{"id":1424,"date":"2011-07-11T13:13:53","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T20:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2025-11-02T20:25:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T03:25:19","slug":"the-world-according-to-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1424","title":{"rendered":"The World According to “them”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is under the Twirling My Skirt<\/em> category because\u00a0 when I wrote this I was pissed as hell.\u00a0 Several months ago at my last Doctor’s visit.\u00a0 My Doctor’s told me she thinks I have Bipolar Disorder.\u00a0\u00a0 And the basis for this lovely denouncement of my mental status….\u00a0 my promiscuity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was shocked.\u00a0 But should I have been?\u00a0 She’s happily married, happy in her life with her new baby, living the Armenian Wife’s dream.\u00a0 And if I find happiness outside that “norm” how can I possibly be normal?\u00a0 And according to her narrow minded belief’s if I’m not normal I must not be sane!\u00a0 Top it off, she admits she has watched a family member who is Bipolar destroy those around them by denying they have a problem. (Got teary-eyed telling me.)\u00a0 So she’s prejudiced to see this disorder in ALL her patients.
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I immediately look around at my relationships in my life and scrutinize them to see if I’m “destroying” anyone.\u00a0 Other than my ex-husband (who doesn’t realize how much happier he’ll be without me demanding unrealistic expectations from him) and my religious family members who worry I’m going to hell due to my pre-<\/span> post<\/span>–\u00a0 UN-marital sex , I couldn’t see anyone I was doing harm to! <\/strong><\/p>\n

My kids are loved and fed and I do a hell of a job as a mother.\u00a0 Am I perfect?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Do I lose it sometimes?\u00a0 Yes, because no one is perfect.\u00a0 But doesn’t the definition of BI-polar mean I should have mood swings?\u00a0 EXTREME mood swings?\u00a0 Irrational moments of bliss and then irrational moments of sadness?\u00a0 Well, guess what.. I do get irrational moments of bliss… DURING SEX!!\u00a0 Haha!\u00a0 But I don’t get irrational moments of sadness just because I’m not FUCKING someone!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did I mention I was pissed.\u00a0\u00a0 Breathe, Heather, breathe.
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See, according to my doctor (who admitted that the patients she has been right about this have all thanked her and the patients who’s she was wrong about this did get angry… I wonder if any of THOSE patients ever forgave her!!)\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry.. sidetrack..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My Doctor said, “People who engage in risky behavior, in full knowledge of the consequences and disregard them, these people may be Bipolar Disorder.” <\/strong><\/p>\n

“So race car drivers are all Bipolar?” I question her.\u00a0 She babbles on about a study being done to measure the serotonin of risk takers and its high and she’s amazed I brush that aside. <\/strong><\/p>\n

OF COURSE its high!\u00a0 A percentage of any population has to be risk takers.. or how would anything get done!\u00a0 Risk Takers went after the big woolly mammoth.\u00a0 Risk Takers left their village to begin a new village far away.\u00a0 Risk Takers got on that boat and went to America.\u00a0 Risk Takers took that idea\/ invention and pushed it into reality.\u00a0 Risk Takers look for, reach for, and grasp the Brass Ring.\u00a0 I ask you, where would the human race BE without the Risk Taker’s genetics popping up every so often in the gene pool!.
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What I don’t get is WHEN Risk Takers as a group suddenly became Bipolar Disorder!\u00a0 Who decided that trait falls into any disorder much less THAT disorder?!?\u00a0 And WHO decreed it had to\u00a0 be “FIXED”!<\/strong><\/p>\n

To be fair.. if you swing into a depression that immobilizes you for days, weeks and months on end and swing out of it into an equal extreme, I can understand how you would need and want drugs to balance that out.\u00a0 But what if you don’t swing into such extremes… are you still Bipolar?\u00a0 How can anyone justify saying that?\u00a0 Because I live my life the way I want?\u00a0 Isn’t there a difference between accepting the consequences of my actions and denying the risks?\u00a0 I seem to see the difference, can’t they?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AM I YELLING??!!…..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 sorry… this is a personal pet peeve button she’s pushing.\u00a0 Anothers\u00a0 judgment of me… drives me insane.
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And that’s where we come to the crux of it.\u00a0 THEY<\/em> have decreed my behavior abnormal.. yet it seems completely normal to me.\u00a0 And I’ve met many (MANY!!) who feel\/ believe\/ behave\/ the same way.\u00a0 Are we ALL Bipolar? <\/strong><\/p>\n

“Yes,” my doctor said when I put that point to her. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I was stunned!\u00a0 The closed-mindedness of it all.\u00a0 My automatic response, “Well, I’d rather be one of “them”; happy, hanging with like-minded people, than be your definition of normal and be unhappy.” <\/strong><\/p>\n

All this because I wear condoms in sex but prefer not to do so with oral sex.\u00a0\u00a0 Because I’ve made a personal choice, knowing there “MIGHT” be risks (and pretty slim ones at that), she now worries I “Might” be Bipolar.\u00a0 Never mind the “Choice”<\/em> I make to drive over the speed limit (risk of dying a horrible death in a car accident).\u00a0 Never mind the “Choice”<\/em> I make to let the sun burn me occasionally (Cancer! Cancer!).\u00a0 Never mind the “Choice”<\/em> I make to leave my house every day knowing I might die in some unforeseen way.\u00a0 We all make those choices and take those risks in little ways every day.\u00a0 Some of us take more in some ways, hello Stockbrokers!\u00a0 Some of us take fewer.\u00a0 Some of us take none. <\/strong><\/p>\n

To me it comes down to the same thing as religion.\u00a0 If it makes me happy, if I harm no one, why are you trying to tell me I cannot be me.\u00a0 Why is my being unique, being me, being different than YOUR norm, have to be labeled a disorder and wrong.\u00a0 Because I’m putting my health at risk?\u00a0 Is it healthier to be unhappy?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lets see how “healthy” it is to find a new doctor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bottom line… she is wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 She is making a judgment based on her definition of “risky behavior” and\u00a0 her\u00a0 own traumatic experience with it.\u00a0\u00a0 And that is bad medicine.
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I always thought smoking cigarettes was an addition… now I wonder if the medical community may soon dub it a symptom of Bipolar Disorder!
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is under the Twirling My Skirt category because\u00a0 when I wrote this I was pissed as hell.\u00a0 Several months ago at my last Doctor’s visit.\u00a0 My Doctor’s told me she thinks I have Bipolar Disorder.\u00a0\u00a0 And the basis for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twirling-my-skirt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3176,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/3176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}