If you don’t admit you have the disease, then maybe you don’t. How many of us want to just let denial have it’s way with us? Pretend it doesn’t exist, maybe it’ll go away. This works at first, but long term, not really.

Evidently, there is a whole category of folks in Denial of Diagnosis. I wonder if I am one of them, due to Anosognosia: “a medical term for a person who lacks the insight or awareness to understand their own condition. They’re in denial of illness because their brain isn’t currently or fully capable of understanding the illness. In many cases, the individual will see the truth of their own diagnosis at times while at other times experience denial.” (from wellSanFrancisco, a B Corp Clinic that is top of SEO when googling the term Denial)

Last week when I asked my shrink to reassess my situation and run it down for me again – how she thought of me when we first met and how she thinks of me now, four and a half years later; she wanted to know why I was asking. “For my blog, doc!” was my response.

She promptly confirmed that my crisis – which caused me to seek her help – and the medical record that accompanied it, did, in fact lead her down the wrong path, initially. (but seriously, that was because I had lied by omitting important and relevant details to those doctors – which is a whole ‘nother sidebar, and another, longer blog post.) Getting to know me, over time, understanding and empathizing with my anger, even while she was uncertain if what caused it was real or perceived means she’s learned more about me, and ultimately has changed the diagnosis of my condition(s). She’s also confessed learning more, just through the current topical tech related headlines and news stories in addition to what I’d been telling her,- that the suspicions driving my anger and motivating my weird behavior, (about digital privacy/data collection + the overall Capitalist-Surveillance State) were well-founded, and that I was in a better position to know than most, at the time. Additionally, because I immediately refuted the initial diagnosis, yet have continued to benefit from talk therapy while refusing pharmaceuticals and haven’t experienced any drastic consequences similar to my major crisis…she’s comfortable with a more general catch-all GAD diagnosis. In case I’ve been too convoluted in this explanation, to come completely unveiled here, General Anxiety is way more manageable than BiPolar disorder, so you know, phew, I dodged a bullet there.

So, no, I am not just in denial that really, I’m bipolar and refuse meds, and my life would be so much easier if I would just take them. In fact, that’s more of a dysfunctional fantasy. Reality is that I just have this free-floating anxiety that looks for things to attach to, and, coupled with being a workaholic, that can be pretty toxic. I now treat my talk therapy as if it were chemo for a cancer I know I must have; I gotta get the treatment even if it partially kills me as we target this invisible, chronic “stress”.

I can’t deny that it seems to be working.