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Laura Riordan knows that feeling "too happy" can be dangerous. Most people don't have to worry about feeling too happy, but, when you live with Bipolar 1, that euphoric feeling can be a very real and very nefarious signal that you are slipping into mania. Once that slide happens, it is very difficult to course-correct and you may be flying high on a terrifying ride heading towards the inevitable crash of severe depression. This is what it is to live with the bipolar beast, as Laura calls it. She's learning to tame it.

Laura navigates life with bipolar disorder; she and her partner, Chris, are watchful for signs like losing sleep or spiking confidence. They know that coincidences can lead to magical thinking; they check in with each other. It is a delicate dance and finding that content, peaceful middle ground is part of the key to success regarding disease management.

Today, Laura is in training to become a Certified Peer Specialist so that she can help other people living with mental illness by supporting them, sharing her own story, and walking beside them as they navigate the complex and fractured mental health system.

Laura has benefitted from peer support and and Depression/Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) online support groups, which she writes about in the essay she wrote for us a few years ago, "How Bipolar Support Groups Helped Change My Life", which Laura reads aloud in this episode of the show.

Laura is open about how stigma can inhibit help-seeking and can encourage people who are suffering to mask and hide their symptoms, which can be catastrophic. Laura also shares her personal experiences about trial-and-error medication management, side-effects, spotting triggers, setting boundaries, and taking care of herself.

If you’re searching for bipolar disorder support, DBSA resources, peer support specialist insights, coping strategies, or an honest conversation about non-linear recovery, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and be sure to leave us a review!

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

https://recoverydiaries.org/

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Casey Cannizzaro is a mental health and addictions clinician and three-time Recovery Diaries author, but he's far, far more than that. Casey's writing on our site-- we encourage you to voraciously devour each of his essays, findable via the links to come-- is exhilarating; his voice is unique, roving, insatiable, and unlike anything else we've published. Casey is just like Recovery Diaries itself: the perfect antidote to AI slop and Chat GPT sterility. His writing will knock your socks off, and make you forget your feet are cold.

But we're not just here to brag about this really talented guy; we sit down with Casey to talk to him openly about his path from his last stretch of treatment into the work he does now, including substance use counseling, LGBTQIA+ focused care, and admissions for a fully virtual intensive outpatient program. Casey talks about his sexuality, his family, his ups, his downs, and he does it with integrity and flair.

Maybe one of the loveliest things about this interview is that it's an opportunity for two men who live with mental illness and aren't afraid to be vulnerable about their emotions to connect with each other, and share their mutual appreciation and respect for the other. A little love-bombing is healthy!

During the show, Casey reads his beautiful essay “The (im)possibilities of Love with Bipolar,” a story of devotion, medication, relapse, and grief told with Casey's signature wordplay and vivid imagery. "Recovery is possible. Recovery is fucked," Casey says. Who could disagree with that assessment? If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find these stories. And after you've listened, check out Casey's other two, fabulous essays on our site: Six Days on the Good Unit: Hospitalized and Alive and After I Destroyed Myself: Fast and Furious with Bipolar Disorder and Addiction; you'll be glad you did.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

https://recoverydiaries.org/

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Natalia Aiza, LPC, is the founder of Kairos Wellness Collective in Boulder, Colorado. She is educated, well-informed, articulate, empathic, and aware. She's just the kind of person you'd think would be perfectly well-suited to quickly identify and address a mental health challenge in herself, right? Well, not so fast.

Natalia believes now that she was living with OCD since age seven, but she didn't recognize it for years; even while training and working as a therapist.

Natalia describes her early experiences with motherhood, plagued by incessant, intrusive thoughts about harming her baby, but even though she managed to get through these thoughts, soon, another nagging obsession took that one's place: she needed to control everything about her child's (and later, her children's) eating. For her, it was just a concerned mom being mindful about “healthy eating” In reality, this was uncontrolled, untreated, and unidentified OCD running amok, resulting in food shopping trips taking multiple hours, methodically scanning labels on every possible food item, and placing unhealthy ideas about food into her children's minds. Natalia openly describes the shame, guilt, grief, and other negative consequences of what she now calls orthorexia-by-proxy; a disordered obsession and compulsion with the healthy eating of others. A few years ago, she wrote a wonderful, open and honest essay about her particular form of OCD, and she reads it aloud here on the show.

Natalia, now successfully managing this mental health challenge (with grown children who are able to joke about it with her) discusses with us why reassurance-based talk therapy can unintentionally enable the OCD brain, and how exposure and response prevention (ERP) helps you stop responding to intrusive thoughts with rituals and safety behaviors. Natalia discusses SSRIs, what it means when OCD gets quieter instead of disappearing (it may very well never disappear, and Natalia still has her moments of struggle), and why access to proper OCD treatment is still a significant public health problem.

It is so easy for OCD to get missed, even by a professional, and that's why our conversation with Natalia Aiza is so important; so many people out there are struggling with something they may not understand; a mental health challenge that presents itself under the guise of something "good" or "healthy", but one that actually has the potential to cause harm. Subscribe for more Recovery Diaries in Depth, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review if you enjoyed our conversation with Natalia.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

https://recoverydiaries.org/