LIVING MY BEST LIFE WITH BIPOLAR
For Sarah, it’s an ongoing balancing act
It was a rainy Saturday morning when Sarah Walsh arrived on a damp sports field in her rugby gear, cheeks blotchy from a morning of uncontrollable crying. Overcome by emotion and her mind spiralling, the young winger noticed her parents were late to her game. When they did eventually arrive, she lost it. “I started yelling at them and couldn’t calm down or control my emotions at all,” explains Sarah, 25, who didn’t realise she was heading towards the peak of a terrifying manic episode. “I played the game and went from smiling one minute to crying the next. Afterwards, I still had so much energy, it felt like I could have run a marathon. Something wasn’t right.” Later that day the bubbly blonde was admitted to
Wellington Hospital’s mental health unit, where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Two years on, speaking to Woman’s Day at her and mother Jackie Lloyd’s Wellington home, Sarah opens up about her life-long struggle with the complex mood disorder.
She’s refreshingly honest about the challenging illness, which generally shows up between the ages of 15 and 40. Characterised by extreme emotions that shift from one end of the scale to the other, bipolar disorder causes fluctuation in mood – from very low and depressed to extremely elevated and manic. Usually there are far more lows than highs.
Sarah was 12 when she first experienced depression, which was triggered by schoolyard bullying.
“Unlike most people with bipolar disorder who’ll have the manic phase first, I started with depression,” she says tearfully, the memories of her troubled intermediate years still raw. “Depression is like being stuck in tar and you can’t move. Everything’s black and the simplest of tasks seem like Mount Everest.”
After school she’d go home and sleep, the depression accompanied by an anxiety that made her nauseous and shaky, and her hands clammy.
“I didn’t understand what I was feeling and thought it was normal for people to sleep a lot. I believed that’s what life was. At 12, I had my first thoughts about suicide.”
Manic episodes
By 18, Sarah believed her troubles would disappear as she excitedly started a tourism management degree. Yet her low moods only got worse.
“At school I felt I had a reason to cry because of the bullying, but I started getting really down again and didn’t want to socialise. I was withdrawn and crying for no reason.”
Given antidepressants by her GP, she carried on, relieved to finally wake one morning to find her depression had lifted. Instead, it was replaced with unexplainable euphoria.
“I believed my depression was cured and it felt so good!”
What Sarah didn’t realise is that the sudden shift in her mood – the boundless energy and stomach-turning exhilaration – was actually the feeling of mania.
“When you’re manic, you’re like a Christmas tree that’s lit up,” she explains. “My life felt like a fairytale. I felt in love even though I didn’t have a boyfriend. It’s literally like the song ‘Walking on Sunshine’.”
From wanting to sleep all the time and feeling suffocated by an invisible black cloud, Sarah was suddenly alive with vigour and desperate to fill every waking moment of her day.
“With mania, you’re up early and socialising, with this huge smile and all these great ideas. You become really productive and creative, and get so much done, which people think sounds awesome.”
Yet with a racing mind
and an unnaturally busy schedule, sleep becomes less of a priority and, of course, what goes up must come down. She remembers, “I was sleeping just two to three hours a night because I didn’t want to rest and lose that feeling. Then I’d wake up and the depression would be back. I’d think, ‘Aww, man, it’s over.’”
In 2015, with her bipolar still undiagnosed, a series of life stresses – including exams, a bad job and a failed relationship – triggered a suicide attempt.
“I was so manic and when you’re like that, you’re impulsive, so I took an overdose,” she tells. “Since it doesn’t happen instantly, I panicked and woke my parents.”
Taken to the hospital, where she stayed overnight and was visited by the community mental health team, Sarah was again diagnosed with depression.
“What I was feeling
was given a label, but I was confused because it just didn’t make sense.”
Later that year, she finished her degree and as the summer of 2016 rolled in, so did her most extreme of moods.
“By then I was sleeping very little but waking like it was the best sleep of my life,” she tells. “When I talked to people, I’d get tongue-tied because my mind was working way too fast for my mouth.
“Nothing could possibly keep up with me. I wanted to live life at 130%! I’d drive my car fast because it was such fun and I’d spend a lot of money at once because I had no self-control.”
She started noticing black figure-like flashes from her peripheral vision and became fixated on coincidences and their meanings.
For example, Sarah recalls, “The song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen is one of my favourites and I was driving home listening to it when it felt like this penny dropped. I thought Freddie Mercury was singing about bipolar because it says, ‘I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low.’ I believed he was singing to me.”
Laughing, she adds, “I was convinced, even though I know Freddie died many years ago!”
Increasingly concerned about her daughter’s emotional state, Jackie took Sarah back to the GP and got a referral for a psychiatrist.
Jackie says, “New Zealand is short of psychiatrists, so the appointment was well into the future.”
Before they could reach that date, though, the day of the rugby game arrived.
After Sarah left the sports field and returned home with her parents, who split not long after, she had an argument with her father and fell into such an emotional state that she couldn’t calm down.
Usual remedies like talking or having a bath weren’t working.
Jackie recalls, “She couldn’t speak rationally or control her anger and emotions, and I was really concerned. I was worried she might try another suicide attempt, so I took her to A&E.”
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by Saturday rugby players with gashes and broken arms, Sarah felt out of place not having any physical impairment. “Here I was in my robe just looking upset!” she says.
Yet the nurses applauded Sarah for coming in, explaining
how people in a manic state can go off the edge and end up arrested, sectioned under the Mental Health Act or even killing themselves.
After a week in the hospital’s voluntary mental health unit, she returned home with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
It took a further year and half to establish the right combination of mood stabilisers, which now help to significantly manage her condition.
With the assistance of good nutrition, rest, fitness and family support, Sarah is able to work full-time in a job she loves as a media account executive and recently celebrated her one-year anniversary with supportive and loving partner Beau Brown, 30.
Some days the dark cloud still appears for Sarah, or her mood secretly creeps up and sparks a flurry of creative ideas and energy. “It’s great in work meetings!” she jokes.
Now an advocate for mental health awareness, anti-bullying and suicide prevention, she’s supporting events including Mike King’s in-school Key to Life campaign, which she’s raising $5000 towards. She’s also determined to stir real conversation surrounding mental health and encourages others to speak out.
“There’s a stigma about mental illness and that we’re a certain kind of person, but it affects brilliant minds and brilliant people.”