Courtesy of Yvonne Liu I’ve struggled with depression, but kept it secret because that’s what my family taught me to do. At 30 I was diagnosed with cyclothymia, a milder form of bipolar disorder. For another 30 years, I parked blocks away from my therapist so no one could see me.
It was late afternoon, and I needed to study for final exams in my first year of high school in Michigan, but couldn’t muster the energy to study French conjugations or the life cycles of plants. Instead, I found myself curled up in a fetal position, my pillow over my head. I soon fell into a deep sleep.
Fourteen hours later, I woke up and rubbed my eyes. I could do this, I assured myself. I forced myself to get back to work and be successful.
My parents and I never talked about these episodes. As in many Asian families, we treated psychological problems as a taboo subject. It wasn’t until 16 years later that I was diagnosed with a mood disorder.
It made me realize I needed help, but still, I tried to keep my diagnosis secret because of the stigma around mental health issues. In my family, mental illness was a sign of weaknessGrowing up, I watched my mother attempt suicide twice, and my aunt try once as well. Embarrassment and a lack of access to Chinese-speaking psychiatrists and counselors prevented them from receiving the treatment they needed.
My family and I subscribed to a traditional cultural belief that mental illness is a sign of weakness that people should keep hidden. Three years ago, the parents of a Chinese-American friend took him to the emergency room for extreme anxiety. Yet he balked when the doctor referred him to a psychiatrist, saying, “I’m not crazy.
“Asian Americans seek professional mental-health services at the lowest rate compared to all other races and ethnicities in the country. Looking back, it’s no wonder I sometimes wanted to run away and hide. Abandoned as a newborn in Hong Kong, I lived in an orphanage for 15 months before the people who would become my parents adopted me.
While I felt gratitude towards my adoptive parents for choosing me, my mother was a paranoid borderline narcissist and my father often lashed out physically. Yet I soldiered on just as my adoptive father did, despite his own ongoing troubles with depression. I had to pretend to be OKEven before society ascribed the moniker “model minority” to Asian Americans, my family’s goal was to portray the image of successful immigrants.
Above all, we had to save face. I worked nonstop to graduate as the valedictorian of my high school, accrue honors in college, and earn an MBA from a top program. I even married a nice Chinese boy.
Still, life was a roller coaster, high for a few days, basking in success, then crashing. At 30, a breast-cancer diagnosis and the ensuing treatment scuttled my career as a marketing manager. The emotional and physical tolls of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy worsened my mood swings.
At last, my concerned husband pulled me aside and said, “You’ll survive cancer, but I don’t know if you’ll survive depression. ” It had never occurred to me that I needed help. I made appointments with a husband-wife psychiatrist-counselor team.
The psychiatrist diagnosed me with cyclothymia, a mood disorder that’s often considered a milder form of bipolar disorder. Still, because of the stigma, I parked far away from my therapist’s home office for the next three decades. After remote appointments, I placed a check for her in an envelope but didn’t include my return address in case the check was misdelivered.
I used the drive-through window at the pharmacy to pick up my mood-disorder medicine. During the pandemic, I joined AAPI Facebook groups for people with similar struggles and attended online meetings where we shared our mental-health journeys. I realized I was not alone and that there was no reason to feel ashamed.
I wish my relatives had received the help they needed. I’m so glad I did. Yvonne Liu is a writer living in Los Angeles who is writing a memoir about mental health, adoption, and childhood trauma.
Read the original article on Insider.
From: insider
URL: https://www.insider.com/cyclothymia-mental-health-struggles-shame-stigma-secret-asian-american-2022-7
