25 years old, on holiday in Melbourne, undiagnosed and experiencing my first hypomanic episode
My name is Courtney, and I have Bipolar Disorder. For 6.5 years I’ve hidden it away like it’s a dirty secret. But I’m no longer ashamed. I am who I am, and having Bipolar doesn’t change that.
Bipolar Disorder affects approximately 1% of the population, so it’s highly likely you know someone with it. Bipolar Disorder is a mood disorder that can develop at any time. I have Bipolar II disorder, which means I experience hypomanic episodes (less severe than the manic episodes experienced by people with Bipolar type I) and can experience long depressive episodes which can cause significant impairment.
I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 23 and then Bipolar type II at 25 years old, which is a common age of onset. Before then I had never struggled with my mental health. By my early twenties I had breezed through high school, moved away from home at 17, got a Bachelor of Arts degree, made lifelong friends, had a few different jobs, and met the love of my life. I had lived a happy, carefree life, privileged life; little did I know that was all about to change.
These years were a very difficult and confusing time of my life. I knew quite a lot about depression, but when I was diagnosed I was still in complete denial. Despite being prescribed anti-depressants, I was convinced the doctor had it wrong and I had chronic fatigue syndrome. When it came to Bipolar Disorder, I knew nothing about it except the one dimensional, cinematic portrayals I had seen on screen. I was totally uneducated and misinformed.
I was diagnosed with Bipolar following my first hypomanic episode. The change in me came on very quickly. One week I was normal, the next my mind was racing, I couldn’t relax, and I wasn’t sleeping. Then before I knew it I was in a full blown hypomanic state, though being undiagnosed I didn’t know what it was yet. The tipping point was when my partner (now Husband) proposed to me. In the first few months of dating I knew he was my person. I had waited 5 long years for this day. The proposal itself was absolutely perfect; the only problem was I knew with certainty he was going to do it.
I’m a very perceptive person and I don’t do well with surprises, in the sense that I’m too nosy and excitable and I have to know all the details. As a child I could never sleep before Christmas’ or Birthdays. I’m still like an excitable child when it comes to that sort of thing. My husband still reminds me of the time he threw me a surprise pool party for my birthday, and I was convinced we were going swimming with dolphins. But I digress. My husband, let’s call him J, had planned a surprise trip away for our 5 year dating anniversary. He asked me to take time off work, pack a bag with enough clothes for a long weekend, and that’s it. I pried and pried but he wouldn’t budge. My mind went into overdrive.
The week leading up to our anniversary/trip, I lay awake for half the night deciphering all the clues J had inadvertently left. My mind was thinking of every possible scenario. I was also full of creative energy, and I had an urge to write and write. By the time the trip came around, I was exhausted and a bundle of nervous excitement. We drove to our secret destination, Raglan (which was no longer a secret as J finally cracked under my constant harassment) and stayed at a beautiful accomodation on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The proposal was top of my mind, but it took 2 days of sight-seeing and holidaying until he finally popped the question. I don’t think I slept at all for those two nights, and I was barely functioning. But I was doing my best to hold it together and act normal as I couldn’t exactly let on to J the reason for my insomnia.
When he asked me to marry him, the moment actually took me by surprise. It was beautiful. I said ‘yes’ through tears of joy. I was beyond happy, but also relieved. We were going to get married! And finally I could get some sleep! However as hours passed, and we revelled in our new engagement, sipping champagne and calling all our friends and family, my tiredness lifted. I felt amazing, and high on life. I did sleep that night, but not much. I was still so excited, and now my head was full with wedding plans.
The next day, the world looked different; felt different. We went on a little walk through the bush next to our accomodation and I was totally entranced by the beauty of the scene around me. The insects, the flowers, the rosy light of the sun. I had never seen anything more beautiful. The sound of the cicadas was overwhelming. I was euphoric and floating on air.
My finance started to notice my behaviour shift. I was hyper, easily humoured overly talkative and jumping from subject to subject. A few times he told me I wasn’t making sense, and wasn’t acting like myself. I just said I was excited from the engagement, and admitted I suspected it and hadn’t been sleeping well.
