Unlearning the Shame: Navigating Self-Esteem with a Loud Brain

The fight isn't over. Neither am I.

Receiving a diagnosis like Bipolar II, depression, or ADHD can feel like a direct hit to your self-esteem. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I took it in stride. But the bipolar diagnosis? That one knocked the wind out of me. It shook something deeper. It made me feel like everything I’d struggled with wasn’t temporary — that it was me, forever. It felt personal. It felt like failure.

It took time, research, coping tools, and a whole lot of self-care before I finally saw the truth: none of these diagnoses define my worth. Being bipolar, depressed, anxious, hypomanic, ADHD — whatever flavor of brain chaos is happening on a given day — has nothing to do with who I am at my core. They’re just pieces of a very specific wiring system that makes me, me.

That doesn’t mean I never get down on myself. I do. But now I have tools that actually help me crawl out when things get heavy: exercise, eating like I give a damn about myself, staying connected to people who ground me, and offering myself compassion on the days everything feels like an uphill sprint.

None of these diagnoses limit my potential or erase my value. Sure, I may need to approach some things differently or create my own strategy to get where I’m going. But nothing — absolutely nothing — is going to stop me from building the life I want.