Sleep, Seinfeld & Steady Friends: How I Survive

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month (existing since 1949!!), I sit down with Ava to talk about how to talk to friends and relatives about mental illness.

Ava has had her own mental health journey, particularly with her father who witnessed a genocide at age six. With signs of a soul in agony, she has yet to engage him in a conversation about his mental health and deep pain.

When it comes to finding therapy and support--yes, the times are actually changing--but most people living with illness must navigate the complicated decision to disclose one's diagnosis, with whom, and how much detail to provide. 

As host of Bipolar She, there's no more hiding my diagnosis. Perhaps there will be judgement. But one place I've found support is through friends that have treated me on good days and bad with simple acts of kindness. Sharing an article they read as a way to connect to my experiences. Or being a steady support, taking life moment to moment, while my manic mind was not my own. Compassion is often the best medicine.

Whether you're living with mental health challenges or supporting someone who is, this episode offers practical insight into creating spaces where healing becomes possible through speaking our truths. Ready to break the silence around mental health? Join Ava and me for this chat.

Transcript

Introduction and Mental Health Month

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Bipolar she. I'm your host, janine Noel. Before we get started, the content of this show does include suicide and suicidal ideation. If you are ever in need of immediate support, please dial 988-SUICIDE-AND-CRISIS-LIFELINE. I believe in the healing power of writing and speaking our mental health stories and all their raw details. So let's go.

Speaker 1 0:31

This episode is brought to you by the Soar with Tapping app, created by expert EFT coach and friend of the show, amy Vinsa. If you're navigating anxiety, trauma or just trying to feel more grounded, tapping is a powerful, science-backed tool that can help calm your nervous system and gently release the emotional weight you've been carrying. Amy's guided sessions in the app make it very simple to start healing right from your phone. Visit the Soar with Tapping app in Apple or Google Play stores and start your journey towards freedom. Episode. I was kind of in a little bit of a dark place and thankfully I talked to you and was able to loop you in here and have some help. Yeah, you have come to help. Thank you Absolutely. Well, I thought I definitely needed to acknowledge that it's Mental Health Awareness Month right now.

Speaker 1 1:45

Woo-hoo, woohoo. I think I may have noticed it last year when the podcast was just starting, but it's certainly something I haven't really thought about. But I was looking it up and it started in 1949.

Speaker 2 2:03

That is shocking. I would have guessed it would have just been in the last 10 or 20 years.

Speaker 1 2:08

Yeah, I don't think they accomplished very much.

Speaker 2 2:11

Well, we're going to focus on this.

Speaker 1 2:13

Yeah, so I thought we would just do a really simple episode because I think sometimes my episodes were quite heavy and big stories to tell and I think sometimes just getting into the dailiness of having a mental health issue I think is important Just how we get through the day, right, Well, that makes me think of a question for you.

Speaker 2 2:43

What are some things that you do on a day-to-day basis that help you stay mentally healthy? Things, maybe, that you didn't do when you were younger about the medications and bedtime.

Speaker 1 3:07

I mean that's kind of where the production is for me, like right now I have to take a medication at 8.30 and then 9.15 and then 9.35. So I have this complete ramp up to bedtime. So I didn't have to do that when I was younger, I didn't have Got it up in the evening. When I have to do this, like this med ritual, right, and then I kind of sense it Am I going to fall asleep easily? What's going to happen? Like I just there's a lot of anticipation around, will I fall asleep or not?

Daily Medication and Sleep Routines

Speaker 2 3:57

So my awareness is really heightened between like eight and midnight is really heightened between like eight and midnight, and what are other things that you've learned to do over the years to optimize your sleep? It's very critical for all of us to get a good night's sleep, but I would imagine particularly for you and for anyone else dealing with a mental health illness, we need to optimize the time that our brain gets to rest.

Speaker 1 4:27

Yeah, absolutely, exercise is great. But even if I run many, many miles and feel very fatigued, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to pass out at night. So pushing your body is one thing that is helpful, but it's not always successful, you know. Stopping caffeine early, that's another one. Actually it's not that early, at about 11, I shut off caffeine Walks with my dogs. I find that very meditative.

Speaker 2 4:58

Do you shut off screens at a certain time?