It was time to go home, but we decided to call in for a night at my parent’s house to break up the trip and celebrate. I was so tired, but so excited to tell them all about it. My Mum had a really old, expensive bottle of champagne on ice and we toasted and drank into the night. I remember being in fits of laughter, and very intoxicated. The night gets a bit hazy after that. We went to bed late, and I heard noises from the garage and I was worried our dog Juno had escaped out the cat door. Sure enough, I went down to check on her and she was gone. It was about 2am, and I was in the rain walking down the street calling her name. This roused my family, and when I returned home with Juno, they were shocked to see my soaking wet in my pyjamas full of energy about my adventure. It was all a bit of a blur, but that night I had what I can only describe as a period of psychosis. I lay awake in the lounge with Juno, and I was convinced something was different about her. I felt this strange energy that my friend that had died 6 years earlier was with me. I was somehow convinced that she was my dog reincarnated. I talked to her as got chills all over my body, and whispered “Is it really you? Has it been you all along?”
The next day, I woke up after a few hours of sleep with an anxious feeling of ‘what happened last night.’ My memory was blurred, and I had flashbacks to finding my dog in the pouring rain. I asked my family if everything was okay, subtly checking in on my behaviour, and they said it was fine we all just had a bit much to drink. But I felt really weird about it all, and I still had chills from my last night’s experience.
The next day, we went to get coffee and visit my Mum’s work (a women’s fashion store) before hitting the road. My behaviour was really starting to concern my fiancé. I was talking non-stop, and in Mum’s shop I was trying on everything and in the mood to buy. We had a bit of a fight, as he was in a rush to get on the road, and I just wanted to keep shopping. I popped to the cafe next door to get us coffee, and returned with a $100 painting that I bought with engagement present money from my Uncle that I hadn’t even told J about yet. That was the final straw. He told me in front of my Mum that my behaviour was really out of character, and he didn’t know what to do. Mum agreed that I didn’t quite seem like my normal self, but she had only seen me for one night. J had to get back to work, and I was in no rush to get back, so we agreed that I would stay on for a few extra days.
I was aware of how different I was feeling, but because I felt great (ultra energetic, happy, sociable, productive, and exorbitantly confident) I didn’t understand why my loved ones were concerned. I liked these new characteristics. I had always been a self-conscious person, so it felt like I was a new improved version of myself. I would lie awake at night and think about all my untapped potential; I wanted to publish a book, learn snowboarding, get fit and enter some sort of bodybuilding competition. And everything I dreamed about, I truely thought I could achieve. For me, it felt like I had tapped into an unconscious part of the brain that most people don’t know how to access. For my friends and family, their concern was growing about my uncharacteristic behaviour and that fact that I never seemed to stop. I was sure my depression had been cured for good and I was experiencing some sort of spiritual enlightenment.
The night J left, and things felt a bit tense between us, I lay awake and convinced myself him leaving was all part of an elaborate cover up for some huge engagement gift/surprise. I convinced myself my parent’s were in on it too. I went into their room in the middle of the night, and loudly woke them up to tell them I was on to them. Mum was less than impressed. Dad was obviously concerned, and followed me to my room to hear me out. I explained that J had gone to pick up a luxury camper van that he had bought for us, and was driving it back right now to surprise me. It was something we had talked about briefly in the past, travelling around the country like nomads, but it was merely a fleeting idea. But I truely believed he was going to pull down our driveway any minute, lights flashing and horn hooting. I kept pulling back the curtains, as Dad tried to reassure me there was no secret plan and my idea was ridiculous. Eventually he jumped in and top-and-tailed with me to calm me down and try to get me to sleep, but I wasn’t convinced that they weren’t all in on something.
