My mother is bipolar, or manic depressive as it is more popularly known, and I recently started blogging about what it was like to grow up with a bipolar parent. As a conscientious blogger I get daily Google alerts for the phrase "bipolar disorder" just to keep track of who is talking about the issue and meet fellow bloggers, and that is how I met Donald Kern, a California-based therapist who — since he too has bipolar disorder — specializes in treating bipolar patients.
"How interesting," I thought. "A therapist with bipolar disorder; who knew?" My mom has never been highly functional at the best of times, and unfortunately she pulled me along for many of her great manic adventures. When I saw that Kern had written a book about his own experiences that led up to his becoming a therapist, I knew I wanted to read it. Mind Gone Awry has given me insight into what my mother was experiencing in a way that I never quite understood before. In fact, while I still cannot forgive a lot of what I was put through as a child and teenager, I can review those experiences with a slightly softer heart after reading this book.
On his blog, Bipolar By Chance, Kern states,
Bipolar since the age of 25, I have gained a lot of knowledge about the disorder, not only as an author, but as a licensed therapist bent on treating those who share this diagnosis. I also share my stories with my clients, tales of dark passages through madness, sprinkled with novel, lighthearted punctuation on occasion. Hearing my reflections about my delusional state from the past seems to help my clients relate to their own traumas and their own struggles with maladaptive thoughts, behaviors which stretch the meaning of normalcy. “I feel heard,” they say. So at some point I started to write my stories down, which gave me a reason to write, Mind Gone Awry. If hearing my experiences helps others to come to their own epiphanies about their lives, it is a good thing.
Kern had his first manic experience at age 25 in 1973 when he started to feel that television movies were speaking to him and sending him messages, that winos were sending him secret messages, and that he had in fact been chosen by the President of the United States to be his spiritual adviser on all issues. Suddenly I was reminded of two personal experiences. In the first I came home from school and the TV was in the trash room of our apartment building and all of the electrical appliances in the house were unplugged. My mother told me that "they" were trying to contact her through the electric sockets, but most especially the TV and radio.
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