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How Art Helps Me Navigate Bipolar: A Personal Reflection
What is your relationship with ‘madness’? Do you agree with the strictly bio-medical approach to madness, or believe that there might be something else to it? I have been struggling with identifying myself as bipolar, and instead, focused on art as a tool to help me to cope with overwhelming stigma. I write in my… Continue reading
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Loving myself is giving me power
I am here to reclaim my personal power. You see, I am diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I am originally from Russia. I am a single mother. I am being silenced every single day. But I have dreams. I want to become a published writer. I wrote three books. I want to raise a good man,… Continue reading
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Mental Asylum
On the painting called La Salpêtrière (1795), Tony Robert-Fleury depicts how ‘madness’ was dealt with during the age of enlightenment. The ‘mad elements’ of the society were institutionalized in asylums, together with criminals. If you had nothing better to do on a Sunday, you could go to the asylum and watch the ‘mad’ for a… Continue reading
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I started to trust my psychiatrist. I had to.
Describe one positive change you have made in your life. When one has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and totally unexpected, the natural reaction of any person would be a negation of it. And in all honesty, I am still not sure it applies to me (my diagnosis), but one thing I did learn during… Continue reading
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A job and bipolar disorder
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… Continue reading
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Awake in a psychiatric hospital
In my first psychiatric hospital (twenty years ago) in Purmerend, a small Dutch town, there were cameras everywhere, including in each patient’s room. When I noticed this phenomenon I wondered whether by some accident I had ended up in an episode of Big Brother, with a question -what to do about it? I had to… Continue reading
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Psychosis: Before and After
Prior to my first ‘psychosis’ and my first psychiatric hospital in a small Dutch town called Purmerend, I was leading quite a successful life, according to the society’s standards. I somehow managed to get a job as a financial analyst of banks (and later, as a portfolio manager) in a Dutch consultancy without any diploma… Continue reading
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And so, my psychiatric journey began…
It was twenty years ago when I entered my first psychiatric hospital, in a town called Purmerend, not far from Amsterdam. I was driven there by my boss and a colleague/dear friend, who were concerned about my health. I was in a ‘psychosis’, in which I experienced the most amazing things. The whole world appeared… Continue reading
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Stigma sucks
What’s the first impression you want to give people? The first impression I want to give people is that I am absolutely normal. And it’s the impression I usually give. It isn’t written on my face that I have the tendency for psychoses, and the majority of people find me pleasant, empathetic and friendly. I… Continue reading
About Me
I am a doctor of philosophy, a university lecturer, and a lover of cats, fine wine, dancing, theatre, and human eccentricity. I was born in the Soviet Union (Moscow). I am fluent in four languages, and have spent all my adult life studying (except from 18 to 19) working and living throughout Western Europe. Despite a surname-Netchitailova- that translates from Russian into English as “unreadable”, my greatest passions in life are reading and writing. My personal struggles have made me appreciate the manifestations of weirdness that exist everywhere.