The next day, my parents made me go to their family doctor. She had been my GP since I was little. I tried convincing them that I didn’t need to go; my natural instinct was to dismiss people’s concern, because I wasn’t concerned. I felt great. My Mum sat in on the appointment, vouching for my strange behaviour. I under-exaggerated my sleeping problems, and consciously slowed my talking down and calmed my enthusiasm. I must have told the doctor I was fine probably 50 times, just excited from the engagement. She eventually reached the conclusion that I was having a ‘mental break’; just a small blip, and it was nothing to be concerned about.
My parents and Jonno weren’t convinced, and decided I should stay a bit longer. I called my boss to explain I wouldn’t be back at work on Monday, but it came out all wrong. I gleefully announced my engagement as though that was a reason in itself, thinking he would be thrilled for me, and he instantly turned dark and started to raise his voice at me. I didn’t understand, and freaked out, and Dad who heard the conversation unfold had to take the phone off me and explain that I was going through something and I needed to be home right now. Good old Dad keeping it vague. My parents also had to intervene when people started to notice my strange behaviour on social media. I was posting weird, spiritual things in the middle of the night, and planning social catch ups with people I hadn’t seen in years. I would often wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning feeling like I was fully refreshed, and headed downstairs with my phone to start the day. My friends started to tell me some of my posts were out of character, and when my parents cottoned on they decided to loving take my phone off me at night, which in hindsight I am grateful for. Part of me was slightly embarrassed with everyone’s concern, but I truely couldn’t see what the problem was. I was happy, which as a sufferer of depression was not always the case for me, so why couldn’t they just be happy for my newfound happiness?
After a few days of staying with my parents, my lack-of-sleeping started to get the better of me. I was so tired from sleep deprivation that I couldn’t function properly, but so wired by hypomania that I just couldn’t rest or sleep. My energy would come in waves, but at times I felt like a drunk zombie. Eventually I got prescribed sleeping pills which helped me get to sleep and stay asleep a few hours longer, but my elevated behaviour continued. I turned everyday things into a party. I went to do a supermarket shop with Mum, and was singing and dancing around Countdown, filming myself on Snapchat (a big thing at the time) and talking to every stranger that so much as looked at me. I would never be caught dead doing this normally. The security guard came and stood near me with a watchful eye at the checkout, as quite frankly it probably looked like I was as high on drugs, and I thought it was all a big joke. Although I was not myself, and my family was rightfully concerned, I was funny and charismatic and I could still make them laugh. None of us knew what on earth was going on.
As I started to get better sleep (still a max of 5-6 hours a night, but nobody knew that), I decided it was time to go home and get back to my new fiancé. I booked my flight and was so excited to see him. Unfortunately, his life was continuing as normal and I was still experiencing a whole other level of euphoric ecstasy. As much as he told me I wasn’t acting like myself, I denied it, and we argued constantly. It wasn’t the post engagement bliss we had both hoped for.
My hypomania continued months, putting strain on all of my important relationships. But it was particularly hard on J, who had to live with this supercharged version of me for months, telling me I wasn’t acting like myself until he was blue in the face; but I wasn’t listening. Meanwhile I was having the most fun I’d had in my life. I managed to go to work and smooth things over, and tone down my behaviour as much as I could. At the end of the day, I was still full of energy and squeezing in as much extra activity as I could into my day.
At home I was drinking wine every night, and instead of hanging out with J and relaxing and watching TV like we normally would, I would rather go out and socialise. I had a lot to say, and I really struggled to sit still. Because we lived at the camping ground that J was managing, I only had to walk over to people’s caravans where they were always happy to socialise. I befriended some new neighbours, a lovely same-sex couple who came up to stay regularly, and would arrive at their caravan unannounced with a glass (or bottle) of wine quite. They seemed to enjoy my company, and I talked their ear off for an hour or 2 before I reluctantly heading home. In hindsight, I’m embarrassed that they regularly saw this version of me. I didn’t want this space between my fiancé and I, but I was tired of the conflict and being called out for my seemingly harmless behaviour.
