Recovery Diaries In Depth
Welcome to Recovery Diaries In Depth; a mental health podcast that creates a warm, empathic, and engaging space for discussions around mental health, empowerment, and change. Executive Director and podcast host Gabe Nathan brings a unique combination of lived experience with mental health challenges, years of independent mental health and suicide awareness advocacy, and an understanding of the inpatient psychiatric millieu as a former staff member at a psychiatric hospital. This extensive background helps him navigate complex and nuanced conversations with a diverse array of guests, all of whom are vulnerable and engaged; doing their utmost to eradicate mental health stigma through advocacy, storytelling, and open conversation.
Guests who have previously contributed a mental health personal essay read their essays aloud during the podcast and then chat with Gabe about what has changed in their lives since their essays were published on the site. By engaging in deep discussions with people living with mental health challenges like bipolar disorder, trauma histories, addiction issues, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive or eating disorders, Recovery Diaries in Depth further carries out Recovery Diaries' mission to #buststigma by showing people that they are not alone, instead of just telling them. This mental health podcast features guests from all over the world and, while their own personal experiences are unique, the human experience is what unites, inspires, and connects. Subscribe, like, share, and enjoy!
Recovery Diaries In Depth is supported in full by the van Ameringen Foundation.
Recovery Diaries In Depth
Work, Life, and Self-Care with Bipolar Disorder; with Sheila O’Shea | RDID; Ep 114
Sheila O'Shea is a writer with bipolar disorder; two of her intriguing and vulnerable personal essays reside on our website, www.oc87recoverydiaries.org. In one of her essays, she writes about the importance of drawing boundaries at work and the other piece is devoted to how she learned she had bipolar disorder. Our podcast interview with Sheila delves into material and themes from both essays. Sheila talks openly about working with bipolar disorder, the frustrating necessity of educating employers who know next-to-nothing about mental illness, and the benefits of working from home. Sheila describes bipolar disorder as leaving her work life in tatters, but she is continuing to work, this time on her own terms, and living a healthier life.
Sheila also talks about "the unpleasantness", which is how she refers to how her bipolar disorder was finally diagnosed, and speaks candidly about her time spent in a locked, inpatient psychiatric hospital; one of the most highly stigmatized and feared places on Earth. "It was really fucking boring," Sheila says with a laugh. Most stories about psychiatric hospitals are replete with horror stories, but Sheila's description reveals the often ceaseless banality patients encounter in these facilities where there is often not much to do and the most exciting thing that happens is your discharge.
Exploring hypomania with thoughtfulness, Sheila openly admits that there are "advantages" to hypomania-- creativity and productivity being chief among them-- but that high always wears off and the crushing low comes hard; it is this knowledge and understanding that has prevented Sheila from going off her medication, and it's what keeps her stable. Sheila's insight, awareness, and openness made her a great guest, and you'll enjoy her conversation with our host, Gabriel Nathan. Check it out; like, share, and subscribe to Recovery Diaries in Depth.
Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they're always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting www.wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.
Hello, this is Recovery Diaries In-Depth. I'm your host, Gabe Nathan. Thanks so much for joining us. We're very happy to have you here Today. We have as our guest Sheila O'Shea. She's a writer who lives with bipolar disorder in Georgia. You can find out about a project that she is working on. It is called 10,000 Flowers. That is at wonderbink. com. You can read some of her writing at sheilawrites. com, and she has not one, but two essays on our site at oc87recoverydiaries. org.
Gabe Nathan:Each week we'll bring you a Recovery Diaries contributor folks who have shared their mental health journey with us through essay or video format. We want to see where they are in their mental health journey since initially being published on our website. Our goal is to continue supporting our diverse community by having conversations here on our podcast to follow up and see what has shifted, what has changed and what new things have emerged. We're so happy to have you along for this journey. We want to remind you to follow our show for new and back episodes at recoverydiariesorg. There, like the podcast, you'll find stories of mental health, empowerment and change. You can also sign up for our mailing list there so you never miss a new podcast episode, essay or film, and you can find this podcast pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts.
Gabe Nathan:We appreciate your comments and feedback about our show. It helps us improve, make changes and grow and, of course, make sure to like, share and subscribe Sheila O'Shea. Thank you so so much for joining us for this conversation on Recovery Diaries in depth. It is great to have you here.