Speaker 1 5:01

No, no. I have this really weird habit at night that helps me fall asleep. I watch Seinfeld. I watch Seinfeld reruns. That's awesome. I just watch them over and over. I go from season one through season nine and then I just like loop them over. Yeah, that's really comforting to me.

Speaker 2 5:24

Yes, it's got to be a nice distraction from any other things that are in your head to have a good laugh, yeah, with old friends.

Speaker 1 5:33

With old friends. I know I'm not supposed to have screens on, but my doctor was like hey, I have patients that fall asleep with the TV on, so it's different for everyone.

Speaker 2 5:44

Well, in the name of Mental Health Awareness Month, how often do you find that you share with people that you need to take medicines at this time? Like, how much of that personal information would you share if, say, you met somebody new and they said, hey, let's, let's go out tonight? Like, do you, would you avoid that situation or do you share with that person? How do you approach it?

Speaker 1 6:16

okay, I guess I did like hotline dating or whatever bumble and all that shit, like a couple years ago, and I think I tried to fake it you know what I mean and say like I'm an early person and meaning like, right, I want to go home at 11 or something, you know, and I think I did fake it, but it was so not worth. The men that I met during it Got it. The men that I met during it Got it. Even recently it was Easter and I was on this new medication and, like my sister's, like how are you? And I'm like I'm really tired. I'm on a new medication and I share that with my family. I'm probably going to be more quiet than I normally am.

Speaker 2 7:09

So they know what to expect from you. Is that what you mean? The medicine was going to make you a little bit more quiet.

Speaker 1 7:16

Yeah, but that's probably not a good example. Stuff with my family is not a very good example.

Sharing Mental Health with Others

Speaker 2 7:22

Well, it's not a bad example either, because I'm sure not everyone wants to share everything with their family either, for whatever reason fear of judgment, you don't want to answer questions that are going to come up, so I don't think that's a bad example. It's hard to share some of that stuff, depending on who you're sharing it with.

Speaker 1 7:42

Yeah, I think it is really hard. I do this podcast and I feel like, well, there's no disclosing this anymore, right, right, it's me in a picture up there saying, hey, I'm bipolar. But then I talk to a lot of people who do not disclose to their employer, do not tell others. I think that's actually more common than this. So to be reminded that people are pretty quiet about this and that families and friends don't really want to talk about this is important for me to remember.

Speaker 2 8:22

Right, and have you felt that there's been an evolution in your own family? Has there been an increase in the comfort level of talking about this stuff? Because I can speak from my own experience of having a sister with bipolar disorder and having a father with significant depression, which he's had for as long as I can remember and I'm in my late 50s, and I'm in my late 50s. My sister we've only known maybe for the last five, six years, and I've had a son who struggled with depression and in terms of my father, it was nothing that we ever discussed. Like I knew as a kid something wasn't right, but my parents never sat me down and said you know, dad's got depression and he's trying to get help.

Speaker 2 9:23

It just was never a topic of discussion. He's never wanted anyone in his extended family to know, even though there have been times when he's been obviously depressed. Anybody with functioning eyeballs would be able to see that this person is suffering emotionally, but he's never wanted to talk about it and that has never helped. It's never helped him get better. It's never helped increase anyone's awareness, and so I feel very strongly about not hiding it, at least, certainly within a family where it should be a safe place? I don't think, but it's not something that we comfortably talk about in my family. And I'm just curious since you've dealt with your diagnosis for a few decades now, do you feel that it's something that, within your family, it's gotten easier to talk about?

Family Communication and Trauma

Speaker 1 10:55

or it's still hard. I think it's probably better in my family if it's just not talked about still Right.

Speaker 2 11:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:07

It's tough. Yeah, I mean, I'll hear that my sister listened to a podcast. My mom will ask me questions about one, but that's really as far as it goes. But then again, what would the conversations be right Like? What would we be talking to our families about?

