Do you enjoy your job?
I love my job, and in general, I love working. But it hasn’t always been easy, in fact to get where I am now, it took me massive efforts to achieve.
I teach at universities, and try to navigate it around my bipolar disorder. I have vulnerability to psychoses. I don’t have mood swings, but I do have a fragile mental health. I had to learn how to say no, and I had to learn how to pace myself. I have an over-active mind. I always want to do something: work, write, work more, write more. At some points I just have to tell myself ‘stop’ and abandon unrealistic ambitions. I am not interested in climbing the career ladder anymore, I just want to do well at what I have as my current job.
Many people with the diagnosis of severe mental illness struggle to work. I don’t know many people who, with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, have a job. I have the feeling that it’s due to the doses of psychiatric medication they receive. I can only talk about my personal experience but there was a moment in my life (two years ago) when I thought that I wouldn’t be able to work anymore. I was on a high dose of one antipsychotic, and the side effects were devastating. I had no desire to live, and lost my ability to enjoy the simplest things in life, such as nice food, a walk in the park, reading or watching a movie, and most importantly, write, which is perhaps my biggest passion.
It was only when the dose of my medication was reduced to the absolute minimum that I started to ‘breathe’ again. My doctor also added another medication, and the combination seems to work, at least, for now. I consider myself as fully recovered, where I enjoy life again, and where I derive pleasure from working.
Work is an incredible confidence booster for anyone, not just for those who have mental health issues. It gives purpose to life, brings income, and makes one feeling ‘capable’. I do have to organize my work around my fragile mental health, where I prefer to work mostly from home, but it gives me the feeling that somehow I am still within the society, instead of being an outsider in social aspects of our life. Work is a place for networking and socializing.
Some days are more difficult than others, however, and sometimes, I wish that I could work less, or have the possibility not to work at all. But I don’t have such luxury and so, I work.
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