Sheila O'Shea:I'm glad to be here.
Gabe Nathan:So, I'm just going to start off with how are you today?
Sheila O'Shea:I'm doing pretty well, knocked out four hours at my little work-from-home job, which has been absolutely glorious since working in the public, since I could set my own hours and take a nap in the middle of the day and work late if I need to, not work late if I don't, and the work's pretty good. And the work's pretty good. It's stimulating.
Gabe Nathan:So you live with bipolar disorder, type 2, is that right? That is correct. A little bit about, since we started out talking about work, can you talk a little bit about sort of work-life balance and why, like everybody talks about, oh, it's so important to have work-life balance and to have professional boundaries and things like that. But I think a lot of people talk about it in a really nebulous general way. That's fine for the general public, but I think when you live with a serious mental illness it's, for lack of a better word, more serious. So I would love to hear about that from you.
Sheila O'Shea:Well, I'm not 100% sure how to answer that question because my work history up to about this point was a series of catastrophes In turn. You know I would have to sort of rest. What balance I could get out of whatever job I was working. You know, of whatever job I was working, you know it's like I said, I take a nap in the middle of the day. When I worked the last job, I worked the job that I was working at when the unpleasantness happened. I would sleep under my well, I wouldn't sleep, I would rest, but I would curl up my coat and curl up under my desk to have some kind of rest and some way to decompress. So that's a really difficult question for me to answer because I haven't been in too many situations where work-life balance has been a priority in too many situations where work-life balance has been a priority. I think this may be the first job I've had where I've really had that.
Gabe Nathan:And what has that been like for you?
Sheila O'Shea:It's really been wonderful because I can work on my own rhythms. I'm pretty stringent about when I work. I try to do 7 to noon and then 2 to 5. But if I wind up oversleeping, I just live with that. I work around that. I like that. I don't have to customer service anybody anymore. I like that. I don't have to customer service anybody anymore. You know, and I think in some way I like the fact that communication is primarily written, because that's my strong point. I don't do well having to think on my feet when you know, conversing with somebody, especially about a really stressful situation. When I'm typing something in Slack or whatever, I can weigh my words. I can go back and fix typos. I can go back and say no, this word would work better, and then hit send.
Gabe Nathan:So I'm going to get kind of meta on you. I'm super interested by what you just said about spontaneous communication and about how you perceive that it's not really your strength. Is it making this interview hard?
Sheila O'Shea:Not really because it's a different situation. Not really because it's a different situation. We're both on the same page about mental health and it's important, For sure.
Gabe Nathan:The harder push. We're dealing with people who just don't get it. And specifically when I say people, let's talk about employers. Do you feel that there's a lack of overall understanding of mental illness and how it impacts people in the workplace? I'll just start with that question.
Sheila O'Shea:Oh yeah, absolutely. I had a lot of Granted for a lot of the stretch that I was humbling my way through my work history. I didn't know what my issue was. I had been misdiagnosed with depression, because bipolar II has a lot in common with depression. There are, unlike bipolar 1, bipolar 2 has more depressive episodes. If you were hypomanic ones, then then bipolar 1 does.
Sheila O'Shea:Uh, so I was, you know, basically taking the wrong drugs, undergoing the wrong treatments and I don't know, people don't get it a lot. And I think the hardest part was when I was looking for a job. After the unpleasantness after the unpleasantness it was, I kept trying to figure out how to tell people, if I should tell people. For a while I hedged it as I was having health issues. And then other times I said I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And I remember there was one interview I had. It was for a company I really wanted to work for and when they got to the so why did you leave? Less Than Soap? And I'm like, well, I had to go into treatment for bipolar disorder. They said, oh, and they kind of went oh my gosh, we've had an emergency, we'll get back to you, and ended the interview and they never got back to me and I cannot help but be convinced that it was because I told them.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah. So here's the thing about that. I have so much that I want to say about that no-transcript. Even know what they're scared of.
Sheila O'Shea:Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'll say that I think. I mean I didn't know there were two kinds of bipolar until just before I was diagnosed. That's not a very you know from movies and TV show, just this exaggerated and inaccurate perception, it's just synonymous with crazy.
