26d • Perspective & Meaning
Not All Ups and Downs Are the Same
I was diagnosed with bipolar in 2011. Years later, that got reclassified as cyclothymic mood disorder, which is basically the same beast wearing a quieter name. I've also spent my whole life around people close to me with mental illness. If you're waiting for me to tell you there was something quirky or interesting buried in that, there wasn't. It's miserable. It's painful. That's the whole story, no silver lining hiding underneath it.
The Satellite Thing
I saw an exchange online that stuck with me. Someone pointed out that in 1960, one in 200 people were diagnosed as autistic, and now it's one in 30. Somebody else came back with this: there were about 40 near-Earth satellites decades ago; now there's something like 47,000. Do you blame the telescopes for that?
The point landed. We're not looking at an epidemic; we're looking at better instruments. Better diagnostic criteria, more awareness, doctors who aren't just handing out one label for everything that doesn't fit neatly. The sky didn't fill up with more objects because we built better telescopes. We just finally started seeing what was already there.
I bring that up because the same logic gets used against people with mental illness, except backwards and badly. People treat a diagnosis like it's inflation, like everyone's just calling normal life a disorder now. They don't say that about diabetes or asthma. They save it for the stuff they can't see.
The Comparison Problem
There is nothing worse when you're struggling with an illness than someone saying "we're all a bit like that" or "we all have our ups and downs."
Imagine saying that to someone having an asthma attack. "I had a bad chest once." Imagine saying it to someone on crutches. "I hurt my knee two years ago; it was murder." It sounds like sympathy in your own head, but what actually comes out is a worse version of their story—a billy-better-story. You're not connecting with them. You're competing with them, and they're too polite or too exhausted to tell you that's what just happened.
The Diagnosis Conversation
Then there's the bit that floors me every time. Someone finds out and immediately becomes a physician. "What you need to do is..." Go for a walk. Stop thinking negative. Don't take those pills. Insert whatever bullshit fits.
Even if you've had something similar yourself, it's not the same illness. It's not the same brain, the same history, the same chemistry, the same day. Everybody's experience is different, and unless you're a psychiatrist or a mental health nurse, you're not qualified to fix someone, and more to the point, they're not asking to be fixed.
People are not a puzzle. Most of the time they don't want a solution sitting across the table from them. They want to say what's in their head out loud, to someone who isn't rushing to patch it. That's it. That's the whole ask.
Just be there. Just show up.
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Not All Ups and Downs Are the Same
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