everything isn't bipolar.
All of this would not be possible without the organisation itself. It has helped set up and support the groups, it has got funding for and helped the groups get funding for the SMT courses and helped bring a greater awareness of bipolar - helping to reduce the stigma attached to the condition. They say it's the condition of genii. Well that doesn't mean that everyone with the condition is a genius! But it's nice to know it doesn't stop you, and it doesn't. Yes, living with the condition can necessitate making changes to one's life. I don't overfill my life, I can't afford to (health wise) but it has made me a more compassionate person. At the end of the day we all have our foibles; what we can stand, what we can't, and yes, I have mine & I am happy to live with them.
It costs £350 to provide life-changing self-management training for someone with bipolar disorder. We appreciate that you may be on a low income and not in a position to to make a gift, but any donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated and put to good use.