Speaker 2 11:28

I suppose with my father. I would want to talk about an experience he had in childhood that was incredibly traumatic in 1947, in which people in Pakistan who were not Muslims were forced to move to India and the Muslims in India were pushed into Pakistan. There were 8 million people that migrated at that time and there were at least half a million to a million people who were murdered and killed during that process. And so my dad, as a little six, six-year-old, saw I don't know exactly what he saw, but from what I understand he saw dead bodies. I mean, it's horror, right, it's to see a genocide, and it's nothing that he's ever talked about. He doesn't want to talk about it. But I think that suffering these profound traumatic experiences has to unlock something in a person that will then make it make them more likely to suffer with mental health disorders, and he never wants to talk about it. He doesn't want to see a therapist. I think that it just continues that whole idea of we're not going to talk about it. We're not going to talk about our mental anguish or our suffering, and it's not helping anybody, because he suffered his entire life, and it just makes me really sad. And so I want to, at least with my own children, let them know that it's okay to talk about it, to come to us to see that it's okay to get therapy, that we're all suffering. Everybody suffers in one way or the other.

Speaker 2 13:18

When I was a little girl, still living at home, I remember my dad having these nightmares and in the middle of the night it didn't even sound human, it sounded like kind of like a howl or I can't even remember. It was so jarring when you'd wake up in the middle of the night to this, this horrible sound, and then I'd hear my mother just trying to wake him up and tell him it's okay. It's okay and, like I, just I know that there's so much suffering in that poor man and he just never wants to let it out. So I hope that with mental health awareness, that more people learn that you don't have to suffer. But I think it's going to take a long time Because in however many years you said that Mental Health Awareness Month has been a thing, we've taken baby steps moving in the right direction and I don't think my dad's going to talk to me about it.

Speaker 2 14:23

He's a writer, but he writes only fiction. I really wish that he would write a memoir and at least put it on the page. If he doesn't put it anywhere else, Maybe I'll encourage him to do that, because writing can be very healing. Yeah, I think writing is so important. I don't know if you remember from a few months ago if you noticed in the news I'm not on teenage self, your college self and meet that person somewhere and have a conversation with her. What would you tell her? Just curious how you would answer that.

Speaker 1 15:11

So it's interesting. I started swimming again in the high school pool where I grew up. Now you're doing that. I was maybe like a year ago.

Speaker 2 15:23

Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 15:25

Yeah, now I'm at a different pool, but basically they had gone in and renovated the swim center and it became really nice and fancy, but they kept the original pool and so I was swimming in this original pool, like like counting the years back, because I was 17 when I graduated and I was just like doing backstroke, looking up at the hills, going like holy, like oh my god, like watch out, there's so many grenades coming your way.

Speaker 2 15:57

You don't even know what's coming.

Speaker 1 15:59

Like how the heck do you have any idea what this is? Right, I didn't know what mental illness was. I mean that was 1992. I mean, people were talking about it, but I don't think I ever heard a kid my age, and even at Dartmouth, say the word mental health or mental illness. It's not that long ago. No, I do remember auditing an abnormal psych class and deciding not to take it. I don't know if that was something inside me knew just don't take that class. But all I can think of was like grenades are going to be fired at you and you just I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you Brace yourself To run and duck, and you have no idea what's coming your way.

Speaker 2 16:55

Right, but you're still here. You know you've survived it all, so that's exceptional because you've been through a lot.

Speaker 1 17:05

Yeah, I did survive it. I think that's also something that we were going to talk about. Like, how do you really talk to someone who might want to say something about their mental illness? Right, I know you feel like your dad may not be even approachable at this time, or maybe he is, I don't know.

Speaker 2 17:29

I haven't even tried Because I've been conditioned over a lifetime to not approach that subject.

Messages to Younger Self

Speaker 1 17:40

Well, I think it is important to start talking about it, like literally at the picnic table, like seriously. I do think that is important. It can be considered such a dark part of you and I had a friend do this once. She saw an article. It was like in the New York Times. It was someone had written about mental illness and this was like 20 years ago and she like clipped the article and sent it to me and I went, oh wow, she's really thinking of me. You know, here's someone that's willing to learn and educate themselves and that's really really kind, that's really nice.

Speaker 1 18:15

So I think doing something like that, like oh, I saw this article. Is this similar to your experience? Or I read this. This sounds hard. If you ever want to talk about it, let me know, like I'm here. So it is kind of in that murky area, but I don't think I would ever get. I mean, I might kind of laugh out of shock a little bit, like really You're going to ask me about this, but I think there are very warm ways to do it and to use the news, to use, you know, something that you've read. I think is a really nice way into it.