Sheila O'Shea:I feel like it's just a synonym for crazy in most people's mind and they're like well, I don't want to hire crazy, just a synonym for crazy in most people's mind and they're like well, I don't want to hire crazy, yeah, and I think bipolar has a big stigma. Depressions is, I guess, a little more acceptable than bipolar, because bipolar has, you know, mania and hypomania kind of lurking around the corner and, oh my God, what is this person going to do when they get up there?
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, and how is this going to affect my bottom line? I mean, that's what an employer's really concerned about. Is this going to make my company look bad? Am I going to lose money or customers or clients because of this person? And it's just, it's so frustrating to know that people like you carry the burden I guess is the word I'll use of educating other people, people in the workplace about your mental health challenge and kind of constantly having to reassure them that you're not a threat to their, their business or whatever it is I've had to deal with people who think bipolar doesn't exist.
Sheila O'Shea:I, I had yeah, I had to deal with somebody that's like, well, everybody's got their up moods and their down moods. It's like, okay...
Gabe Nathan:Oh, wow.
Sheila O'Shea:It's like, okay, do your up moods involve booking international flights on impulse and do your down moods involve suicidal ideation.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, and that's unbelievable. It's unbelievable that you even have to have conversations like that with people. But of course there are also people who believe that Sandy Hook and the Holocaust didn't happen. So people are dumb. I guess is the bottom line, and there will be people who believe that Sandy Hook and the Holocaust didn't happen. So people are dumb. I guess is the bottom line. And there will be people who will deny anything's existence, no matter how real it is. But it's very unfortunate.
Gabe Nathan:I guess this gets to the next question that I wanted to ask you, and you alluded to this earlier when you said sometimes I'm like, should I even tell that I have asked this question a lot by people? Should I disclose at work? And if I disclose, what should I say? What shouldn't I say? And it's a very, very difficult question for me to answer because everybody's situation is so different. Everybody's mental health challenges are different, everybody's workplace is different, everyone's supervisors, colleagues, subordinates are different. So there's really no one answer for that question. But my question to you is how did you wrestle with that question of do I disclose or not, and how do I do it?
Sheila O'Shea:Like I said, for a long stretch I did not even know what my issue was. When I believed I had depression, I was pretty open about it, as I recall, and generally people were pretty receptive, and it wasn't until I found out that I was bipolar that things got difficult.
Gabe Nathan:And how did you navigate it once you received that bipolar diagnosis and how did you navigate it once you received that bipolar diagnosis?
Sheila O'Shea:Talking about it and not talking about it may have cost me a number of potential jobs, and I can't do anything about that. I do know that when I made it to Publix they didn't ask, so why did you leave your last position? I cobbled together a resume of retail jobs I'd worked, filled out an application and I was done. And I was done, I think pretty early on I made a point of informing management that I was bipolar and I certainly had to make a point of it when I was explaining why I couldn't work any later than nine o'clock.
Gabe Nathan:These days, you know kind of fast forwarding to now what helps keep you stable, what helps keep you healthy as someone living with bipolar disorder, medication, that's.
Sheila O'Shea:That's the number one one, and also really listening to my body and what it needs and having, I guess, sort of a plan. I know that medication has a completely obliterated, you know, mood episodes. It's mellowed them and made them farther apart, but there are points when I'm starting to, you know, slide into depression and then, you know, I take it easy on myself. I take it easy on myself and one rule I have is if I'm having a mood episode in either direction, I do not drink.
Sheila O'Shea:How does it impact you when you do drink? I went through one stretch where I quit drinking because I was getting very worried about how much I was indulging. This was before I was diagnosed, but I was going on. The impulsivity dragged me into a lot of drinking binges, including drinking binges that led to a loss of memory Really bad stuff and I just stopped, you know, just quit. I remember I was working at the Hilton and I was explaining to my supervisor that I needed time off to go to Dragon Con. I needed permission because Dragon Con is in the same hotel as the one I was working at at the time and he asked me if I was going to drink at any of the bars and I just said I don't drink, and at that time it didn't. And at some point I mellowed out enough that I was able to drink without getting overboard. And that's pretty much how I drink now intermittently and never in excess.
