 Have you ever wondered what it's like to have bipolar disorder? Well, if you have, you might want to stay tuned because I brought along a special guest. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And I am so excited. I haven't had a guest come on my channel for a little while. But today, today, folks, I have the wonderful Kim Charlson. So a little bit about how I met Kim. If you are not following me on Instagram, you need to. But I am very active in the mental health community. And I'm always trying to meet new people and learn new things and stuff like that. And I'm very familiar with a lot of different mental health issues, anxiety, depression, addiction. I'm learning a lot more about borderline personality disorder. But on my channel, I want to offer as much mental health help as possible. And I will admit when I don't know about something. So Kim actually has a mental health channel as well. And she's somebody who's been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So I was like, hey, girl, why don't you come on over and do a guest video? Talk about what's it like having a bipolar disorder. So please stick around. I will put links up here and down in the description and even in the comment so you can go check her out. Please show her some love, go subscribe to her channel. But I'm going to shut up now and take it away, Kim. Hey, guys, I'm Kim Charlson. Thank you, Chris, for having me on your channel. Today, Chris wanted me to talk a little bit about bipolar disorder. I am diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I got the diagnosis in February, but I've known for a while. I've self-diagnosed myself, I think, because I just knew that that's what was going on with me. I'll go over the signs and symptoms and things like that and what goes on when you have bipolar disorder. But pretty much I just knew that that's what was going on. And a therapist in my past told me that that might be what I was dealing with. And I kind of got mad and left that therapist. So until I was ready to commit to getting better and acknowledging what was going on with me, I didn't get a diagnosis. So, like I said, I'm newly diagnosed. So bipolar disorder is two poles. To have the diagnosis, you need to have both manic episodes and depressive episodes. And manic episodes might sound like, oh, this person's happy. Depressive episodes might be, oh, this person's sad. Not exactly. So bipolar disorder is huge shifts in mood, energy levels, how much you're doing activities and things like that. So when you're manic, it's not just being happy. You might feel a lot happier during your manic episode. You might, you might not. It depends. But it's all about energy you have and the lack of sleep you get and things like that. For me, my manic episodes are three days to maybe seven days. It depends. And I am go, go, go, go, go. I stay up a lot later. I don't get really a great night's sleep. And I always want to do new things. I started my YouTube channel, my blog, my Instagram, all of the stuff that I started to speak out about mental health was when I was going through some type of manic episode because I was ready to start all of these projects. A lot of the time you don't finish the projects because your concentration takes a hit during the manic episodes. And for me, I experience a lot of impulsivity, buying things. I shouldn't be getting tattoos, things like that, like an impulsive behavior. And also irritability is, is common. I experienced that a lot with my manic episodes. I'm very quick to anger. I can control myself, I don't have like an anger problem, I don't think, but it's definitely noticeable during the manic episode that I am going through some type of, you know, imbalance where I can't control my anger and I just get very angry really quickly. For the depressive episodes, for bipolar disorder, a lot of the time the person is going to be depressed more than manic. For bipolar one, the manic episodes are super, super, super high and the lows are, you know, not too bad. Bipolar two, you're not going as high, but you're going pretty low with the depressive episodes. And there's also cyclothymic disorder, which is when you're kind of going up and down and up and down and up and down really fast. You can have mixed symptoms and signs and all of that. Going on during the same week, you can feel all different things, gets very complicated. But back to what I was saying, depressive episodes are pretty much just going through your depression. It feels the same way. You're getting more sleep, probably eating more unless you are one of those people that eat less when you're depressed. You're not doing much, you're isolating yourself. You can also be irritable with the depressive episode. A lot of things that you would experience when you're just very depressed is the same with a depressive episode for bipolar disorder. And to have bipolar one, you need to have a certain amount of manic episodes with the depressive episodes, but they both need to be present to be bipolar. So a lot of the time people will get misdiagnosed. And that's pretty much what happened to me for years and years and years. I've been diagnosed with major depressive disorder or chronic depression and anxiety. When really what's been going on is I've had bipolar disorder and it feels really good to finally have the diagnosis. I think if you think that anything that I'm saying sounds familiar, like you might be going through any of that as well, you should absolutely speak with a therapist or a doctor because they can determine if you're going through these things. And you can go through the right course of treatment because if you have the depression diagnosis and you think that it might be bipolar disorder, you're going to be treated differently, treated as in medications and things like that. I've already seen a difference in changing my medications and things. So it's really important you get the right diagnosis. Having the diagnosis of bipolar disorder is... You know, there's pros and cons. I feel very, very validated that I finally have a diagnosis that I know that this is what's going on and I know that I can finally get better and I can manage this because you can manage your symptoms and you can manage your lifestyle. I know that it seems like it's a roller coaster because sometimes it is, but once you are familiar with what your signs and symptoms are, what is pushing you into a manic episode or a depressive episode? What are those triggers and how can you manage that? You'll be able to live a great life. But it's important to know that you can live just, you know, just as much of a great life and you can follow the same dreams that you wanted to if you didn't have that diagnosis as you can with a diagnosis because it doesn't mean anything. And bipolar disorder is highly stigmatized just because everybody uses bipolar as an adjective. And I think that that's one of the main issues about, you know, mental illness is we use... That's the stigma. I think that's where a lot of the stigma comes from. People are using these words as adjectives, like my anxiety, my OCD, my bipolar, my mom's bipolar, the weather's bipolar, everything's bipolar these days. I think that's important that we do talk about these diagnoses and that you see a face for it because I am doing fine. It has helped me back in the past. I'm not going to deny that. But moving forward, I'm trying to manage it and I know that I can manage it and live just a great life that I wanted to begin with. So thank you so much, Chris, for having me on your channel. I'm so glad to be here and talk about bipolar disorder. I know that you can probably tell me all the things I just said that I'm very passionate about it. So I hope that you guys learn something and I'll give this back to Chris. See you guys. All right. So thank you so much, Kim, for taking some time to come over and do a guest video on my channel. Like when she submitted this video to me and I watched it, I was like, Oh, man, like I love learning about this stuff so I can hopefully not only help more people but also have more empathy. Like that's one of the main reasons I have this channel because there's a lot of people who look at different mental illnesses and pick and choose which ones they're going to empathize with, you know what I mean? And I really appreciate and respect the fact that Kim is very open and honest. But like what I really loved about her video is how she offers some solutions and insight into how she lives this like great life, even with her diagnosis. And I always try to teach everybody who watches my channel like, yo, like, yes, we could be diagnosed with a mental illness, but that doesn't mean we can't live an amazing life. So again, thank you so much, Kim, for coming over and doing this guest video. Like I said, you can check out in the info card, you can check down in the description or in the comments. Kim will be here. So if you have any questions about bipolar disorder, please leave them down in the comments and Kim will be in here answering questions and stuff. But like I said, go over, subscribe to our channel, show some love for the mental health community. OK? But anyways, if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're new here, if you're just now meeting me, make sure you click that little round subscribe button. And if you got some time, you want to check out some other videos on my channel, you can click or tap right there. But right up there, there's Kim's channel again. All right, thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.