Overcoming the double self-stigma of being gay and bipolar

For Pride Month, MFT client and regular blogger Chris shares his journey of double acceptance. Chris didn’t realise he was gay until he faced a big mental health breakdown which forced him to question his identity and discover who he truly was. What followed was a difficult and slow journey of accepting and overcoming two self-stigmas – being gay and being bipolar. We’re really proud to share his story:

“I’m what they’d call a late bloomer when it comes to finding my sexuality. It wasn’t until I was 26 that I started seriously asking questions about myself and seeking support. Interestingly, that coincided with an acute relapse with my bipolar disorder. I, like many people who “come-out” gay, at any age, consider that I was probably always gay. I don’t think I turned gay at any particular point. My experience around the time I first “came out” as gay was a period of enlightenment and discovery in my life. When thinking back over the years the evidence for it stacks up.

At school I’d never had a girlfriend; at a young age I’d make pencil drawings of topless male torsos and I’d daydream over certain guys in class. As I got older I remember walking down the street and noticing good looking guys but completely miss the girls that my mates would be jeering at. At a time when my friends were finding girlfriends, I was just not all that bothered, but I didn’t know why. Despite all of this, I just hadn’t put two and two together. There was little actual information being made available back then about what being gay was or what it meant. All I knew was kids at school just used it as an insult. So whatever it was, it must be bad and that means I can’t be it.

So, the years went by. I had friends that had been brave enough to come out at earlier ages and I always felt very comfortable around them – never any sense that it was weird nor did I hold any form of stigma about them being gay. But for me being gay, well that was very different. I went to Uni, I graduated from Uni, I got a job, bought a house etc… Life went on. Yet, I still didn’t identify myself as gay. I had a huge mental block and it was easier just to ignore it and march on. Then, something happened and from an unexpected place I found myself questioning who I was. This brings us to Christmas day 2008. While most families were at home stuffing themselves with turkey and mince pies, I had just landed in A&E. I hadn’t slept for days, my head was full of ideas of grandeur and false money making schemes. I’d spent excessively on my credit cards. My mood was massively elevated, I was disconnected from reality and very argumentative. I’d been hit by a major bipolar episode.

This hadn’t come out of nowhere. I’d just returned from a three-month work secondment in Dubai. Now, it’s worth noting that there are no LGBT rights in Dubai and homosexuality is illegal, with fierce punishments that may include death by stoning. I’m not sure they’ve much more tolerance for mental health conditions either for that matter. However, this was a fork in the road moment – had I been able to accept my sexuality at an earlier age – I simply wouldn’t have gone and would most likely have enjoyed my Christmas dinner at home with my family than in the confines of a Psychiatric ward. Conversely, dealing with my sexuality would most likely have been kicked down the road for a few more years.

The work placement was largely fine, although it was my first time being overseas for any prolonged period of time and I’d not travelled internationally for holidays more than a couple of times. Whilst it sounded like a great opportunity, I really didn’t enjoy it at all. I struggled massively with loneliness. Weekends seemed to drag and there was little to do. Sitting by the pool, shopping and going to restaurants was about it.

I had fallen in to a slightly depressive state and to make things worse, towards the end of my secondment, I had a falling out with the manager. I don’t think it was actually all that serious but I blew it out of proportion in my own head and made myself very anxious about it. It was only a few days before I was due home anyway and I had a plane ticket booked. Fortunately I managed to keep myself together to get my stuff packed up, to the airport and on a plane home. By the time I got home, I was very relieved to be back in around familiar surroundings. I felt safe to be home. Whilst this should have been a start to my mental health recovery, in fact it was the start of a steep deterioration. There’s been a familiar pattern for my bipolar episodes over the years. Once the pressure that has led to a deterioration in my mental health has passed, and I feel safe again, that can often be the trigger that causes my mind to let go and for me to fall in to a deeper state of my condition. This is what happened to me on this occasion and resulted in me being admitted to a Psychiatric ward on Christmas day.

I was there in total for 12 weeks. I sometimes describe the experience of a serious episode as similar to having my brain ‘reformatted’, in the same sense of how you might ‘reformat’ a hard drive in your computer; the process of wiping all the data from it ready to start again. I’d go in to hospital feeling alive and full of personality (my bipolar always goes high first) and after several weeks of strong medication I’d come out the other side feeling like an empty husk.

