Depression and feeling like an outsider

I am bipolar. Right now I am in a fluctuating depressive episode I am trying with my several drugs to escape without, and this is tricky, without flying into mania. Usually I am on top of this - happily married, good job, good life, haven't been psychotic in many years. Episodes generally minor in depth or elevation, brief, and few and far between.

But right now I am not on point and it's affecting my job, and my perception of how good it is and possibly a major decision I might make under the influence, if you will, of too little or too much serotonin, whether or not to jump ship in pursuit of greener pastures or some strong paranoia that I will be fired or that my team's project will get canned.

I am disengaged, not enjoying it, disengaged socially from my team, I am way behind in my email (work and personal), I ducked out at 2pm today to go lie in bed, I am unsure if I am dissatisfied because I have good reason to be or if my perception is distorted by the depression.

My Zoloft kicked in last week and I felt as though I had the best and most productive two days in a row, following two sick days I felt compelled to take. So another challenge is to figure out whether my suddenly improved impression of my job was distorted by hypomania. Bipolars need to be careful with SSRIs, but a calculated risk for me now.

Bipolar is dangerous to disclose. But I fear I may be testing my boss's patience and disclosure would buy me latitude but I'd only do that concealing that I am struggling with manic depression, rather just garden variety depression. Or with levity, that I have a tummy ache, but in my mind.

I guess I'll try to correct myself medically and keep my mouth shut, and consider having this in my back pocket if I leave early one too many times. Though my boss and team are smart people, and many people have some familiarity with mental illness, so my money's on his already knowing I have a few screws loose. Which might be why he didn't inquire about the nature of my sudden illness, instead being quite accomodating even on my request for second day. I'm grateful for that, though I can't help but read into that.

One thing I envy about gays, in addition to their charisma and fashion sense, is how much less trapped in their closet than I am in mine (or so I suspect). Gays don't have a reputation for going postal. People fear bipolar folks even if they are "high functioning" and treated enough to blend in. I guess I would too in their shoes.

Wow that was long, sorry, but my sudden loquaciousness is a sign I may be escaping my depressive episode in this therapeutic comment box. Thanks, Hacker News! ;)

I'm not black. I'm a white male. I have five degrees including a PhD from an Ivy League school, I've been published in nature twice, Harvard Business Review, bla bla bla. All great on paper. But if you meet me in person, you'd never know that. I come across as a person of average intelligence (at best!), and I can tell you that I've always (at least at first) been treated like an outsider in high performing circles. I remember my second year of computer science when we had our first big group assignment, and no one wanted me in their group because they assumed I was a slacker of low average intelligence. Little did they know at the time that I was one of the top programmers in the class. Eventually everyone found out, and you know what, they liked me even more for it. But it's an uphill battle whenever you are different.

That said, I'm not walking in your shoes. Maybe it would be the same, or maybe it would be 10x worse or 100x worse. What may help is two pieces of advice: (1) when you're in high performing circles if you don't talk and act like others in your group they'll assume that you're an outsider. Ironically, humans are simply not smart enough to look beyond the first set of superficial data points before they make a decision and so people react according to their experience. It may not be right, but it is. So if you're entering a foreign group and you WANT to be accepted, then you're going to need to act in a way that is familiar to them. (2) Something I heard once from Indra Nooyi: "Always assume positive intent". That is, sometimes people think negatively about us, and sometimes we read into things. If you think that people have good intentions then try to make the second your null hypothesis. Even if you're wrong you may win some of these people over, and when you're right you may give people important benefit of the doubt.

I see that one of the Nature publications was the endometrial cell transposon work in Nature Genetics - may I enquire as to the other publication?

How can you help people who don't realize this and would refuse any suggestion to seek advice? I fear my mother might be struggling with this since she was laid off last year but actively refuses to have conversations about how she might feel. 1/4 of my blame lies in Irish culture however :/

You're right, but I like to say that just to to make sure people with depression don't redirect their problems towards something else, like politics or people.

I used to blame many things for my problems, including me. I kept thinking about that "positive" mentality, for a long time. It can start to make sense at one point or another. If you're depressed, I think it's important to have a minimum of knowledge about questions on the meaning of life or something like that. If it can make you think in a healthy way and prevent people to turn into stupid things, I don't think it's really insignificant.

Good life philosophy can help you make better choices. I'm not talking about religion, I'm just talking in general, how do you look at the world.

I agree that philosophy won't really help, but it would be stupid to just not talk about it a little.