Personal Stories

It wasn’t until I was 24 years old and in early recovery from addiction, that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It took me a long time to accept the fact that I had this diagnosis.

As part of my recovery, I learned as much as I could about schizophrenia, which further deepened my compassion for those with mental health conditions and their loved ones. I now speak about the resources available from NAMI at a local hospital and teach the NAMI Family-to-Family class.

Admitting that we need assistance never makes us less of a person. It simply means that we are the bigger person because we are willing to admit that we have a problem and we want better for ourselves and our children.

I think a lot about the fact that people who don’t live with mental health conditions really don’t have a clue about what the experience is like for those of us who do.

What you feel and witness on a daily basis cannot be imagined by many, yet you stand tall in the face of fear.

I live with severe depression and anxiety, PTSD, ADHD and borderline personality disorder. Out of all of them, BPD affects my life the most.

Forced to leave my family and friends, the hospital became my home. Over the next year, I faced the biggest challenge of my life. At my lowest ebb, I had to find the courage to beat my anorexia.

I read that BPD was a mess to treat, that most professionals didn’t want to have to see people with BPD and that people with BPD were usually seen as treatment-resistant, difficult, overtly hostile and manipulative. Was that really me?

My name is Amber. I am one of the 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. who live with a mental health condition. I carefully chose the word live and not have. I live with a mental health condition, I don’t have one. I am not my illness.

No one wants to hear that something is wrong with their mind. Tell them they have a heart condition, diabetes, or any other myriad of “normal” disease and nine times out of ten they’ll handle it better than hearing that they have a mental health condition.