Gabe Nathan:I have a question for you regarding bipolar disorder and your experience with it. I think when a lot of people learn about bipolar disorder, they learn about it as okay, there's mania and then there's depressive episodes and that's kind of it. It's highs and lows, it's this or that. And I would just like to hear from you, as someone who lives with this mental health challenge, what is your experience with it like day to day? What do you feel? Can you feel yourself kind of sliding into hypomania or into a depressive episode? Are you able to intervene by yourself? Do you need the help of others? If you can just talk a little bit about what it feels like to live with this mental health challenge live with this mental health challenge.
Sheila O'Shea:Well, people divided it between, uh, hypomania and depression. Uh, apparently don't know, and I didn't know about a mixed state, which is basically when you're manic and depressive at the same time. That's the state I was in, uh, at the start of beyond plusness, when I was at work and trying to find some focus on trying to focus on work and being completely unable to I was like aggravated. I was like energetic but despairing at the same time.
Sheila O'Shea:So, first of all is that my usual measure for depression is that when I'm dealing with depression, there's a physical sensation to it and the way I describe it is the weight in the chest. I mean, it's literally a sensation of something heavy. I can't show you, I'm putting it right in a sensation of something heavy. You know, I can't show you, I'm putting like right in the middle of my chest. So that's my big measure as to whether or not I'm depressed. Hypomania is a little harder. Harder it's usually when I find myself, when my impulsivity goes up more than usual. I'm capable of being a very impulsive person, but when it's hypomania it's a little more than that. And also I get and this is the dirty secret about bipolar is that it has advantages- and one of the advantages is
Gabe Nathan:I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Gabe Nathan:Please talk a little bit about that.
Sheila O'Shea:Oh sure. Well, one of the advantages is how I'm able to focus intensely on something. There was one time before I was diagnosed and I got an idea for an epic fantasy series and I pulled out a notebook and started taking notes and I filled out pages and pages and pages in a matter of a few days and I still have the notebook, but I feel like I need more knowledge to be able to pull it off as a literary work.
Sheila O'Shea:I mean, if it hadn't been for a hypomanic episode, I would never have gone to Japan, just having that impulse, because I could tell. I looked over to my diary and it's like it happened the day after my boyfriend broke up with me and at that point my attitude was well, you know, if I because I've been talking about going to Japan for a while and there was sort of this if I go, I'm going to have to leave behind. What am I going to do? And then he breaks up. I was like, right, that's it. Nothing holding me back. Well, that's that. So I went and I had really an amazing time and I stayed until. Well, the problem was that I got there and I'm all full of fire and ready to conquer the world, you know, finding a job, teaching English and then the depression hit in and suddenly I can't peel myself off the sleeping bag I was sleeping in.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, it's a concrete wall, yeah, oh God.
Sheila O'Shea:But there have been times when having that energy, that intensity, can be advantageous.
Gabe Nathan:Has it ever been? You know that I'll call it a high. Has that high of hypomania ever been so seductive for you that you stopped your meds? No, wow, that's great.
Sheila O'Shea:Short answer no Good, because I could conceivably open the door to hypomania, but I also could open the door to more severe depression. Right, right, and given I'm type 2, I'm more likely to wind up depressed than hypomanic.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, it's great that you have that awareness. I used to work at a psychiatric hospital and I saw time and time again folks with bipolar who really liked what the hypomania and even the mania gave them, or what they felt like it gave them. And you know, a lot of times it led folks to stopping their medication because they didn't have that anymore and they wanted it back, and for them the gamble of well back, and for them the gamble of well. Am I going to slide into a deep depression or can I ride the manic high long enough and just enjoy the ride? For them sometimes it was worth it and it's such a huge risk and I'm so glad that that hasn't happened to you.
Sheila O'Shea:Oh God, no, oh no, no. I will admit that there are times that I miss hypomania, Mm-hmm. I particularly miss the sense of mighty destiny, the sense that I'm going to conquer the world, I'm going to be famous, I'm going to be rich, all that kind of stuff. It felt good to have that, but it really is better to have a more grounded sense of what I have and what I'm capable of.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, um, you have referred several times during this interview to the unpleasantnessed. I had Bipolar Disorder or the Unpleasantness, and I would love to hear you read it in your own voice when you're ready okay, sure it started with a cup of tea.
