I’ve always felt like I was living two lives. On the outside, I seemed okay, but inside, I struggled to understand my own mind. I’d feel deeply depressed, then months later feel like the happiest person in the world. I couldn’t explain what I was going through, and I felt alone with my thoughts.
In 2020, I experienced psychosis for the first time. I was terrified. I didn’t understand what was happening to me or why my own mind suddenly felt so unfamiliar. I spent a week in a mental health hospital, where I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Accepting that I had bipolar disorder was hard. Even with a diagnosis, I didn’t change anything about how I was living. I didn’t want anyone to know I was struggling mentally, and I didn’t want a label to define who I was. I kept it to myself, afraid of the stigma and how people might see me differently. I finally had an explanation for what I was experiencing, but I still felt alone.
For the next three years, I tried different medications, hoping to feel stable without losing my spark. I wanted to get better, but I also wanted to feel like myself. After so many changes and difficult side effects, I grew frustrated and stopped taking my medication.
Soon after, in 2023, I experienced psychosis again and spent another week in a mental health hospital. This time, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. After I got out, it took another year of switching medications before I finally found one that worked for me. Hallelujah!
Finding the right medication brought relief, but accepting that I needed it was still hard. I struggled with stopping my meds and falling back into psychosis. Those experiences helped me understand how important medication was for my stability, even when that was a hard pill to swallow.
For five years, I kept most of what I was going through to myself. Only my husband and family knew. Even with their support, I felt so alone, like nobody else in the world could understand what I was feeling or what I’d been through.
Bipolar Life began as a cry for help.
In January 2025, I started posting on TikTok because I felt alone. I couldn’t imagine that anyone truly understood what I was going through. So I began sharing my thoughts and talking about the parts of my life I had struggled to explain.
Then people started telling me they understood. They had felt it, too. The things I thought made me impossible to relate to were the very things connecting me to other people.
For the first time, I felt seen. I found a community. And I realized I wasn’t the only person out here trying to make sense of all of this.
Living with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, and going through psychosis, is still a journey. Community doesn’t take away every difficult day, but being understood makes those days feel less lonely.
That is why Bipolar Life exists. Because I needed to hear “you are not alone”—and now I want you to hear it, too.
Find your community →
