How I Accepted My Mental Illness Through Language and Why Preference Matters

They told me I should say I was a person with bipolar, not a bipolar person. And then I began policing the language of other advocates…

Words are complex. The act of naming is so powerful that it can change our entire understanding of something. The diagnosis of bipolar and the ability to provide a name for my symptoms and experience created both a suffocating sense of doom and a profound relief. This naming, this grouping of random items into one solid thing, meant that I wasn’t just m…