Sheila O'Shea:I'd arrived early one morning my new job, as was my custom and had fixed myself a cup of tea, as also was my custom. Gazing out, fixed myself a cup of tea, as also was my custom, gazing out the large windows to the view of the city. I saw a perfect sunny day. I couldn't feel any kind of pleasure in any of it. I had a good job that was willing to take me on after I'd flamed out so spectacularly at my previous one. I had a lovely day ahead of me and I had tea. I could be happy, I thought to myself, if I weren't so unhappy. Almost two decades prior, I was diagnosed with depression by a general practitioner who gave me a prescription for antidepressants and sent me on my way. I went through a variety of medications that didn't quite work, most of them prescribed by a psychiatrist whose modus operandi seemed to be throw different drugs on the wall and see what sticks. When one of my meds exhausted me, she prescribed an ADD-treating stimulant to perk me up again. When I was having trouble sleeping, she prescribed an atypical antipsychotic. When I finally let her go, because my insurance changed, I gradually weaned my way off of everything until I stopped completely the last antidepressants I had. I gave up for length and never looked back. Now the depression had returned. I've been staving it off with amino acid supplements, but that clearly wasn't enough. I've been dealing with it at my previous job, but it's affected my productivity to the point that they fired me. I thought that perhaps working at a smaller firm wouldn't stress me out as much, but it seemed that was not the case. I called my doctor Not a psychiatrist I didn't have one at the time but someone who could prescribe medication for me. I picked the drug I'd taken that had worked for a relative of mine, and she dutifully wrote me a prescription. I did some internet searches on what I was taking to check its compatibility with other over-the-counter drugs I was taking, and I tumbled down a rabbit hole in the Wikipedia page just to land on the one for bipolar disorder type 2.
Sheila O'Shea:Up to that point I had no idea bipolar disorder came in gradations. I knew only the extremes that were said to come with it and I didn't think of the things I had done amounted to it. I mean, there was a time I booked a flight to Japan the day after my boyfriend broke up with me. But that's not really mania, is it? I knew I'd been depressed, but I wasn't always depressed. Then again, intermittent depression did make sense if bipolar was the case. The antidepressants only made me shaky and anxious. I stopped taking them.
Sheila O'Shea:One fine Monday morning I came to work, sat down at my desk and just couldn't. I stared at the screen trying to figure out which task to do first, and I couldn't concentrate enough to pick one out. I felt incredibly tense in my body and yet my mind was exhausted. The boss was out of the country, so I talked to the administrative assistant. I need to go home and have a lie down. I told her she suggested I go for a walk around the block. I did. As the cars lurched out of the parking deck, I wished one of them would hit me. I told the amend that I didn't feel any better and she gave me leave to go home.
Sheila O'Shea:I went to my parents' house because it was closer and they weren't using it because they were on vacation. I tried to rest, but my mind was racing too much. Perhaps I thought I could take a bath to relax myself. Perhaps I thought I could drown myself in it. I went downstairs and called 911. Calling 911 summoned a police officer and a social worker. I glanced nervously at the cop when I described some of the things I'd done over the weekend, but he assured me that he was there to make the social worker safe. The social worker suggested I go to the emergency room for help. I was able to get a friend to drive me and she kept me company until I had a room to go to. I waited for hours. They were not pleasant ones. Finally they knocked me out with some heavy meds and threw me into an ambulance.
Sheila O'Shea:I woke up in a psychiatric treatment hospital. My only possessions were in a bag I took with me to work, containing the usual thing Wallet, keys, phone, etc. And a couple of unusual things A composition book I'd been pre-lighting in and a copy of open letters, a collection of the writings of Václav Havel. They confiscated the phone, but let me keep the books. I called a friend to explain I probably wouldn't make it for dinner that week and she came down for visiting hours. We met in the cafeteria and I told her everything that happened. She brought me new clothes, toiletries and a comb. Since I brought none of those with me, I still feel I haven't adequately paid her back for that.
Sheila O'Shea:Psychiatric hospitals are dreary places. They're kind of a combination of hospital, high school and prison places. They're kind of a combination of hospital, high school and prison. I told them that I might be bipolar and they conceded as a possibility but also suggested other conditions. They tried different medications on me and I emerged after a five-day stay with a few prescriptions and an appointment with a psychiatrist. They never told me what my diagnosis was. I canceled the appointment and stopped taking the meds. I wanted more and better options than what I'd been hastily saddled with.