Speaker 2 18:57

Well, I wanted to learn more about the partition. Nice way into it. Well, I wanted to learn more about the partition, so I think I could ask him to share whatever he feels comfortable sharing with me, if anything. And what are things people have said to you that maybe they said coming from a good place, but they made you feel maybe not supported or somehow in a negative way? I'm just wondering.

Speaker 1 19:23

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is somewhat recent. I think we're talking about the podcast, we're talking about mental health and a friend said well, it took you a long time to get this managed. And I bristled at that because it's not managed, it's. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 19:44

It's like okay like kind of it was in the context of having this podcast being some sort of you know things are better for a big reveal, right, right, so you mentioned the friend sending you the article that was touching and made you feel seen and validated. Are there other things you can think of that people have done for you? That just felt really good but maybe and would be helpful if more people did them. Absolutely and would be helpful if more people did them.

Speaker 1 20:19

Absolutely. It happened somewhat recently with a friend from graduate school who, again, didn't know a lot about this, and he I was manic, my mind was revved up high. He like witnessed me like screaming in my bathroom, like it was full on. I was, I was pretty crazy and I probably could have been hospitalized, but he was like I called him, I remember, and he came over and he was just so nice, he was thank you, well, thank you for calling me.

Speaker 1 20:56

And then I made all these like manic demands, like, um, take me to church, we should go to church. And he did. He took me to church and I'm like, oh my god, we have to go for a walk, we have to go for a walk now. And he did, he took me on a walk. Or I have to go to my mom's now. Like these aren't that crazy things, right, if they're broken down? And like sure, just been like okay. And he was a really mellow guy from Hawaii and so like his mellow energy really at that time like came in and really therapeutic, it was really therapeutic and he didn't run in fear, he wasn't like, oh my God, she's asking me to go to church on a Sunday. Like, get her to the hospital. She wants to go to the bike path. He was like, okay, we'll go to the bike path.

Speaker 1 21:52

You want to take a nap inside or sleep in? You know what I mean? Like he was like it's okay, and he even came up to my family's house and my behavior was totally strange. But it wasn't this like jump to a conclusion Like this is oh, we got to hospitalize this woman. This is just insanity, you know.

Speaker 2 22:15

Right.

Speaker 1 22:15

I never really thought my demands were that crazy high, right, and I think having someone like that in my life, combined with better therapy and combined with some confidence that I could stay out of a hospital and some total fear that if I didn't, my life was going to be over Having those three things come together, really helped me. But he was the kindest, most supportive person and he just took it moment by moment, if that makes sense, and it wasn't like I was being this big diva, like I was having a manic episode.

Speaker 2 23:09

Right? Did he have any personal experience with any kind of mental illness that you know of?

Speaker 1 23:17

No, but he was part of my MFA program in writing, so he knew that I had written about all of this illness stuff.

Speaker 2 23:26

Okay.

Speaker 1 23:27

And he was friends with people that had read all of this mental illness work that I had produced during that time, so people knew that I had this Right Was very much out in the open. I didn't really talk about it because it was just written and that was enough. But it was no surprise that one day I'm screaming in my apartment.

Speaker 2 23:52

Right and have you stayed in touch with this person?

Speaker 1 23:57

Yes, he's a great person, that's lovely. But it does. It changes your life. When someone does that Right, right, right and just says, hey, this isn't that strange, I'm going to Right.

Speaker 2 24:10

You're not a freak, I'm going to help you. You're not making crazy demands. Let's do what you want to do, if the requests are not things that are going to hurt you. Like you said, going to church or going for a walk or whatever.

Speaker 1 24:28

That must have been so grounding and comforting it was. It was being a kind, nice person.

Speaker 2 24:34

And he wasn't alarmed. It sounds like it's just the way he's wired to be yeah, a nice, chill Hawaiian guy.

Speaker 1 24:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:43

That's good.

Speaker 1 24:44

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh sure, my pleasure. Hi, it's Janine Bipolar. She is currently an independent podcast. I'm its writer, producer and host. Please consider this podcast as a work of advocacy, getting important stories to those that need them. As we gather ideas how to keep the show running financially, please do engage with the podcast wherever you find it. Offer up some stars and some likes. You can visit us at BipolarShecom or at BipolarShePod on Instagram and thank you, as always, for your support.