Why I Love the Word “Bipolar” - Author L. E. Henderson

For someone with bipolar disorder, I have apparently been way out of the loop in terms of knowing about all of the intense controversies raging within the bipolar community.

However, my recent post “My Bipolar Event in High School” met with an overwhelmingly supportive response from most who read it.

But there was a problem. Writing about my experience had tumbled me head-first into a semantic boxing ring.

I learned that there is a heated debate in the bipolar community about how certain words should be used, if they are used at all. One of these sensitive terms that I used in my post was apparently off-limits: “nervous breakdown.”

Granted, this term is vernacular and non-clinical, which is why I put it in quotation marks. But one of my readers told me that the term was bad, because it “does not help children or adolescents.”

Stunned, I tried to think of any way my post could have hurt children and came up short. I mainly used the term because I got tired of using the sterile word “episode” again and again. And in some ways the term “nervous breakdown” seemed more apt. The night before my hospitalization, I did feel like I was falling apart.

I felt conflicted because the same person was complimentary of my post overall and thought it would encourage those with bipolar disorder to seek help.

I earnestly hoped that my post would ease the pain of other bipolar sufferers.

But when I wrote about my experience I was not thinking of that. I wrote it to write it. I wanted to share a personal experience that I have been carrying around in my head for decades. I drew from my verbal well all the terms that I thought would get it across.

From a writing standpoint, the term “nervous breakdown” is not ideal, but I have found no words in the English language which accurately convey what a manic episode is really like.

I did the best I could, and nothing awakens the rebel in me like being told there are words I can never use. It was my blog. It was my awful experience; I could call it anything I wanted.

But the language debate goes even further, including a fierce argument about whether the public and media should say that sufferers “are bipolar” or “have bipolar disorder.”

The thinking is that if you call someone bipolar, you are slapping an unfair label onto them and are suggesting that they are only their disorder.

This confuses me. If people say to me that I am female, does that mean they think I am only female and nothing more? Maybe some uber-chauvinists do think that, but they are not people whose opinions I value. I am perfectly content to dismiss them as stupid and move on.

The debate also confuses me because I like the word “bipolar.” Not the disease but the word. For decades I had no idea what I had. The doctor overseeing my hospital stay never volunteered a diagnosis. But I desperately wanted to understand and pressed him. Finally he unloaded his unhelpful, vague, and shocking diagnosis on me: \”Acute psychotic episode.\”

The term slammed into me and almost took my breath away. I was a self-conscious 17 year old girl who had seen a lot of horror films, including the sixties Hitchcock classic. Having a word with such a grisly cinematic history applied to me by a licensed medical professional was a blow.

I envisioned hockey masks with heavy breathing, frantic night time races through briery woods, screaming, and creepy music.

I had never worn a hockey mask, had never even watched a hockey game. I had walked off my high school campus mid – session in a euphoric daze.

Before I took to walking off campuses, I had spent most days doing homework on a bean bag. I liked taking long walks through my heavily treed neighborhood, but I had never chased anyone through it, and especially not at night.

I could barely think the word and resolved to never tell anyone what he had said. “Crazy\” would have been a welcome euphemism. If my doctor had only bothered to ask a few more questions, he might have spared me years of shameful secrecy by pinpointing a more specific cause. And he could have given me a drug better designed to treat my condition, which may have prevented a recurrent episode in 2001.

In 2001, when my new doctor said the words “bipolar disorder,” I embraced the term completely. Next to my first diagnosis, it was a gift. Plus, I was no longer alone. People like Carrie Fisher, Van Gogh, and others I admired had the same disorder.

I personally see no stigma in the word “bipolar.” I have owned it since the day it was given to me. I have never had trouble saying to anyone “I am bipolar.” Besides I think adjectival forms of nouns are a good thing.

For some who have had different experiences, “bipolar” apparently has awful connotations. I can easily imagine someone having the word spoken to them in a contemptuous, accusing, or disparaging way.

I was lucky to have a psychology professor for a dad. He understood that bipolar disorder was not something sufferers choose and never talked about any mental illness in a derogatory way. My other family members were equally supportive.

Others are not so lucky and I can only imagine how painful it must be to have people, even those closest to you, blame you for the misfortune, adding to the pain that already exists.

More communication is certainly needed. But banishing sensitive words from the conversation is not the answer.

Dictating how others phrase their thoughts limits open dialogue and makes everything awkward. It discourages kind people who want to understand from asking questions. It focuses on minutia and assumes that most people are emotionally challenged cretins who must be wrangled into empathy.

From the outpouring of understanding responses to my last post, I am convinced that people are far more empathetic and understanding than we give them credit for being. Bipolar disorder is one of many thousands of ways people can suffer, and most anyone can understand bad things happening that are beyond their personal control.

Many semantic “offenses” are committed innocently by compassionate people. Coercing them into semantic etiquette creates not empathy but fear.

But the principle underlying the bipolar word controversy is true. People are more than their disorders.

I consider myself more of a writer than a bipolar sufferer, and I think about words a lot. I like some better than others. There are words that I cringe to hear, like racial or ethnic slurs dripping with such contempt that it impossible not to reproach cruel individuals who use them as weapons.

But the words themselves are not at fault. Intentions matter, which is why comics can get away with saying offensive things better than others can. Their intention is not to denigrate but to entertain.

Our best hope of removing stigma is by harnessing the power of words to communicate what having bipolar disorder is really like.

Words are not good or bad. They are tools that allow people to think and talk about reality. And in a world where so many misunderstandings exist, we need all the tools we can get.

That being said, the term “acute psychotic episode” delivered to me long ago when I was 17 was painful to hear. It is still hard to say and hard to write. I hope that no one ever applies those words to me again. But as part of language, as words, as tools, they deserve to exist, and I will never tell anyone not to say them.

While words can be used to hurt, weakening them with arbitrary etiquette rules does nothing to enlighten. Rather, it creates a nation of stutterers and shuts down the dialogue needed to clarify, describe, and educate.

For those of us who have bipolar disorder, being seen for who we really are will require freedom of expression on both sides of the conversation. Nothing less than a language operating at full capacity will do. To create genuine understanding, open discussion and words – lucid, vibrant, and unfettered – are the best hope that we have.