Sheila O'Shea:After less than a week's interaction, my parents' neighbor worked at a mental illness treatment center with a thorough diagnostic process. You want to do that? My mom asked. Hell, yes, I replied. I took tests, interviewed with experts and even had blood drawn to make sure my symptoms didn't have a physical cause outside the brain. The final verdict was bipolar disorder type 2. I called it. I shouted as I threw my hands up triumphantly. From there I did outpatient treatment at the same place for four months, learning about my illness and how to manage it.
Sheila O'Shea:Suddenly a lot of my life made sense, from the moments I felt like I conquered the world to the moments I felt crushed under the weight of it. Now, when depression hit, I knew what to do besides take more pills, which is all I'd ever learned before. Then I learned cognitive behavioral therapy. I learned mindfulness. I learned about myself and my sometimes detrimental coping mechanisms. I had my medications refined by several different psychiatrists, all of which I vetted for their bedside manner. I had drugs that didn't work, so tracked in as often as new ones were added, and I now have a stable combination that keeps me steady. I'm in therapy with a counselor who specializes in CBT. If a minor mood episode creeps in past the meds, I know exactly what to do to handle it.
Sheila O'Shea:Bipolar disorder left my life, particularly my work life, a bit of a shambles. Now that I know what I'm up against and have it under control, I'm able to strive for greater things and get them done. I've held down a steady job for more years than I've worked anywhere prior to that. I've started a freelance business and I'm starting to see income from it. A long-term art project I started while hypomanic is still going on and I'm determined to see it all the way through. The time I spent threshing about in suicidal ideation and spending in a psychiatric hospital. I refer to this day as the unpleasantness. People who know me well know exactly what I'm talking about when I say it. It wasn't the unpleasant, but it also set my trajectory toward getting a clear picture of what our problems stem from. If I did it again, I'd do it the same, because what I gained from it? If you have your own unpleasantness, embrace it. You won't be where you are now without it.
Gabe Nathan:Thank you so much for reading that. I enjoyed that piece so much. Thank you enjoyed that piece so much, thank you. Can you just tell me what it was like to read that aloud and look back on that time when you wrote the piece?
Sheila O'Shea:Well it's. It's a distant time. It was calculated now over a decade ago, so I'm pretty removed from it. And in the process of writing that and in the process of telling the story to people, explaining what had happened, that sort of helped me process it. So there's no sore points about it. I didn't have a great time in the psychiatric hospital, but I wasn't necessarily traumatized by it either. I mean I don't want to go back, but you know it was. I feel it was necessary to sort of I know this is going to sound bad sort of slap me in the face and say yo, o'shea, you're crazy.
Sheila O'Shea:Fun story about that piece that I just read. I was at a science fiction convention called Chatacon, which happens in January, and my ex-boyfriend was there. We're on good terms. He sort of bore the brunt of a lot of my mood episodes when we were dating, but still we're on good terms. But I was referring to somebody who knew. You know, back in the unpleasantness. You know I mentioned the unpleasantness to a bunch of people and so he asked me so what exactly is the unpleasantness? And I said it's a really long story. I've got your email, I'll write it to you. And then I'm like wait, I've got your email, I'll write it to you. And then I'm like wait, I've got this completely handy breakdown of what happened.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, you just send him the link.
Sheila O'Shea:That is exactly what I did. I sent him the link and he came back to me and said something like I had no idea.
Gabe Nathan:Well, the essay is quite a useful tool for you. Anytime someone wants to know what the unpleasantness is, just zap it to them. Yeah, exactly Are you happy that you wrote it.
Sheila O'Shea:I am. I am because I'm a show-off.
Gabe Nathan:Do you really believe that, or is that just you being funny?
Sheila O'Shea:No, when it comes to writing, I'm very much a show-off.
Gabe Nathan:Well, if you're going to show off, it's good to do it with something that you're good at. So you definitely are. I think it's far more. The piece is far more useful than that, because I mean, I know, being the executive director of the organization, that there's people all over the world reading this essay who think that their bipolar disorder is telling them that they're the only one who feels like this or has had experiences like this. And you know you're here to show them not only is that not true, but that you can live with it and live a good life and manage it, and not have it manage you.