Then the recovery period becomes the rebuilding phase. Taking time to think about what I want in my brain. How I want my life to be, what I want to do and how I want to live. I’d find myself questioning life, the world, me and my place within it.  And during this process I find myself thinking deeply and asking questions of myself that I’d never think to ask when I’m otherwise ‘well’. During this time I’ll often reflect on thoughts and emotions I’ve experienced during the manic phase of the condition. When my mood elevates, this manifests as greater confidence in the way that I act but also the way that I think. It pushes boundaries and takes me to places in my mind that I’d not normally go to whilst I’m my normal quiet, conservative self. And this time, not before time, I started to ask the important question “am I gay?”. Despite the previous evidence, I really wasn’t sure and certainly wasn’t able or willing to accept it.

The first person I opened up to about it was my Community Psychiatric Nurse, Michael. I’m not sure why it felt relevant to bring it up with him; I guess I felt comfortable having that discussion, and in the broader context of my other weird things I’d said during my relapse it was no biggie; just another problem for the pile. Fortunately Michael wasn’t phased by the question and was able to sign-post me to a charity for further support – London Friend near Kings Cross.

The first step needed on my coming out gay journey was to actually identify that there was something not usual about my sexuality and work out what it was. It was all to easy to kick the can down the road and not do anything, after all, I’d done that for the last 15 or so years at least (based on probably having my first gay thoughts at around age 11 when starting senior school). The major sticking point with me was definitely self stigma. From my perspective, being gay was something that very much only happened to other people. My bipolar episode was what was needed to kick me in to action in to dealing with these emotions. On the outside, it looked like bipolar made me gay. I went in to hospital as a ‘straight’ man and came out three months later thinking I might be gay. But in reality there was a lot more going on. It was the start of a journey to find my authentic self.

Once I started asking questions, I met a lot of people via various gay and coming out support groups who later became some of my best friends and we explored the gay scene together. One of those groups was the Gay Outdoor Club, where on one outing I happened to bump in to no other than Michael, my previous Community Psychiatric Nurse. Suddenly a few things from our conversations slotted into place; he knew a lot more about the topic than he was letting on.

As a result of all this, I felt much less alone and that being gay was in fact as normal as being straight. For a long while I had a straight life (work, family, old friends who didn’t know) and a secret gay life that happened mostly at the weekends. In time, I built the confidence to tell people in my straight life and gradually allowed these lives to merge together. It’s a lot harder telling people you’ve known for a long time that you’re gay than telling new friends. I suppose it feels like there’s much more to lose. And this probably comes down to perceived stigma around being gay. But it’s far less now than it has been in the past. Civil rights campaigns have brought about equality and in time this has helped those identifying as gay to open up about it. This has probably lead to a public perceptions of homosexuality becoming seen as quite normal, common and is generally accepted. There’s countless celebrities who have made their fame off the back of it and have broken out of the gay world in to the mainstream which has certainly also helped.

I’ve found that coming-out is something that never stops, but it does get easier. I don’t go around telling everyone, but it’s not uncommon for heteronormative statements to come up in conversation with new acquaintances. I made the decision long ago that I’d always use the right pronouns describing dating activities and latterly, my partner, and to not be evasive in response to any direct questions. I knew that if I couldn’t be honest with others, I wasn’t being honest with myself. Sometimes I still find this difficult. I don’t know why, but being gay is still personal to me and sometimes it’s not something I want to go into as part of light chit-chat with someone I’ve only just met. But that’s just how it is.

