Living With Bipolar, The Desi Version

Trigger warning: Mentions of bipolar disorder, addiction, and suicidal thoughts.

When Bipolar Meets South Asian Denial

So here’s the thing. What does it feel like to admit, even anonymously, that I live with bipolar disorder?

I’m Desi, and that makes this harder. In our South Asian communities, mental health is the one thing that stays hidden behind a ghoongat for most of us, across genders. For years, I kept it hidden too. It took me from my late twenties all the way into my forties to finally accept it.

I’ve been moody all my life. But my first real depression hit at 17 or 18. That’s when I started smoking. Within a few years, it was a pack a day, and I was drinking heavily too. The addictive behavior started there, long before I understood what I was really dealing with. At home I was often amped up, irritable, quick to snap. My temper could be explosive, especially with my husband. I told myself it was just who I was, difficult, dramatic. I didn’t know then it was part of the illness.

A couple of years into my marriage, a doctor suggested bipolar. I didn’t believe it was real. I thought it just meant you were mad. I laughed in his face, walked out, and numbed myself with alcohol. How could that be me when I had a job, a spouse, a home?

Inside, though, things weren’t normal. Mood swings, anger, reckless spending, bursts of frantic, purpose-driven work where I’d take on more and more, accomplishing a lot in record time. Then the crash: exhaustion, despair, a hollow self-hate I couldn’t explain and that fueled my addictions. I’d quit jobs “on a whim.” Of course, it wasn’t really that. It was the bottom of the loop, the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.

How Bipolar Almost Cost Me My Marriage

To put it bluntly, I made for a difficult partner with my unpredictability. We reached a breaking point, and therapy was the only thing that kept us from falling apart. It gave me a language to communicate better with my spouse. It gave us tools to survive together. But therapy didn’t erase the extremes. I still cycled between the highs and lows.

Mental Health Is Not Physical Health (or So They Say)

So in spite of therapy and the symptoms persisting, for years I told myself that either I wasn’t trying hard enough or there had to be another explanation. My family history is full of diabetes, thyroid, and heart disease. The “devil’s trifecta.” I clung to that. Every three months I’d get tested, convinced something physical was driving my moods.

I stuck with therapy, continuing to believe I was the problem. That I was just a cruel bi***, a drama queen. I even remember one therapist telling me I liked the attention. That was more acceptable to me than believing that I was someone who might be living with a mental health condition.

When I Finally Chose to Get Help

By my 40s, I couldn’t keep pretending. The suicidal thoughts scared me, not just flashes but detailed planning. When they grew too loud, I’d picture my mother in my head: “Ok darling, that’s enough. We need to find a doctor now.” She never actually knew. My parents still don’t.

So I kept going back to therapy, but I never told my therapist the full truth. A part of me still wanted to believe it had to be something else, anything but my mind.

What finally pushed me to seek real help wasn’t only fear for myself. It was my son. I could see how my temper, my moods, my absence were shaping him, hurting his self-esteem. I knew I couldn’t be responsible for breaking another human being.

What It Takes to Manage Bipolar

Here’s what I’ve learned since: managing bipolar isn’t about one magic solution. It’s not just medication. It’s not just therapy. It’s a routine, a discipline. The same habits that help any human being: sleep, exercise, food become non-negotiable. For me, that means no late nights, no junk or heavily processed food. Exercise, even when I don’t feel like it. And above all: sleep, sleep, sleep. (Definitely no alcohol or any other stimulants or depressants.) 

And of course, what steadies me most is the unconditional love of those I trust with my diagnosis. They don’t always understand it, but they stay.

It sounds boring, but it’s survival. Without discipline, I slip. With it, I get to show up for my loved ones and myself.

The ‘Ring’ of Mental Health Stigma

Recently, something happened that gave me the best way to describe stigma. I accidentally dropped a ring I love into the toilet bowl. I fished it out with gloves, scrubbed it, soaked it overnight in disinfectant. Rationally, I knew it was clean, cleaner than plenty of things I’ve eaten without thinking twice, and yet it took me days to wear it again. Even when I did, my brain whispered: ew, gross. That’s stigma. You can be treated, recovered, doing well and still there’s that irrational “ick” that lingers in people’s minds, and even in your own. Maybe that’s why I’m still choosing to tell this story anonymously. I hope one day to break free.

Finding Hope and Support

If you’re here, you’re already ready for something and that’s a big step. These were my symptoms, yours may look completely different. If any of this feels familiar though, it’s still worth getting checked out. PsychologyToday.com is a good place to start, you can search for therapists, psychiatrists, and all kinds of mental health experts near you. But sometimes support shows up in unexpected ways. I found my psychiatrist because I broke down in front of my acupuncturist, and she connected me.

I love India in all its colors, languages, spirit, and diversity. I just wish we extended that richness into our thinking too. To accept that speaking about mental health doesn’t make you weak, and to admit that silence only feeds pain, making people slip further into quiet suffering, into addiction, and sometimes even suicide. I live with bipolar and I’m learning to let it not define me, taking it one day at a time. 

In the end, I want to leave you with this: needing support doesn’t mean I’m less. Some people are roses, blooming without help. Others, like me, are jasmine creepers. We may need a trellis to grow, but our lives are just as fragrant.