Sheila O'Shea:Thank you.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, I think that's really important. One of the things that you talk about is suicidal ideation. What do you want people to understand about feeling that way?
Sheila O'Shea:Well, first off, that's not the only time I've felt that way.
Gabe Nathan:Sure, of course.
Sheila O'Shea:You know, there's just been some really bad moments before and really one of the things that held me back was thinking how much it would hurt my family and I would.
Sheila O'Shea:Usually, I would usually sort of talk my way down from it, and it wasn't until much later in life that I realized that talking yourself down from killing yourself is not the side of robust mental health that I might think it is. The unpleasantness was different, because I finally decided, okay, if we need to do something about this, and I think part of the problem was at that time, all my family was down in Florida on vacation. I was completely by myself in terms of my relations, so I didn't have that support system. It's interesting I'd read a blog post on a blog called Captain Awkward, which is an advice column basically, but there was like a guest post from somebody which is basically what being in a mental hospital is like and it sort of demystified it. And it sort of demystified it and I said, well, that doesn't sound 100% awful. Maybe I'll just do that instead of try to talk myself down from it again.
Gabe Nathan:That's so interesting because, as a former staff member at a locked inpatient psychiatric hospital, as a former staff member at a locked inpatient psychiatric hospital, I think one of the most detrimental things are and this is not to deny anybody's experience people who have experienced trauma in these places, and not just patients, staff as well, and so I want to acknowledge that and so I want to acknowledge that. But I think that your description of a psych facility resonated with me so hard because it felt so true and that it is mostly a boring, institutionalized setting where not much happens. And I think that a big disservice is done when people publish kind of sensationalized horror stories about psychiatric facilities because they can inhibit help seeking. And I don't like these facilities and that's again as someone who made his living for five years working at one. I wish they didn't have to exist.
Gabe Nathan:Unfortunately they do, because people in a crisis or people with serious and persistent mental illness who are often unmedicated. There's a danger there and sometimes, you know, people do need facilities like this to be stabilized for the short term. So I think it's so interesting that reading that piece helped you understand that. You know, maybe this isn't so horrible, maybe it's not like cuckoo's nest. Maybe I can do something and go to this place and maybe it'll help me be okay.
Sheila O'Shea:Yeah, I've rumbled widely about the stereotypes about a mental hospital. I did a stand-up routine about being bipolar. One of the bits I had was you know that people think bipolar disorder plays with like padded walls and straight jackets and sexy nurses injecting you and all this stuff. And I said you know, in actuality, mental hospitals are bleeping boring yeah.
Gabe Nathan:It's part of the big problem is that I used to work in activities and it was like you want to have something on the schedule every single hour for folks to do. But even that stuff isn't very interesting and it's a lot of time just pacing the halls or sitting in the hall and you know, waiting for meals and waiting for med time and waiting to see your psychiatrist and it's a lot of waiting. Waiting to be discharged is really what the vast majority of it is. So thank you for adding an honest and nuanced portrayal to it. I think that's helpful and I'm just so grateful that you trusted Recovery Diaries, not once but twice, to be a caretaker for your writing, for parts of your story, and I'm grateful to you for spending some time with me today. So thank you.
Sheila O'Shea:You're welcome.
Gabe Nathan:It's a pleasure getting to talk with you, wishing you all the best.
Sheila O'Shea:Thank you.
Gabe Nathan:Thank you again for joining us in conversation today. It's beautiful to see the progression of our contributors. Thank you so much to Sheila O'Shea. She's a writer who lives with bipolar disorder, writing and speaking to us from Georgia. Sheila's super cool project is called 10,000 Flowers. You can find out about it at wonderbankcom backslash 10kflowers. You can read some of her writing at SheilaWrites. com and, of course, on our site, oc87recoverydiaries. org. Before we leave you, we want to remind you to check out our website, recoverydiaries. org. There, like this podcast, you'll find additional stories, videos and content about mental health, empowerment and change. We look forward to continuing to grow our community. Thank you so much for being a part of it. We wouldn't be here without you. Be sure to join our mailing list so you never miss a podcast episode, essay or film. I'm Gabe Nathan. Until next time, take good care.
