Don't ever feel alone with bipolar disorder...

Do you ever feel all alone with your bipolar disorder? That there is no one out there who could possibly understand the great heights we reach, just as we must hit the pits of despair as well.

I know everyone suffers bipolar disorder differently, but here are a few of my favorite people who I'm proud to stand and be counted with.

Beethoven anyone? Demi Lovato, (possibly) Brittany Spears, Marilyn Monroe, Carrie Fisher, Sinead O'Connor, Vincent Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Linda Hamilton, and Vivien Leigh.

Best known of these is probably Carrie Fisher, she's certainly been one of the most outspoken actresses about her disorder. Here's a little bio on her:

Carrie Fisher, actress, 54, best known for her role as Princess Leia in theStar Wars trilogy, has experienced plenty of turbulence in her life—and not just aboard the Millennium Falcon. After years of struggling with mania and depression, Fisher was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 28.

Fisher told USA Today in 2002 that she now leads a normal life and her behavior is much more predictable, thanks to the lithium prescribed by her doctor. But it wasn’t always so easy. “I hacked off my hair, got a tattoo, and wanted to convert to Judaism," she said of her most recent manic episode.

Ah, the readers, the writers, the dreamers and me...here a few other bios just in case you needed more enlightenment on why you are amazing for just being you. Starting with a Emily Dickinson and ending with Vivien Leigh, just a few amazing people with bipolar disorder. I'll try to do another one of there as interest shows what's read and what's not :)

Emily Dickinson

This introverted poet’s work is often dark and gloomy. While it is impossible to know for sure if her mental illness would have been classified as bipolar disorder today, a 2001 study in theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry that examined cycles in Dickinson’s productivity suggests that may be the case.
Dickinson’s doctor diagnosed her with “nervous prostration,” which, according to the study’s author, psychiatrist John F. McDermott, MD, was “characterized by anxiety and depression.” In Dickinson’s time, physicians had not yet identified bipolar disorder as such, but, Dr. McDermott notes, Dickinson’s writing patterns are “not inconsistent” with the symptom profile of the disorder.

Linda Hamilton

Actress Linda Hamilton is best known for her role as Sarah Connor in Terminatorand Terminator 2: Judgment Day. She also starred in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. Despite her professional success, though, she was self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and her mood swings damaged two marriages. Hamilton struggled with symptoms of bipolar disorder for 20 years, a time she calls the lost years, before overcoming it. Though she initially worried that treatment would diminish her talents, she is now on medication and speaks openly about being bipolar. "Somebody needs to come out and make this okay for people to talk about and get help and take advantage of the resources," she told the Associated Press.

Virginia Woolf

The dark diaries and letters of Woolf, who suffered four major breakdowns before drowning herself at age 59, have convinced numerous scholars that the writer must have had manic-depressive illness. According to a 2004 article by psychologist Katherine Dalsimer, the “mood swings from severe depression to manic excitement and episodes of psychosis” that Woolf experienced would be diagnosed as bipolar today.

Vivien Leigh

Best known for her iconic Oscar-winning role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, Vivien Leigh also captured the public's attention with her marriage to fellow actor Laurence Olivier. However, Leigh was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and her unpredictable behavior eventually ruined her professional reputation and destroyed her marriage to Olivier. "In her day there were no pills, there were no clinics, there were no publicists, there was nobody between Vivien and an outside world which she found chilly, hostile, and sometimes, because of her mental state, could not cope with," said her friend Sheridan Morley in a BBC documentary.

Feel better? Invincible? Unbreakable? Well you should be feeling that way. Look at what just a few of have done. This handful of names has changed histories! No other group of people with the common theme between them being their diagnosis has this. We are amazing. You. Are. Amazing.Now go out there and change the world. I know I'm trying to.