In February 2006, I was hospitalized in the psych ward while experiencing my first full blown manic episode and diagnosed with bipolar I disorder.
24-hours before being admitted, I was manic and walking unattended on the hospital's helipad located on top of a 4-story parking structure without railing. I was arrested, handcuffed and forced into the back of a police car, and charged with trespassing and assaulting an officer while resisting arrest.
The diagnosis scared me, living with an incurable condition scared me while I was drowning in shame due to the stigma and remembering while I did while manic.
Once I was discharged from the hospital, I made a commitment to educate myself about bipolar and find ways to live well not despite it but because of it.
I've been on a 19-year journey trying out different healing modalities from therapy, bodywork, natural alternatives, and the manic episodes continued.
A year ago today, I met Dr. Nima Rahmany, a former chiropractor doctor and Attachment Healing Specialist, and I started studying and working with him. He helped me reframe bipolar responses as nervous system dysregulation.
The work I've been doing with him has been deep and life-changing. It helped me process and integrate in utero trauma, the grief/shame/guilt/abandonment I experienced when I was 7 months old after my older sister died.... and more.
I've been learning to feel the manic energy in my body when it arises, allow it to move, and use exercises to calm it down until it dissipates without escalating into a manic episode. I still take Lithium, it would be foolish on my part to stop it when my body has been used to it for 19 years.
Looking back, it's been a long and often times hard journey but I wouldn't change a thing because it has been necessary to help me become who I am now.
And now the trailblazer in me is ready to continue guiding others.
(This picture is me, two weeks before my first psych ward stay, at the Altavista petroglyphs in Nayarit, MX during a yoga retreat)