Running on 30 years now living day to day managing bipolar and I can certainly attest that majority of the medical community, especially in the psych fields, still don't understand a god damn thing about it. You have to play these people so that they don't play you. It's just the reality of the game they've established. I need two medications from these people, that's it. That's all I've ever asked for and all I ever will, I do all the heavy lifting myself.
I have been lucky enough to have been treated by two brilliant psychiatrists in my life, one of which passed away and the other I saw at the beginning when my life was hanging in the balance, and am seeing again now. All the rest, I've had to hold their hand and walk them through every aspect of the illness - they are clueless, emboldened by their ego's and extremely dangerous. Many of these people work in psych not because they had some passion for it but because they couldn't hack it in more challenging fields and psych is where they landed. You can be an absolute shit psychiatrist or therapist and cruise right through your career, there aren't really any concrete standards they have to abide by. Of course there are those who are truly brilliant and made for this field, thank god for them.
As for therapy, I've never needed it. When you have any type of affliction or disease, course of action is to accept it, learn what you need to know to control and manage it, and move forward with your life. Childhood and adolecent trauma to me is much more damaging and necessary to address with a professional than what I live with. If I ever needed anyone to talk to about something, I had that between parents, some friends, my wife or just a random forum on the internet, and frankly if you're self aware enough (one blessing that comes with the perspective provided by experiencing the insanity-sanity continuum), you can basically assess any of your problems or past traumas and work through it on your own.
The real trauma that comes with mental illness is the public and social stigma way more than the disease itself, which is an incredible indictment on humanity that they could actually be more toxic than a disease that is hellbent on killing you. The medical establishment erroneously believes that self-isolating is a trait of bipolar but it's actually a defense mechanism for dealing with a world that will not allow us to exist openly as we are. Bipolar is a word I'm not even allowed to utter irl without significant social consequences. I'm actually shocked how all these years later, this topic still instantly renders many otherwise intelligent adults into babbling infants. This shit really isn't that hard to undertand.
