The Inner Peace of Coming Out
If I tell someone I have bipolar disorder, the last thing I want is pity.
Pity implies that I have some dreaded disease and that I need thoughts and prayers, as if I am stricken with cancer and about to die. I may have a mental disability, but most of the time my relationships with family and friends are now just fine.
Pity creates an unbalanced relationship in which your friends, family members or colleagues regard you as having a weakness that they have to tiptoe around and treat with kid gloves.
As my psychiatrist told me, I was born with severe bipolar disorder and didn't have a chance to reduce its devastating impact until I was diagnosed and the right cocktail of medications established. Even then, he advised me that I was always going to live with the chance of bipolar moods emerging or maybe not. Coming out is an opportunity to free up the isolation chamber of the mind and integrate oneself into society and build a support network that branches out like roots from a tree and can prevent isolation.
We all face the sometimes daunting question of who to reveal our mental illness to and how.
There are many considerations that require different criteria to tell someone that you have a treatable mental condition.
First, there are immediate and extended family members. Your immediate family may already know that you are struggling to live a healthy life and enjoy yourself as much as you can and are supportive. This, unfortunately, is not always the case.
Your extended family may be shocked or find themselves regarding you as a "different" person, or they may respond with acceptance. You need to take the stigma that they might attach to you as a teaching opportunity.
Then there is the often intimidating question of coming out to friends. If a friend has a visceral negative reaction and starts ghosting you, then they probably weren't a true friend to begin with. They may feel uncomfortable with being around you and distance themselves, as if having a mental illness is a communicable disease. In short they now regard you as a pariah.
However, it is important to remember that empathetic friends, on the other hand, can help you through your struggle. The disorder might not change the relationship at all when you are in remission. They are invaluable. If you have a relapse, they may provide vital support.
How to handle disclosure in regards to work requires careful reflection. If you are looking to be hired for a position, do you want to casually say at the end of the interview, "By the way, at times I have depression, but I am under treatment, and it shouldn't interfere with my job"?
Or do you want to avoid any possibility of not being hired because of possible prejudicial stigma? Each person must come to their own decision. And if you are hired, do you tell your colleagues?
In most cases, reveal yourself when it seems natural. You don't want to blurt out your disorder out of the blue. If you appear at peace with your disorder, you are conveying that it is nothing that should scare other people off. You want to impart that it is a natural part of your life, not a crisis that might cause alarm.
Of course, there are always people from any of these groups who might regard depression as a self-imposed and fabricated state. They believe that you don't really have a mental illness, asserting that "temporary melancholy" is just a natural way to respond to the world in these troubled times. They might advise you to "shake it off" and get on with life,
Whatever your decisions about "coming out," do not think of it through the lens of fear.
Consider it an opportunity to exercise some control over your disorder, allowing you to become liberated from the trepidation that you will be "exposed."
As jazz vocalist Gregory Porter sings:
Take me to the afflicted ones
Take me to the lonely ones
That somehow lost their way
Let them hear me say
I am your friend
Come to my table
Rest here in my garden
You will have a pardon
We all merit a "rest in the garden," and coming out may provide a moment of inner peace that we so richly deserve.
Mark Karlin is retired, after a long career in advocating against gun violence, as a hospital executive and founder of a progressive website. He graduated from Yale University with an honors degree in English.