With bipolar, at least there was a clear demarcation point in my life. I’d become very unwell requiring hospital treatment and I had a Doctor giving me a diagnosis. But having someone tell you you’re a ‘thing’ doesn’t make it any easier to accept it. That’s a separate process I needed to undertake on my own. And that took a while. With my bipolar, it just seemed easier to hide. I felt ashamed of it. I definitely felt stigma towards it and telling others was and still is difficult. Generally I find most don’t really know how to respond when I open up about my mental health and it can result in being treated differently, particularly in a work context. I suppose the same is true of being gay, but it feels more intense when it comes to mental health. It’s also not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation so often. This makes it easier to avoid than with sexuality. I have to intentionally bring it in to the discussion. But for me I apply the same rules as to being gay. If someone asks me about it, I’ll never shy away from giving honest answers. This means that coming out as bipolar is as much of an ongoing process as coming out gay. There’s a few celebrities that have opened up about their mental health, and that’s a good thing. Having someone you can point to who has the same condition but also lives a perceivably ‘successful’ life helps normalise the condition in conversation.

I’m sure I’m far from the only one who is both gay and has a mental health diagnosis. If I were to draw a Venn diagram, the crossover is most likely quite large. In my case, I don’t think being gay has triggered any consequential deterioration in my mental health; I knew about my bipolar first and I think it’s my bipolar that has given me more pain in my life than my sexuality. That said, it is my bipolar that gave my mind the freedom to explore the possibilities of my sexuality in the first place.

For others, I know their sexuality can lay a heavy burden upon them. Particularly if parents, relatives and friends are far from accepting. The rejection can quite predictably lead to depression or in some cases even worse outcomes. I find this so sad and frustrating. People are what people are. It’s hard enough to come to terms with one’s sexuality or psychiatric diagnosis without other people freaking out and projecting their insecurities and prejudices on to you. A little kindness and empathy from those close to you goes such a long way to helping provide time and space to deal with these things, to blossom in to your true self and then enable you carry on with with what you were doing before life threw you a curveball.

Finding yourself as gay and coming to terms with that can only lead us to experience the world in a different way than our heterosexual counterparts that haven’t had to deal with all this stuff. We still live in a heteronormative society where being gay is still seen as different. But having done the ‘self work’ in dealing with all that comes with it can do nothing other than make us stronger and more compassionate people. The opportunities we get in life may also be different (despite equality laws) but there are now few things that gay people can’t do that heterosexual couples can. All I can say is that being gay has perhaps complicated and delayed things a little in my life that would have been simpler and quicker had I not been gay. But overall I believe I’ve become a stronger, more resilient and more interesting person because of it. And all of the same applies just as much to my Bipolar.

LGBTQ+ Mental Health Support

If you are part of the LGBTQIA+ community and would like some mental health and/or emotional wellbeing support, please do join our Online LGBTQIA+ Peer Support Group to meet others in a friendly, non-judgmental environment, to share experiences, journeys and give each other advice and support. We meet monthly on the third Tuesday of every month, 7pm-8pm on Zoom. This group is free for adults aged 16+. You do not need any mental health diagnosis to be eligible.

To attend, please register as a client of Mary Frances Trust and then book your place by contacting our office at info@maryfrancestrust.org.uk or call 01372 375 400 or SMS 07929 024 722.

Follow Chris

If you’d like to find out more about Chris’ journey and read his other blogs, visit his website: www.beingchrispratt.com

You can also follow him on social media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/beingchrispratt

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beingchrispratt/

You can read Chris’ blogs he penned for MFT:

• Glad It Happened: A Mental Health Recovery Story
• Challenging Mental Health Misconceptions: Does Experiencing Mental Ill-Health Make You A Stronger or Weaker Person?
• Journaling: get it out, get it straight and move on
• The Path of Acceptance and When It’s Time to Stop Running Away
• Why Men Don’t Talk and Seven Ways You Can Make It Better
• How To Start a Conversation About Mental Health
• Recovery Without The Crash
• What I Wished I had Know Before Going to University
• Bipolar Is a Super Power Not a Disorder

You can listen to Chris’ interviews on our radio show, The Wellbeing Hour:

• March 2021 edition on what it means to have a bipolar disorder
• July 2021 edition on how to use Journaling to manage your mental health and wellbeing

Want to write a blog for us?

If, like Chris, you’d like to share your mental health story and advice to inspire and guide others, we’d love to hear from you! You don’t need to be an experienced blogger or to have ever written before, we can guide you through it. Blogs can be written prose, poem, videos or artwork – whatever speaks to you!

Contact Connie, Communications Lead at MFT, at connie@maryfrancestrust.org.uk

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