Initial trigger for bipolar

Medical literature overwhelmingly agrees that the myriad of genetic markers that contribute to bipolar do not express themselves unless there is an external environmental trigger. For me, it was sophomore year of high school. I had serious scoliosis and was put into a back brace, a kind of iron maiden torture device. That brace caused permanent damage to my left shoulder and, in the same year, caused my left lung to collapse twice. In the same year my mother casually informed me (all important family information is casually informed) that my father is an alcoholic and my grandmother killed herself. That year my high school grades plummeted, I began to heavily self-medicate with alcohol, and I began a roller coaster of euphoric mania punctuated by severe depression and suicidal ideation.

For whomever wishes to share, I would really like to hear about your experiences.

That sounds rough, wolf. I have scoliosis and came just short of needing a back brace when I was 13. I've always had a lot of back pain, though.

My environment while growing up? It was loving (except for my parents arguing almost constantly), until I was 5. My parents split up that year after 25 years of marriage. I'm sure my dad had BD. My mom was a textboook borderline personality; as she got older, she slipped more and more into psychosis.

TRIGGER

Possible trigger:

Without going into 80 paragraphs I'll just say that my mom married a man when I was 9...he was horribly abusive, in every way. To both my mom and I. Verbally, physically, and he also sexually abused me. He frequently dressed in drag, which included wearing a garter belt and stockings with no underwear. To put it bluntly, he'd strut around the house masturbating himself, sometimes while he was drunk, oftentimes, sober. And, he just plain molested me, personally.

As soon as they married their relationship very quickly became weird and chaotic. And my mom turned on me. She physically beat up on me, emotionally tortured me (saying things such as, "Don't go to sleep tonight because I will kill you". I was 9 when she started saying that to me.)

We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood and neighbors called the cops routinely, because my mom and her husband would be physically fighting, screaming, breaking things. My mom had some pretty bad paranoia that caused her to do such things as hanging black tarp over all our windows. It was horrible to live like that, plus I had to fabricate stories to my friends (when I occasionally brought someone over). I remember one year, my mom left the Christmas tree up until July. Of course, it was totally dead. I remember worrying that it would catch fire. She was severely mentally ill. I do not blame her for that, I only wish she would have stuck with treatment. She never would. And it took her 10 years before she separated from her husband.

Anyway...like I say, I could write many paragraphs about my childhood, but you get the point. It was, frankly, a hell on earth. I escaped, got out, and was married at age 18.

As a child, I was extremely depressed and anxious. Really badly. When I started high school, however, I started acting out in some ways; I refused to go to any class I didn't like. That was during the late '70's, a crazy era. I managed to graduate high school because I did extremely well in the classes I liked, and I did all sorts of extra-curricular stuff that teachers appreciated.

Overall, I will say that mania really manifested for me in high school. But - here's the thing. I remember being as young as 4 and feeling pure rage inside of me. I didn't know what it was called, but I sure felt it. That rage felt like the same manic rage I've experienced in my life.

I also remember, very clearly, being 4 years old and feeling very depressed. That was prior to my home life going haywire.

So, that's a very general overview of my childhood. It's frankly impossible for me (or any mental health professional) to separate environment from genetics in my case.

The big thing that happened to me happened when I was 4 but cause a continuous chain reaction. I had the measles and loss my hearing. I was treated differently in school and had one teacher tell my mother I should be put in a state home away from normal kids. I had a neighbor man who told me god punished me for being bad and I should keep his secret (CSA) and I was always a bit off cause I couldn’t hear the small things that count. Like what is in and who’s who in school. I had depression young but no mania until my mid 20’s going though an abusive marriage.

Thank you both for sharing. What's amazing is that you both remember so early in your childhood and can remember into adulthood. I have a block in terms of my childhood. It's simply just not there, except for memories of pain. Nothing specific. Thanks for your honesty. Hearing from others is, quite frankly, enlightening.

I don’t really remember much I know I had the measles but all I actually remember about it was a snippet of being in the back seat of our car and both of my sisters were mad at me because I was sick. It’s just a tiny snippet that and I can remember the sound of the crickets that summer. But I know I loss my hearing then because it’s a fact. We were on vacation when I got sick and had to drive home to take me to a doctor. But that’s what my family told me. The thing with the neighbor was when I was eight. For some reason I have a pretty good memory of being 8-9 but after that my memory is terrible. I don’t really remember jr high or high school.

I do agree that there surely has to be some genetic predisposition to develop bipolar disorder, but there does also usually seem to be a trigger for its development. I don't think it is always as major of a trigger for some, as it is for others, though.

My paternal grandmother developed her bipolar disorder seemingly at the age of 33 or 34, when my youngest uncle was born. He had Down's Syndrome. A severe case. At that time, she also had three older sons ranging from a couple years old to 15 years old (my dad was the oldest). She started with a severe depression that left her hardly able to care for my youngest uncle. Then she developed psychosis and manic symptoms.

Soon after my paternal grandmother's start of her illness, my father became ill and was hospitalized for "a nervous breakdown" at 16. He attributes that breakdown to my grandmother's, as well as MY mother's (his future wife's) fall that began her remaining lifetime struggle with tonic clonic seizures. My parents were sweethearts as young as 7 and 8 years old, and very much in love at 15 and 16. My father has had bipolar symptoms off and on throughout his life. Symptoms eventually led him to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars and become so addicted to alcohol that he almost lost his life. Since then he's been in assisted living, with his quality of life deteriorating since. Really, the worst of the end part of his life was triggered by the sudden death of my mother, and then the suicide of my nephew, who lived with him for a period.

