Why Storytelling Slays Stigma: Kicking Off Mental Health Awareness Month

Today is May 1st. The first day of Mental Health Awareness Month. And the start of a month I am taking very seriously on Bipolar Brought Balance.

For the next 31 days, I am producing more content than I ever have. Some of it is bipolar disorder specific. Some of it is about ADHD. Some of it is about people who have been impacted by suicide. Some of it is in-person, like the unboxing I'm doing with a creator who lives with ADHD and invented high-frequency headphones built for neurodivergent brains. I am leaning all the way in this month, because Mental Health Awareness Month is not a graphic. It is an opportunity.

And the opportunity I keep coming back to is this one: stigma reduction is best done through storytelling.

Mental Health Education Was Not Built For Most Of Us

I am a millennial. When I was growing up in school, we did not learn about mental health. I had a lot of things to be anxious about or stressed about, but I had no verbiage for any of it. No words to describe what I was feeling. Because no one was talking about it.

A lot of that is due to stigma. A lot of it is due to a lack of awareness and education. The internet has shifted some of that. Conversations have been normalized a little. But stigma still exists, and a lot of people still believe that something is wrong with them or that they need to be separated from society if they are struggling.

That belief is the thing storytelling can dismantle.

Why I Started Sharing

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in my late 20s. I never knowingly dealt with mental health challenges before that. I played sports. I played instruments. I did well in school. I got a double major in four years at UW Madison. Worked professionally in Madison and San Francisco before coming back to Milwaukee. Looking back now, I can see periods when I was probably hypomanic or even manic. But I had no awareness or knowledge for what to be looking for at the time.

When my episode and diagnosis came, I was a fully developed adult. I had built credibility at my job. I had built an identity I was proud of. The diagnosis did not limit what I felt was possible for my life.

If I had been diagnosed in my teen years, I might not have believed I could achieve as much as I had already achieved by the time I knew what was happening. That is one of my privileges.

I also had the privilege of great insurance. I was in inpatient treatment for six days. I did about seven weeks of outpatient treatment full-time, Monday through Friday. I saw people in those same programs get turned out after a couple of days or a week or two because their insurance said that was plenty.

I worked at a company that empowered me. They wanted to support me and elevate me, and I knew being open would not decrease my opportunities.

Those privileges, all of them, are why I started sharing. At the one-year mark of my hospitalization, I launched Bipolar Brought Balance. It started as this blog and an Instagram handle. Now it also includes a YouTube channel, and a community.

You Do Not Have To Share Publicly

I want to be very clear about this. I do not believe everyone needs to be open about their diagnosis. For some people, sharing will not make you feel better or more supported. Especially in the workplace. Especially in certain family or community contexts. Sharing has to be what is right for you.

But sharing does not have to mean posting online. Sharing can be telling one friend. One family member. One coworker you trust. One person in a local group going through something similar.

Each time I have shared in the past seven years, I have connected with someone else who needed it. Someone with their own diagnosis. Someone supporting a loved one. Every one of those conversations made me feel a little less alone, and reminded me how many people need support.

One in Five

The statistic I keep coming back to is one in five. Roughly one in five Americans is impacted by a mental health diagnosis, either their own or someone they love. Which means a lot of the people you work with, live with, walk past, are carrying something you do not know about.

Stigma breaks down when we say it out loud. Bipolar disorder doesn't just look one way. Depression doesn't either. This is my experience. This is my journey.

When I do lived experience presentations, like police de-escalation training with first responders, I tell the story of the night I was hospitalized. I had to be strapped down to a hospital bed and sedated. When my parents arrived after my partner called them, I was naked, pacing around my apartment in full mania and psychosis, saying I just needed to shower and sleep.

When officers see me at training, engaging, presenting, doing talkbacks, and then I tell them that is what I looked like that night, something shifts. The next time they go on a call, they remember that the way they are seeing that person right now is not the full embodiment of who they always are as a person.

We should not pass judgment about what led to an episode. We should be helping the person through it.

Episodes Are Not Always Triggered By Bad Things

Something I want to keep saying because it surprised me is this: happy life events can trigger mental health episodes too.

When I got engaged, I was so excited that my sleep started to decrease. I was up late messaging everyone, celebrating. After two days, I realized I needed a little more medication to bring myself into a more balanced state and protect my sleep. If I hadn't been paying attention, if I hadn't had the awareness or the tools, I could have tipped into full mania from a beautiful life moment.

I took the same approach planning our wedding. I had support from my partner, my family, my treatment team. The big and potentially expensive life event did not cause an episode, because I had access to resources and I knew to use them.

That is what we need to normalize. People living with mental health conditions sometimes need support to stay well. That is not who they are all the time. That is what well looks like for them.

What This Month Is About

If you are comfortable sharing, share. With one person, in one conversation. Online if that is your thing. Quietly if it is not.

Seek out education about your own diagnosis or one someone in your life is navigating. Mental Health America and NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, are vetted organizations with science-backed information. First-hand accounts, including this channel, can give you the embodied side of what a diagnosis actually looks like in a real life.

The more we learn about mental health and the more we normalize the realities of it, the less stigma there is. Less stigma means more support for everyone.

If there is something you want me to cover this month, comment on the episode or email me at emily@bipolarbroughtbalance.com.

Guest ideas for Success, Rewritten can go to emily@successrewrittenshow.com.

Get good sleep. Get yourself a sweet treat. Whatever you need to do to feel a little bit of joy today, go do it.