Denial comes in many forms. Sometimes, I play doctor, convincing myself that my husband doesn’t actually have the bipolar illness but rather that his mood swings are a symptom of some other condition – often one that, conveniently, is much easier to treat.

It’s true that in addition to bipolar disorder, my husband has attention deficit disorder (ADD), obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and narcolepsy. So, it’s a bit more complicated than managing just the bipolar disorder. But the mood swings are definitely the most difficult to manage – and bipolar disorder is certainly the one illness of all his disorders that I would pick, if I could, to trade for something else. Narcolepsy is a bit difficult to treat, too, but ADD and OSA are just so darn easy to control compared to bipolar.

I was ambushed by denial last week after it was discovered that my own mood swings promptly cleared up with diagnosis and treatment of a previously overlooked autoimmune disease. A major part of my maintenance treatment is in a restricted diet. I felt so much better that I thought, perhaps, the same sort of diet might do some good for my husband.

Admittedly, his American diet probably does need some adjustment, but when my brain isn’t swirling in a delusion of denial, I know without a doubt that there is no diet that will treat bipolar disorder.

Denial is like its own disorder. It keeps coming back and tends to manifest itself in the same ways unique to each particular person. For my husband, denial tends to crop up as a blind eye to his own bipolar symptoms: “What? I’m not depressed. I just need more sleep. What? I’m not manic. I’m just super excited about this project.”

Trying to manage his symptoms gets a bit complicated, as we first must peel back the layers of denial, slowly and as painlessly as possible: No, bipolar disorder is a real illness. You know this. We wish it wasn’t so, but it’s here and will always be. There are no magic cures, and there are no missed diagnoses. There are ways to make it tolerable, but it is impossible to make it go away.

I understand his struggle with denial; after all, when you’re depressed or manic, it’s just part of the symptom to not have accurate insight into what’s really going on, what exactly is reality and what isn’t, when it comes to self perceptions. But I’m startled by my recurrences of denial. I can see, without my husband’s obstacles, when he’s having periods of depression and mania. So, why do I continually find myself denying that he’s having another bipolar episode, denying that the meds aren’t perfect, denying that he indeed has bipolar disorder, denying that there isn’t a much easier method to treat his illness?

Some people would call my dips into denial naivety or even stupidity. I sometimes call it hope. But, really, it’s neither. It’s wishing that what’s real isn’t so. It’s looking for a quick fix that doesn’t exist but hoping that we missed something along the way. Is it stigma? I don’t think so, because I do the same sort of denial thing with my own health issues. Rather, I believe it’s one of those steps in the grieving process – I’m mourning what I wanted my life, his life, our life, to be.

Someone told me once that the grieving process is a lifelong thing, that even if you eventually get to the final acceptance stage, to not be surprised if you bounce in and out of acceptance and some other grief stage like, anger or bargaining. Every time I or my husband finds ourselves denying his bipolar disorder, or the beginning of a mood episode, we’re working our way through that grief process again. We’re coming to terms with reality, but keep pulling away to see if maybe we was mistaken, if we could wake up from this dream.

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    Last reviewed: 20 Jan 2012