Living With Bipolar Disorder as an adult with ADD in a Filipino household- My personal experience.

A.J Riley

In October of 2020, I was diagnosed by my psychiatrist that I have bipolar disorder. My symptoms were often random outbursts of anger that came out of nowhere and caused disruption in my family’s environment. Previously, in early 2020, my psychiatrist told me that I do not have bipolar disorder and said I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). While I do in fact have ADD, I was still showing symptoms of bipolar disorder and my mother noticed them, as I was discussing wanting to be a firefighter out of the blue.

After my diagnosis, I began to discuss my bipolar disorder with my therapist and we discussed things that could possibly help me manage my anger and random spouts of irritability. Unfortunately, that failed to work as well because while I had a personal therapist, I was also in group therapy and none of the techniques either of my therapists and I discussed would help me at all. In fact, it strained my relationship with my family even more because what I had discussed with my therapist is that when I’m angry, I need to just walk away and cool off. But with my family and with us being Filipino, and my family being first generation who grew up in a completely different environment and had a very different set of cultural beliefs, me walking away to cool off was seen as disrespectful and rude. I tried my best to keep myself together, but it strained my relationship even more than it had been when I was 17.

Shortly after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my psychiatrist prescribed me medication to help maintain my mood and hopefully help how I react to certain situations. But unfortunately, those medications only helped bit by bit and never truly helped me maintain my mood swings and how my mood could go from sunny days to rainy days in a matter of minutes, and perhaps even seconds. I tried so hard and still do to this day but every day, there is something that causes me to just tick and nearly explode or in fact explode with immense spouts of anger. While I never hurt anyone when angry, I often wanted to remove myself from the situation in order to avoid anything else happening.

Dealing with mania while in a household with first generation Filipinos is a very stressful environment. I often have manic episodes where I can’t sleep and just focus on so many projects that I become so hyper-focused on them that I lose my inability to think clearly. Sometimes, mania also affects my judgement and how I do things, especially when it comes to my writing. It also means progress but not quality, where I spend a lot of my time focusing on writing a project and become so focused on finishing it, that sometimes, it isn’t necessarily a piece of work that has a lot of quality. On top of my manic episodes, I also deal with ADD and my attention becomes so focused on a project that I am just “go, go, go” without stopping to think about the quality of my work and how I could possibly improve it.

Depressive episodes are a different thing though. When I am dealing with depressive episodes, I tend to feel really lonely and sad. I lose interest in writing or reading. I lose interest in basically everything. I often have the urge to isolate myself from my family and stay in my room like it’s a cave and I am in hibernation. Except it isn’t just a season thing like for other mammals. It’s a yearly thing. 24/7/365. When I am in a depressive episode, it’s just depression. I lose interest in writing, which is my main hobby and the thing that brings me the most joy, and often times, the thing that helps me cope with life. I also lose interest in reading, which sometimes is a side hobby for myself. With depressive episodes, I lose interest in walking, which my doctor recommends I do every day in order to help with my mental health and build endurance.

Life with bipolar disorder as an adult with ADD in a Filipino household is tough and sometimes, it’s hard because my family pushes for me to become better and as hard as I try, it feels like I get nowhere in life. Thankfully though, I have friends who help me along the way .

This is my experience, hopefully this helps you too in a sense. Hopefully reading this makes you know that you’re not alone.

Happy Wednesday and I hope you’re all well.

Until next time!

-A.J Riley