“I’m Not Scared of the Bipolar Stigma, it Doesn’t Define Me.”
When I agreed to write the columns for the Indiana Lawyer there was no pay wall to view the articles. A couple years later they changed their policy and now all of my articles are locked behind a pay wall. You can access a limited number of free articles each month. I reached out to the Indiana Lawyer’s Editor in 2022 and asked if they could remove the pay wall for only my disclosure article and allow me to post it on this website. They declined and said that they can’t choose individual articles to remove from the pay wall. The copyright laws allow me to quote part of the article and I can publish anything that I have re-written in my own words and write about the article.
Here is the beginning of the article:
“"My child overdosed on heroin and died.”
“My spouse was in a serious car accident and will be permanently disabled.”
“My business is failing and I am considering filing bankruptcy.”
“I am in jail.”
“Help.”
Lawyers routinely receive these calls. We are trained to help other people when tragedy hits or people hit rock bottom. But, are you taking good care of your brain? In this article, you will learn a mental fitness exercise that only takes three minutes. But first, I will share my experience with asking the Indiana Judges Lawyers and Assistance Program for help in May 2015. Since that time, I have gained the confidence to discuss it publicly. Contacting JLAP was the first step in that process.”
CITATION: Reid Murtaugh, Mental Fitness: I’m Not Scared of the Bipolar Stigma, Ind. Law. (Jan. 11, 2017), https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/42477-mental-fitness-im-not-scared-of-the-bipolar-stigma
Here are some other quotes from the article:
“Mental fitness is not just for people with mental illness. Everyone has unproductive, unhelpful, irrational thoughts at times. I encourage everyone to take the time to think about your own mental fitness. I am not saying that the legal profession is more stressful or more difficult than other professions; I am just pointing out that lawyers receive a large amount of emotional input and the work requires a lot of mental energy. A large emotional input without an effective release can be disruptive to someone with perfect genetic brain chemistry.”
“This is new territory for me. I have never written an article for publication before. It is not easy to be openly bipolar. There is not an instruction manual on what to do and what not to do. It is not easy to keep it private, either. I decided to be open about my bipolar diagnosis because I want to connect with other members of the profession. I want to help. I want to share my experience. At the same time, I don’t want bipolar to be my identity.”
“I contacted JLAP in May 2015. I remember how hard it was to ask for help. I typed out the email but could not convince myself to push send. I remember looking up the phone number but not calling. I think it took me two to three weeks to work up the courage to finally send this email:
“I have been struggling with my depression lately. I would like to talk someone at JLAP. Please let me know how to do this. Thanks.”
CITATION: Reid Murtaugh, Mental Fitness: I’m Not Scared of the Bipolar Stigma, Ind. Law. (Jan. 11, 2017), https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/42477-mental-fitness-im-not-scared-of-the-bipolar-stigma
I also included a mental fitness exercise, which I will share in a separate blog post with the other mental fitness exercises.
I feel really proud of this article. I really did not know what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. It was all intuition. I was motivated by my pain and wanting to help myself and others along the way. Writing this article—-taking the leap—-opened a whole new world for me.
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