A first cousin of mine (the daughter of my father's second brother), has bipolar disorder. She went on to be a problem child, surely as a result. She eventually became a heroin addict and alcoholic, went to prison several times, abandoned her three children, and is now...I don't even know where. She changed her name. She's hard to recognize because her face is full of tatooes.

Me? Well, I've written a bit about the start of my illness at 15/16 in my blog. I barely even want to bring it up. All I'll say is that the end of a major dream, social isolation/ostracization, and other slightly traumatic events, played a major part. I ended up having to be sent to a therapist and then private school. At university, I had episodes, as well, though not as severe, but did go to my first psychiatrist then who gave me only Prozac. That set off a mania where I stole my best friend's boyfriend and became quite hypersexual. Then about six years later, I had another major group of bipolar episodes in Taiwan. The rejection by my first love, with whom I moved to California, didn't help. Then issues relating to my job in Taiwan. I was actually taken to a hospital there, but released soon after with bags of mystery pills. They obviously contained some antidepressant, because I then switched to manic, quit the job (losing lots of money), and set off to travel (alone) in Hong Kong and Thailand. After some extremely wild weeks there, and being pickpocketed, I crashed. Some of it is even difficult for me to remember, as I must have had "manic blackouts".

I had mild episodes, off and on, for another five years. Soon after marrying, I became obsessed with my job. The job was extremely stressful for me, so I drank to self-medicate. My mood was rising and rising because of conflicts at work. Then, my mother suddenly and unexpectedly died of cancer. That started a period that I call "My 1st through 10th painful psychiatric incarcerations", during which I was mostly on private disability. Those years were followed by the start of my SSDI, the early years of which were also quite horrible. I call them part of a "Psychiatric Avalanche Effect". Some really rough stuff!

Nammu and Soupe, thanks for sharing. Where genetic disposition and environmental actualization interact is a tenuous line.

Interesting hearing from everyone about their triggers. For me I’m not so sure. I’ve gone through some serious stuff throughout my life and nothing seemed to trigger me. My mom has bipolar and I never thought I was at risk for it since I’d gone through so much and always made it through. So maybe it was a combination of triggers. The only thing I can think of that made it surface was going through the pandemic and I decided to stop watching tv. I freed up my time to work on things around the house and then started teaching from home. I was so happy and excited to be able to stay at home with my then 1 year old daughter. Everyday became more and more exciting. I started reaching out to family and friends that I had not spoken to in awhile and my high school teacher told me that I should write a book and she would be my editor. I got more excited and started writing. I also helped my family have online birthday parties using zoom. Around the same time my mom told me my cousin was raising a baby girl he just had. I know that had to be another trigger because my cousin was the family secret. He molested many of my cousins including my younger sister and brother and made me walk in on it after I refused to let him touch me. I called CPS and told them the family secret. I was a kid when it happened and my Grandma told us we were lying. I remember feeling a rush of anxiety, like this power surge of fear that I was going to get in trouble for snitching. I even started uncontrollably shaking. I thought I developed an anxiety disorder over it. Then when it came to the book I started writing in the middle of the night and couldn’t stop writing. I’d write for hours. I don’t even remember if I was sleeping or not. So I’m not sure if it was the pandemic, teaching, my cousin, the book, overworking, or just a combination of all of it.

My mom said something I thought was interesting tonight. We were laughing at my sister's reports of my 10 year old niece trying her patience and my mom was sharing stories of my sister at that age. I laughed and said that she had really been pretty lucky in the teen years. My sister smoked and that's about as bad as it got. My mom told me that I never really gave her problems as a pre-teen or teen except for what she now knows wasn't teenage behavior but was actually manias. So now I know that those go further back than I remember. I remember depressions but not manias from 5th grade on.

I had so many triggers in my family. And a family full of mental illnesses. I have no idea what caused what although I had biological issues in infancy; I didn't sleep. I was eventually prescribed phenobarbital which is a ridiculously strong med for an infant. My mom gave it once, was scared by how sedated I was and just went back to carrying me around and trying to get me to sleep for 8 months. I talked really early and my older brother swears I screamed and then started talking.

I come from a house of mental illness and trauma. My ED started at 7 when I went vegan because my uncle put the pigs head on the table while we ate it. The voices started around then. I eventually fainted at school at 8. SI at 11. The school mandated me into therapy with a horrible T. She made everything worse. By 16 I moved out into a worse situation and 17 I dropped out to go to college. Went to college flipped back and fourth mood wise. Mandated by residence hall to get therapy Dropped out had my son. Became homeless, moved to new state took care of inlaws, became homeless, moved to new state, became depressed saw sucky pdoc, became homeless, got a new place, moved in with family, Became homeless, moved states, awesome pdoc, awesome T, homeless, moved states again Have been in the same apartment for 6 years. countless T's and pdocs.

NaoSky, Rainbow and Miguel'smom, thanks so much for sharing. It's incredible how much we've all been through, and how different are our stories.


The one thing that is coming through to me loud and clear from reading all of our stories is that we are resilient. We are survivors.