I have been symptomatic all of my life…but I did not always know it. Until diagnosis and medical intervention, I had never had a baseline, I just swung from one mood episode to another – I never had stability and I blamed it all on trauma. I just assumed my normal was “normal.”

CAVEAT: The validity or efficacy of psychiatric labeling may be in question, and I understand, accept, and will respect any client’s reticence to use it but, for the sake of understanding, I will use it in telling my story.

Abuse (emotional, psychological, and physical), punctuated by truly idyllic childhood moments, permeated my world from birth until a culminating traumatic event (childhood sexual trauma, chronic sexual abuse over the course of three years – from 11 to one month after my 14th birthday) that resulted in the dissolution of my immediate family when I was 14 years old (perpetrator: a family member; incest survivorship) and precipitated a legal name change at 16 years old to fully emancipate myself from this family member and family legacy of abuse. Prior to this, I had struggled with severe social anxiety (including selective mutism), but now realize it was Social Dyslexia in ASD and Social Phobia proper, from my earliest memories of the playground until well into my adulthood, and from this event onwards, I also struggled with C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and now in addition to that, due to my career, secondary traumatic stress, otherwise known as Compassion Fatigue due to client trauma and client death) and anorexia/ED-NOS/OSFED/Orthorexia until, through a lot of self-work, becoming entirely symptom-free from these disorders by 2011 after a lifetime of suffering with them.

This was not without hiccups. A hospitalization for my eating disorder, and a near-death, in-and-out of consciousness experience when I was 23 (sepsis caused by laxative abuse, near fatal potassium levels, low weight, etc.) – a response to my grandmother’s cancer diagnosis, taking grief out on my body the year she lost her life – was the first wake up call for me and I was in recovery from my Eating Disorder for two years until a two year relapse (2008-2010) and since that relapse I believe myself to be “fully recoverED” not still recoverING, as per the Carolyn Costin Institute’s definition of full recovery – you do not have to work as hard on your recovery by year ten as you did in year one! You can fully recover, it’s not always going to be quasi-recovery or always being in remission or constant recovery but never recovered…unlike abstinence-only programs, you can’t abstaifrkm food, you have to learn to eat healthily!

In October 2010, at the age of 27, came my second wake up call – an ultimatum from those I love and respect most dearly – because my pain and the pain of those around me persisted and because I had done so much self-work, we didn’t know why. So I walked into a crisis centre and told them my story. In that instant, the trajectory of my story changed forever.

“Bipolar Affective Disorder – Type 2.”

It doesn’t define me, but it does define what plagues me and what underpinned it all, and it empowered me to make previously unimaginable change and reach previously insurmountable goals.

In my 30s and now 40s, I was also diagnosed with and treated for ADHD, PSUD, C-PTSD, and ASD in addition to this, and went through a five month hospitalization for Lithium toxicity, as a result of being medicated for Bipolar Disorder, in which I was functionally quadriplegic and had to relearn how to walk.

Now, I enjoy a daily peace, general contentedness, and relative stability I once relegated to others and believed impossible for myself.

My gratitude for all those who intervened or tried to, for all of those I have gotten to learn from as a Peer Supporter, abounds.

I just want to give back!