My hypomania continued for 3 or 4 months. I had developed a love for opshopping and was constantly buying trinkets and antiques that I thought were beautiful. I collected so much stuff that I turned one of our spare rooms into a museum of goods that some would deem as junk. I was crafting constantly in the evenings, undertaking huge mosaic projects that I still have now. I had plans to open a shop, and even looked at a few premises and started building a website but my plans never eventuated.
We went to Melbourne on a holiday and caught up with some friends over there. Things had calmed down a bit now, but as soon as alcohol got involved I was back to playing the goat. One night I was meeting J’s friends for the first time, and after a night of cocktails and wine over dinner and at the casino, I was loud, outspoken and unhinged. I remember J having words to me but I thought I was the life of the party. I also remember being quite reckless. One night I couldn’t find a lighter, so I lit my cigarette on the gas stove, returning home a few hours later to find the gas still on. But I just didn’t mention it and moved on; it was no big deal to me.
My sleeping, or lack-thereof, was still an issue. Eventually, my tank started to run out of fuel. I was physically exhausted – I just don’t think my body could keep up with my mind any longer. I gradually started coming back down to earth. I remember one day my fiancé calling out something I’d done one day, and something clicked in my brain, and I actually heard him. I got this unforgettable pang in my stomach as I looked back on the last few months, and suddenly saw everything he’d been talking about. I had been acting really strange. I had been embarrassing myself, and him, and my family. As the reality and sunk in, I sunk deeper and deeper into my shame and remorse. What was wrong with me!? I sobbed “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I can’t remember how long after my hypomanic episode I got my diagnosis, but I don’t think it was immediately. It all a bit blurry, but I feel like I spiralled into a depressive episode which led me to get back in touch with my psychiatrist. What I do remember is the appointment. I talked him through the months of out-of-character behaviour, even the parts that caused me deep shame. I knew something was wrong with me, but the word Bipolar had never crossed my radar. After lots of talking and questions, he told me he thought I had Bipolar Type 2, and informed in all about hypomanic episodes. Everything he said I could relate to. It all made sense. I was relieved to get a name for the months that I had been calling to myself and my fiance and family ‘that time I went a bit crazy’. But my diagnosis didn’t alleviate the deep shame I was still feeling. I only told 4 people about my Bipolar; My fiancé, my parents, and my sister. I thought I would never tell anyone else. To those that were witness to my episode, I did damage control where I could, and continued on as normal like nothing had ever happened.
I went on Lithium, a mood stabiliser, and since then I have never had a hypomanic episode even close to the scale as that one. It also helped to manage my depression, keeping it at bay for longer periods of time and making the episodes less severe. It wasn’t until I came off the Lithium to conceive and carry my son that I have experienced another hypomanic episode, and again when I came off it to try for another baby. I have since found a mood stabiliser that is safe with pregnancy, and so far it is working well. I hope to have another baby again in the near future, but it is really daunting with my condition, and timing is critical.
Until recently, my Bipolar Disorder has been a part of me I tried so hard to repress. I buried my shame from that hypomanic episode, but memories and episodes would still intrude on my life and remind me that my mind has the power to play tricks on me. Since starting my Instagram page @mentalhealthmama_nz, I have been sharing parts of my story, and reading so many others’. The Bipolar/mental health community I have found on Instagram has honestly changed my life. I no longer live in shame, because my experience is not unique. There are different types of Bipolar Disorder and no two people’s experiences are the same, but reading and hearing other’s stories and feelings are so relatable. I have wanted to write my story for years, but every time I’ve started I haven’t been able to follow it through. But I’m ready now.
I may only be followed by about 10 people I know in real life, but that’s a huge step after 6.5 years of hiding it away. Maybe one day I’ll wear my Bipolar out and proud, but for now I’m proud of my progress. Living with Bipolar is incredibly hard, and no-one should ever go through it alone. I no longer feel alone.
While my road has not been easy, and because of this life-long condition I’m sure it won’t be all smooth-sailing from here, I am stronger than ever before and I have the tools and experience to get through whatever life throws at me. Despite my disorder, I am grateful for my blessings and the life I have. And at least it makes for an interesting story.
