"My bold declaration had left my graduate school classmate, Nicole, with a look that was hard to read at first, but I concluded that she was about to alert the authorities, and they were coming to take me to the psychiatric hospital-a place that was unfortunately all too familiar to me. After 12 such hospitalizations, and a bipolar diagnosis, I was always on high alert. I had to be."
"Yet, there I was, having put enough of the pieces of my life back together to go to Columbia University and get my master's in education. And despite major imposter syndrome, I was doing well in my classes. But I was certainly not confident that this would continue and was certain that the proverbial "other shoe" was about to drop. What happened next was not only amazing, but life-changing. I braced myself for Nicole's reply, and suddenly her dumbfounded look turned into a huge grin."
I experienced twelve psychiatric hospitalizations and a bipolar diagnosis that kept me chronically vigilant. I returned to school, earned a master's in education from Columbia, and struggled with intense imposter syndrome while managing daily life. A spontaneous remark to a classmate led to an unexpected invitation to a Buddhist meeting, which I attended and later embraced. Over the following twenty years I became a practicing Buddhist and achieved recovery from mania, depression, and psychosis. For the last fifteen years I have not experienced those symptoms while continuing the same therapy and medication regimen.
Read at Psychology Today
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