Escaping the Dismissive Avoidant Ex - how to heal from a bipolar diagnosis

For years, I carried the weight of a bipolar disorder diagnosis—a label that felt like a life sentence. But deep down, I knew that wasn’t the whole story. I was determined to free myself fully, to break away from the narrative that told me I was sick, doomed, chemically defective.

It has taken everything to get here.

The Deepest Wound: A Love that Nearly Killed Me

Before I even touch on the medications and the system that failed me, I need to talk about what I now know was the most significant wound—the one that nearly killed me. The one that did kill them.

I speak of two women who sadly died after a bipolar diagnosis. I have been reading their memoirs to fully understand this 'disorder' and the similarities are jaw-dropping.

All three of us—myself, Zoe Schwarz, and Cordelia—were devastated by a dismissive-avoidant (DA) partner. A man who, for all intents and purposes, loved us in the way he was capable of, but who ultimately withheld the very thing we needed most: real, deep, reciprocal connection.

A DA partner does not break up with you in the way you expect. There are no words, no real closure. AND that for an emotionally intelligent person is the thing that DESTROYS.

They vanish into thin air. They replace you. They pretend you never existed. They run BECAUSE they love you, because the feelings they have are too intense - they are essentially TERRIFIED of real emotional connection.

And for someone with a deep heart, an emotionally intelligent, profoundly feeling person, that is not just a break-up—it is an obliteration.

I have walked with a knife in my heart for years because of the lack of closure. The way I searched for meaning, for understanding, for a way to piece myself back together after he left me broken on the floor.

Until, at last, I realised the truth—he was and is dismissive-avoidant.

And that meant he never could have given me what I needed. He was never going to love me the way I loved him.

But knowing this does not make it any less devastating.

Zoe's DA boyfriend will never be held accountable. Cordelia’s DA boyfriend will never be held accountable. Mine will never be held accountable. They will most likely NEVER face-up to what their actions precipitated, why? BECAUSE they dismiss and avoid anything that is emotionally difficult, then freak out, and run for the hills.

These men will move through their unfulfilled lives, never truly understanding what they did, what they destroyed, and who they left to die.

And that is the unbearable truth that nearly swallowed me whole.

Breaking Free from the Medications That Made Me Sicker

While the emotional devastation of that relationship was the deepest wound, it was the psychiatric system that tried to finish me off.

I was medicated into oblivion. The drugs did not save me; they made me worse. They robbed me of clarity, of emotional regulation, of my ability to heal. They twisted my brain chemistry so profoundly that I nearly lost myself completely.

Coming off those medications was like walking through fire. Every withdrawal symptom imaginable raged through my body and mind. The doctors gaslit me, told me that my desire to come off was just my mental illness talking. But I knew better. I knew myself.

I have now been medication-free for four years, and I will never take another psychiatric drug again. I am vehemently opposed to their use because I have lived the consequences.

The "Perfect Storm" That Leads to a Bipolar Diagnosis (And Too Often, Death)

As I pieced myself back together, and read these amazing girl's memoirs, I saw the pattern—the shared traits, experiences, and emotional wounds that create the perfect conditions for a bipolar diagnosis and, all too often, an early death.

Every one of us—myself, Zoe, Cordelia—had/has the following:

• A deep heart – A level of emotional depth that makes the pain of abandonment unbearable.

  
  

• High intellect and exceptionally high emotional intelligence – The ability to understand too much, to see too much, to feel too much.

  
  

• A dismissive-avoidant partner who broke us beyond repair – A love that was too much for a dismissive avoidant, a love that left a slow, torturous starvation.

  
  

• A heightened awareness of human suffering – A raw, unfiltered ability to see the injustices of the world and absorb them as our own pain.

  
  

• An anxious attachment style – Usually formed through middle-child syndrome or emotional starvation from emotionally repressed parents. Torn with guilt and self-loathing as a result.

  
  

When you combine these elements, it creates a psychological and emotional storm so intense that most never make it out alive.

Choosing a Different Fate

The statistics are horrifying—one in five people with bipolar disorder die from it. The rest are trapped in a cycle of suffering, drugged into submission, misunderstood, lost.

But that will not be my fate.

I refuse to be another statistic. I refuse to let the story end the way it ended for them.

I am choosing healing. Not through medication, not through denial, but through understanding and rebuilding. Through grief and truth. Through learning how to love myself the way he never could.

To anyone who has walked this path, who has been shattered by a love that would never hold them, who has been told they are broken when they were only ever wounded—I see you.

There is another way.

And I am walking it.

TR

Ps - Here's the most hilarious video to show exactly why the whole of psychiatry is BS!