Welcome to Someone’s Shot of Whiskey Podcast! Get yourself a cup of coffee or whiskey and let’s dive in…
Each episode I will provide the audio as wells as the episode transcript. So everything you’re reading below, is actually what was said in the episode.
On this 2nd episode, I’m chatting about:
- My Bipolar 2 + Depression/Anxiety Diagnosis
- What the journey has been and looks like going forward for me
- Reassuring those who are in the midst of their own battles
If you’re ready for no B.S. and life unfiltered, keep reading and keep listening!
Your Value is Not Defined by Your Disorder
Welcome back to someone’s shot of whiskey. I am your host, Tiffany Turner Moon. This is another mini-episode. If you follow me on social media, then, you know, by the time this comes out, a couple of weeks ago, I revealed to my community that I had been diagnosed with bipolar two, which is a disorder, a severe depression and anxiety. And I announced it rather, or I shared it rather with my community with a t-shirt, a graphic t-shirt. The t-shirt actually says your value is not defined by your disorder. My therapist actually said that to me like some months ago and I wasn’t ready to hear it when she diagnosed me. I was just kinda like, whatever, you’re just saying that, cause you don’t have to deal with it. And then I realized that she’s right, this is true.
I have never allowed myself to be defined by anything in life that has happened to me. So why would I allow this to define me? Don’t get me wrong though. It was very, very hard.
When you’re in the thick of it, you don’t want to hear anything that anyone says. I don’t know why. I just heard that TikTok audio, into the thick of it into the thick of it, but that’s what I was in the thick of it, back in December. And so I thought I was suffering from burnout and I spoke about that on my platform. I took two weeks off of work and at the end of the year, I was giving myself time to refresh and get it together. I took a break from social media and then I dove right back in January and thought everything would be fine. It probably wasn’t until late January that I really just completely had a breakdown.
I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I’m tired of feeling like I can get so much done in one day and knock out all of these projects. And then days later be completely exhausted and can’t do anything. Not want to get out of bed.
Hindsight is always, almost always 2020. And I really saw like, I see now what I thought was just burnout and just tired of the routine was actually like deep depression and my highs and my lows with my bipolar disorder. And so let me just let me kind of dispel some of the things that I thought a bipolar diagnosis meant.
One, I thought it meant I was angry all the time and I was like, I can’t be bipolar because I’m not angry, not all the time. My therapist was like that’s not what bipolar means, nice try though. One it does not mean that you’re always angry too. It does not mean that the only outlets, like the only two reactions you have are anger or happiness. So my diagnosis with bipolar two is actually I have extreme highs and with my extreme highs, I am euphoric. I am happy. I am inspired. I’m getting stuff done. I’m energetic. I mean, I am knocking through projects like it is nobody’s business, but my lows are very, very low, I’m in the abyss. So I am upset. I am sad. I’m depressed. I don’t want to get out of bed. Typically with bipolar to the manic episodes as they call them can last, I think anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.
But anyway, long story short I told my community that, you know, I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar two, with severe depression and anxiety. And it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders because I’ve been taking social media breaks and I continue to say, oh, I’m just taking a social media break because I’m burnt out and I’m tired. When in reality I’m depressed and don’t want to get up.
I don’t have it in me to create, but I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason. And I’ve always been a firm believer that, you know, what happens to me personally, is a testimony and can help somebody else. So I really felt led to kind of share that and make as always my platform, a safe place to speak. And I’m hoping that’s what it did. I didn’t get like any negative feedback. I got a lot of positive feedback, a lot of affirmations, a lot of people saying, we’ve got you, we’re here, whatever you need, we’re proud of you. But nobody is more proud of me besides my husband. Nobody is more proud of me than myself. Because it was rough guys. It was really rough.
The diagnosis was rough, even though I’ve been experiencing it for years undiagnosed. It’s really hard when you’re given a label. And you, again, almost allow that label to define you. So back to the shirt, it says your value is not defined by your disorder. Anyone who is listening to this, I’m going to say it again, your value, which is unmeasurable. Your value is not defined by your disorder or your diagnosis. I needed to hear it a couple months ago. I still need to hear it every once in a while. And I’m sure there’s somebody out there who needs to hear it too.
So I just want to say that and make sure that I’m pouring into people as people have poured into me because I fully believe had I not had the tribe, which consists of my mom and my husband and my daughter and my best friends and had I not had the medical team, which consists of, you know, my regular primary care physician and my psychiatrist and my therapist, my psychologist. I don’t know how this would, I do know how this would ended up. I would have stayed in my depression.
So I feel it was really good to not fully be on the other side of it, but to be at a side where I can see my head is above water and I have a routine down and I now know how to combat what’s going on with me. But it was rough. I mean, like I know I keep saying it, but it was rough. And I feel like, social media, a lot of the time, I feel like we don’t talk enough about our lows and being planted.
Like I said in my first episode, we don’t talk about being planted. We talk about blooming and the sunshine, but we don’t talk about being planted and the darkness that comes from being planted and how we have to really draw on our strength and our faith and our family to surface and come to where we are blooming and sharing everything that we’ve learned in the season pass. So I just wanted to make sure that I shared that, like I said, this is totally a mini-episode. It is not a long one. I just want to come up here and do my little quick rant that usually I do on my Instagram stories, but I decided one of the reasons I started the podcast was that I no longer want to do rants on Instagram stories. I’m still doing those. So don’t get disappointed.
I’m still going to do the Instagram story rants, but I wanted to put it in a format where it would live forever, where it’s evergreen and podcasts are evergreen. I own it. It’s mine. And I’m at Liberty to say what I want. And with that, you don’t have to subscribe if you don’t want to hear it. Some of my followers, or I guess anybody deals with this, they may say, I don’t like what you said, or I don’t like how you said that, or I don’t come to you for that. I come to you for this. And so the podcast is kind of like, I guess the podcast is my safe place. All my platforms, I try to make a safe place for people.
But the podcast in particular for me is really my safe space because this is where I will talk about what I want to talk about, how I feel about it and what I think. And eventually, hopefully when I have management that will remain the same because if not, I’m not signing with you guys. If you’re listening.
Anyhow, this is a mini-episode. I’m your host, Tiffany Turner Moon, just coming up real quick to do a quick chit-chat. I will have somebody on later in the season to really dive deep into mental health and social media and how the two intertwine. But I thought I’d kind of kick off the beginning of the season episode with this one, because it was a big deal for me to reveal what I did on social media. And I know that there has to be other people struggling in silence.
And I just want people to know you’re not alone. You have people here rooting for you who don’t even know you, don’t know you by name, but please believe I’m rooting for you. And it’s okay to be planted because with the planting comes the roots and with the planting comes growth. So hang in there guys. And yeah, I’ll see you guys for the next episode.
