Despite what many people think, mental illness isn't just about "being sad" or hallucinating or feeling suicidal - mental illness is about physical pain too. One of the ways people get diagnosed with illnesses like depression is due to physical complaints (what doctors call somatic pain). When you have a mental illness, not only your brain hurts, but your body does too.

By now we know the symptoms of bipolar disorder - wild mood swings from euphoria (mania or hypomania) to depression. We know that bipolar disorder comes in lots of variants, bipolar 1, bipolar 2, cyclothmia, rapid-cycling and so forth. But when are the symptoms of bipolar disorder not bipolar disorder? Are there other illnesses that can account for bipolar symptoms? When is bipolar disorder not bipolar disorder?

It's not my fault. We say it. We think it. We spread it around. It's supposed to assuage our guilt and make others believe we didn't do anything wrong, when maybe we did. But occasionally, someone has a backbone. Not a politician, not a famous person, not a person in a position of power, but your average person that you interact with, they are capable of admitting they did something less-than-perfectly. But never, ever is it a doctor's fault. It doesn't matter what they do, or what they say, it's never their fault. They never make a mistake. They never have a bad day. They never make an error in judgement. They never write the wrong name of a drug down on a script. Never, is it ever, their fault.

I have spent many months of my life with an inability to feel pleasure - this is known as anhedonia. This means that no matter what happened, no matter how great it was, I couldn't feel happy about it. I couldn't feel happy at all. However, there is something I have learned about anhedonia, even without an ability to be happy, I can be thankful.

One of the myths about mental illness medication is that it is used to control its taker. In other words, by taking the pills prescribed by a psychiatrist you become a pliable, braindead lemming. So, let's take a look at my pliable, braindead, lemming life.

Everyone who has been bipolar, or mentally ill in general, for longer than about a day-and-a-half has experienced failed treatments. We've all had medications that didn't work. Therapy that didn't help. Lifestyle changes that did nothing. And so on, and so forth. In fact, most of us experience months of treatment failure before we find treatment that works for our mental illness. But after years of failure and trying everything you can think of and still being sick, how does one keep going? How do you keep going when mental illness treatment doesn't work?

There is a popular misconception that depression is the same thing as sadness. I understand why you might think this if you don't have experience with depression. Depression is sad; it's true. But depression is a lot of other things as well. It's a whole new echelon of sadness. It's sadness 2.0. This morning is a good example - I woke up depressed and the experience is nothing like sadness.

I talk about bi-polar disorder. As in, two poles - mania/hypomania and depression. The name is extremely descriptive. But as it turns out, there is something in the middle (besides normalcy, whatever that is); it's called a mixed mood episode. Mixed moods possess distinct characteristics of both depression and mania. Mixed moods severely impair judgement and carry a significant risk of suicide.

Recently a commenter asked how to tell her boyfriend about her bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, this commenter had negative past experiences in dealing with her bipolar disorder in relationships. In fact, people had broken up with her because of her disorder. A scene that is far too common in mental illness. So, when is the right time to tell the person you're dating you have bipolar disorder?

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. Quentin Crisp I think this quote is funny. It made me smile. So I posted it on Facebook and Twitter. People didn't seem to like that. People seemed to think it was a general statement of affairs and there was something wrong with it because it wasn't "positive." It wasn't "recovery focused." But seriously, why is everything a serious statement on serious issues? Why is everything about our lives and our recovery and our mental illness? Why can't we just laugh at ourselves?