“If someone has bipolar disorder in your life, help them grow.”
She was a freshman when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now, Alex Heller has made a film about the year that followed ... #tribeca2022
She was a freshman when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now, Alex Heller has made a film about the year that followed ... #tribeca2022
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00:00I think if you find out that someone close to you or in your life has bipolar disorder,
00:06you should definitely be there for them, care for them, give them some empathy and give
00:10them some slack, but also, like, help them grow.
00:16A diagnosis like this is something that everyone takes on around you.
00:31It's not just your life that's being affected, it's people who care about you, definitely
00:38people who live with you, but I think, I just have so much gratitude for my own family
00:48and I have so much compassion for other people's families and just, everyone knows someone
00:52who has a mental illness, it's like, it really affects everyone you know, in a way, like
00:57everyone close to you and everyone who cares about you.
01:08It sounds like you're experiencing episodes of mania and depression.
01:13What I'm leading to is bipolar disorder.
01:22I remember being diagnosed with bipolar disorder very clearly and that scene in the movie
01:27is almost exactly pulled from my experience.
01:32It's a fictional story, but everything about mental illness and the nitty gritty parts
01:37of the treatment are all pulled from my life.
01:40I had had a long journey with mental illness before that diagnosis, like in high school,
01:48but I kind of went through different diagnoses and different medications and I was in therapy
01:56since I was 15, but nothing ever really quite worked for me and then I went to college and
02:05I decided to just forget it all and leave it behind me and then I had a massive breakdown
02:09in my freshman year.
02:10I found through my own research that a lot of people are diagnosed with ADHD before they're
02:17correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
02:20So I came across that realization writing this paper for school and I was like, I have
02:26check, check, check, check every single symptom of this or whatever.
02:30So when the doctor told me that I almost definitely might have bipolar disorder, it was, it made
02:37complete sense.
02:49It's become such a community because I have thousands of followers and I just, I interact
02:56with these people every day and we like laugh about this stuff together because it, you
03:07have a chronic illness of any kind, like it's never going away.
03:13There's nothing you can do about it.
03:15It's hard.
03:16It sucks.
03:17It's hard on your body and it's expensive and so what can you do other than kind of
03:23build a community and find some sort of relief?
03:28For me, that's, that's through laughing about certain things.
03:31Before the shoot of our movie, I would have probably said to my 16 year old self, like,
03:40you are a damaging human.
03:45You are about to go through some really hard years and do a lot of bad, but you'll get
03:52through it and then you'll be fine.
03:55But after this, after this shoot, I probably would just want to give my 16 year old self
04:02like a hug.